Art of the Quiet Interface

If this is going to be an article on readable web design, it would be a good place to bring up the fact that the font you're rendering your page on shouldn't require the user to have 20/20 vision just to make out.

The problem is, that's exactly the font this (and many other web sites) are using. As an example, my screen is a standard 72dpi monitor, and sits about about 28" from my eyes. This is the recommended distance by many ergonomic consultants (arm's length) At that resolution, the font this website uses renders as roughly the same size as the 32" line on a near vision eye chart. This means that just making out the individual glyphs of their font requires you to have near perfect vision.

This is not, to my mind, comfortably readable. As a simple comparison, pull up any book you have lying nearby, and hold it at your usual reading distance and compare the relative glyph size to the web site's. For me, it takes 2-3 levels of magnification just to make the site comfortably readable.

Web designers, if you're making content you want people to read, please make it readable.

Nice post, but probably the thought goes much beyond websites focused around content consumption only.

Take search for example. Google has sold a completely dry and silent web interface for long. And it does work well for them. On the other hand there are companies which have adopted skeuomorphism to an extreme and yet made a buck. Apple, for example though an exceptional one by all means.

In the wild, there are also websites that make millions with absolutely terrible interface; even to the point of being called retards by many design gurus. Apparently the decision to have or NOT have a quiet interface depends on a lot of parameters, and not just "coolness".

What you're probably trying to emphasize is to focus on "wider audience first", "loyalty" second and then "monetization"? It may or may not be the right approach too.

Perhaps you may want to evaluate your design process from the perspective of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And then there is always difficulty in striking a balance between intent to reach a wider audience and to make money from that audience too.

Many entrepreneurs lose it at this stage, even with great products or content.

While it is a lovely sentiment and I know I do personally prefer quiet pages, it is also the case that if you love A/B testing you will notice that clutter works. Each distraction is a chance for the consumer to swap from consuming (which costs us money) to whatever the profitable activity we are pushing is.

This is part of what I think subscription sites could offer, though I don't know of any that do. If consuming content makes you money, you can optimize for enjoyability of content consumption.

It's a difficult balance, because on a particular page, you never know if the user is going to want to:

1) Consume the content without distraction

2) Preview the content, decide they're not interested after all, and look for other things to navigate to

Because of 2), millions of things are jammed into the page, and they do serve a purpose. Plus, usually once you scroll down far enough, only the main page content is left, as the right column ended long ago.