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Comment by vortico | Hacker News Reader

Kinda odd that in their one example (https://refactoring-ui.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/landi...), the version on the left appears more interactive (since the hit-boxes are well-defined), minimal (since it avoids useless drop shadow), easier to recognize the content's organization (since the contrast between elements is higher), and functional (since it's more compact without sacrificing aesthetics). The low-contrast layout on the right with lots of mouse-dead-zones is a trend, not better design.

Would you trust anything this book has to say?

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The subjectivity of design has always baffled me. I looked at the example and immediately thought "wow, the one on the right looks so much better". I truly don't understand how the one on the left could be preferred.

It does seem like you're arguing against the "usability", which I think is a stretch. The hover state provides interactivity, the right has far less going on (minimal), the drop shadow does nothing either way and more compact does not mean more functional, I would argue the exact opposite actually.

Yeah I saw that example and thought that the left was better. Which got me thinking about how subjective design can be. Which also reinforces the struggle I have to take a lot of design seriously.

There's a lot of really important parts of design. Stuff that when I'm told about, it's immediately obvious and makes sense. But then there's all this nonsense mixed in, often followed by a "you'll just have to trust me" kind of response from the designer.

I too prefer the one on the left. However, the one on the right looks more laid back and appropriate for a fun/game kind of application, and the one on the left looks more technical and serious, at least from my uneducated point of view.

And of course, you can make a similar list of complaints about the right:

- Visual "desiderata" in the form of noisy and distracting grid lines

- Poor information hierarchy that reduces the contrast between the content and the search box

- The lack of separation between content and action buttons also draws the spotlight off of the content

If you subscribe to Tufte's school of thought on proper visual information design de-emphasizing and/or removing as much as possible in favor of focusing on data and content the right is objectively better.

I'm with you on the drop shadow though :)

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