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Comment by boomlinde | Hacker News Reader

As sort of a sidenote: websites about UX seem to have the worst UX. Clicking the link, I'm not only met by a social sharing bar that uses 1/6th of the screen and screws scrolling up (because for some reason it should follow through my scrolling but somehow only be visible when scrolling upwards), but a faux-chat window overlaying the content where a Tom is asking me how he can help me. Not at all, thank you. At least being so up-front about how absolutely terrible your website is means I didn't stay long enough for a modal asking me to subscribe to their newsletter to pop up.

Does anyone actually believe that this crap leads to a better user experience? Are UX concepts and standards so inbred that the people involved just can't separate chocolate pudding from excrement anymore?

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As a UX designer I have seen a lot of this stuff over the years and I always find it funny. DesignerNews.com, which is an imitation of this site, is chock full of articles like this.

The big thing to understand is a lot of people in The Blogosphere(TM) who post articles about UX don't really give a rip about anything other than the pageviews whether it's for ad revenue, establishing themselves as a thought leader, or trying to market their company. Even worse, there are some people who don't even ACTUALLY know much about UX, they just want to post an article about it to spread around LinkedIn and seem relevant by harping about the importance of UX, etc.

Having said all that, if you sift through all the garbage there are some great resources. Some of the big players in the space tend to do it well. InVision's blog, for example. UXPin are pretty good. There are lots of little ones like UXPowerTools' content marketing emails that are starting to do a good job as well.

At this point as someone who is always trying to improve as a UX designer, I have become accustomed to vetting the 100:1 ratio of garbage articles to bad ones.

This should have been obvious, I guess, but when I read your comment it felt like a revelation. Suddenly, so many articles make sense. It reminds me of the inconsistency inherent in most books about how to beat the market.

I saw it was like designernews.co and I was about to ask how it's that imitation of this site. I agree about these "UX Sites" doesn't present good UX. NNGroup website[1] does its job great since they are pioneer on user experience and usability. They frequently publish articles about how all these pop-ups, modals etc effects the usability.

https://www.nngroup.com/

I just mean imitation in it's simplest of forms, which is to say, some creator saw HN and thought it would be good to do a design-focused version. The idea itself is good, it's just a lot of junk gets posted there. I still visit it. Some improvements would make it much better.

I literally know nothing about UX, but I have to say a visit to UXPin's website instantly turned me off. First, they put this great big demand for my email front and center when I barely even know what their site is (and a single line explaining it is not enough to get me to sign up). The entire website is covered over with "modal grey" with no X box or anything else showing me I can close it, just some links at the top that are not obviously clickable because of the grey modal. Turns out it isn't a modal at all you can just scroll down (no indication of that) and that the small links are clickable. Once I was past that, it was fine and dandy, but if I were actually interested in being a customer rather than a curious person trying to figure out what I was missing, I probably would have just left.

my impression was even worse. why does a company about design utilize a default bootstrap theme?

unless they're all about integrating bootstrap for customers...

Yeah, the product isn't great. To the point about UX blogs though, theirs is pretty solid https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/. It isn't bogged down by social sharing widgets, scroll jacking, or pop ups (last I checked)

besides the floating header that eats-up my precious vertical screen real-estate, the blog content seems great...

thanks for the link

Have you ever considered putting together a newsletter of the weekly best posts across all that you follow?

I would definitely subscribe.

I actually did exactly this for a while and gave up on it. I had about ~150 subscribers after 12 weeks. Here is a sample:

http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8...

It took a lot more effort/diligence than I had figured it would to keep all the links straight and add what I thought was helpful narrative context. I wasn't having much fun or seeing a whole lot of support, so I stopped.

> As sort of a sidenote: websites about UX seem to have the worst UX. Clicking the link, I'm not only met by a social sharing bar that uses 1/6th of the screen

This comment anecdotally reinforces my impression that UX people today (I assume you're either a UX people, or a people interested in UX) have a bias for full-width sites and browsers.

I rarely run my browser full-width (and I think many UX/UI designers rarely do anything else but full-width).

When I opened the page under discussion, I didn't see any social sharing bar at all, just editorial content. And when I read your comment I went "huh?" And then "oh."

So I full-widthed my browser, and saw what you're complaining about. (I didn't notice any scrolling problems. And I didn't notice a popup; that may be because of my adblocking addons.)

As far as I'm concerned, this site exhibits very good UX for this particular aspect of the site. If the browser isn't wide enough to display the sidebar, it gets moved to below the editorial content. That's so refreshingly respectful!

Most often I see "beautiful" sites that have to be sidescrolled if the browser isn't full-width. I do two things in that situation:

1. I turn off styles, which then makes everything flow within the viewport (It's 1990 again!) and moves all the blocks to the order that they appear in the html. Because all I care about are words and pictures, not features. Again, in this site's case that works fabulously, because the site makers ordered their blocks so that editorial content is first; abcnews.com is a good example where, if you turn off styles, the content of interest doesn't appear until you scroll way down the page.

2. Or I leave.

> have a bias for full-width sites and browsers.

Ah, of course. He's using it wrong!

No, not at all. If he doesn't like it, then he doesn't like it, I can't disagree with that at all.

My point is that the page builders consciously thought of this part, and came up with a reasonable and accommodating design, which I (a narrow-width user) only noticed because of the comment.

Or you luckily happen to exemplify a corner-case.

I'm pretty sure the parent poster was joking.

Good UX, in my book, would be omitting the information in the sidebar altogether, because it somehow manages to be less relevant to the content than the pointless stock photos that illustrate it. I don't care that the article was shared 59 times, and the fact that I can share it on social networks is not mind blowing enough to me that I have to be reminded of it by a bar popping in and out of view like a mole throughout the whole article. Neither are the cool icons or Tom's helpful tone. What would I even need your help with, Tom?

It's also important to note that the bar of social network icons are not below the editorial content shere they would dwell on any remotely useful website, but on top of it. The design feels almost contemptful of its audience. My experience as a user is that I am disrespected and hated.

> This comment anecdotally reinforces my impression that UX people today (I assume you're either a UX people, or a people interested in UX) have a bias for full-width sites and browsers.

I used it on a cell phone. My choices there are limited to landscape or portrait mode, both of which behave awfully in subtly different ways. They obviously went out of their way to make a mobile version of the layout, though. They just didn't think it through, because they suck at UX.

And yes, since I am a user, I am interested in my experience. I can't say that I have a bias for full-width sites and browsers, but even if I did, why should my experience be worse in full screen than in a smaller window? Why should it be worse on a phone? The content is text. You read it from left to right, from the top to the bottom. Laying it out in a way that doesn't inspire self harm is not rocket science. Despite these vapid UX blogs making their snake oil salesmanship out to be valuable and insightful, they've failed to find a solution for the most basic problem. They can't even lay text out without having useless crap hovering over it. It's like calling yourself a plumber when you can't even flush your toilet.

Frankly, I'd rather side scroll, because at least then I'd have to make a conscious effort to see all the non-content.

Also, a couple of the images leave me wondering. The walk with orange and black walls? The iPad, keyboard, mouse and pen? And no alt text? Strange.

It's the idea that random themed images will increase your engagement. No faith in the content.

That didn't work for me. I was left with "WTF?". And wondering whether I'm too old to get some joke. Or maybe just not British ;)

>As sort of a sidenote: websites about UX seem to have the worst UX.

That reminds me of my numerical methods professor who gave talks on how to present things - and his lecture was literally the worst at the entire uni and this is not just my opinion, this fact was established by anonymous student vote. He had power point presentation slides stuffed full of formulas - literally 10-20 lines of mathematical theorems and proofs, and he just clicked through the pages, leaving no more than a few minutes for such complex slides.

https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/8gBS9/http://whatusersdo.com/bl...

I clicked the link, interested, saw the design of the article's website, and closed the window.

Don't forget the light grey on white text.

I personally think Tom is great. But then I am him.

Do you personally introduce yourself to every visitor? If not, you're probably not the Tom I met.

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