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Comment by zagrebian | Hacker News Reader

But is it really worth fixing these things? What do you achieve by spending time and money to fix these details, other than making users slightly less annoyed by your design? Maybe these details are not fixed because they don’t really matter that much. Have you ever stopped using an app because a button or icon was slightly misaligned?

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I think realistically it's more of a situation of why don't they just work correctly in the first place. It's not that everyone should spend extreme amounts of efforts for perfection it's that this is one of the most basic things that should just be correct out of the box.

It doesn't give me much confidence in the company's seriousness about quality. When I see these kinds of things in applications, my mind starts thinking, "OK, I wonder what else they half-assed?" Does the main functionality really work? If they can't even notice problems that you can literally see with your eyes, what important invisible things are broken, too? Should I really fork over hard-earned money for the premium version if they can't even get basic shit right?

I dunno. I found out that people who do care about how things look like, tend not to care about how they work and whether they are practical. And the other way round too. The slightly misaligned button is not "basic shit". It is useless shit.

And this works on company level too. The groups that spend a lot of time caring about visuals tend not to give a damm about much else.

I can see the difference between practical design and bad design. A misaligned button is usually the latter.

Those who just want the thing to work without much regard for the looks of it will tend to use whatever default their UI package comes with, with minimal styling, if at all. It is often not bad in terms of correctness. Defaults may not look great, but they are usually well designed and consistent.

If you have alignment problems, it is often because you tried to do something to the looks, but did it poorly.

I did not mean it as in difference between "practical design and bad design". I do agree there is usually tension between the two.

Simply, people who care about function wont notice misaligned button. And people who are notice misaligned button usually prioritize visual stuff over everything. That extends to managers and whole companies.

Pretty much no UI package will have everything aligned out of the box, it is not even possible. When you use them out of the box without tweaking, you either get misaligned things.

> Have you ever stopped using an app because a button or icon was slightly misaligned?

Maybe, maybe not, maybe it made me not use the app in the first place.

It is one of these little things that make the app look unprofessional. I have been a bit uncomfortable using banking apps with misaligned icons. It the designers can get away with misaligned icons, what can the core developers get away with? If a company is sloppy with their design, maybe they are sloppy with their security too.

People can easily see these visual details, they can't see the back-end but for the lack of information, they will assume it is made with the same care, that is, not much. And maybe they are right.

I think it comes down to which type of market you’re in. In some markets, like highly congested markets, design makes a big difference. It can be less important in more niche markets

Totally agree - I think that all the examples included in the article (including high-profile software from wealthy vendors) just show it's not THAT important to have everything pixel perfect aligned and meticulously crafted, it needs to be usable and somewhat good looking and that's enough.

A well-designed product will sell better than a slightly-less-well-designed product

Little shit here, little shit there has tendency to multiply and spread.

Some people like esthetics of swiss gardens.

Some people don't mind esthetics of favelas.

You can live e2e in both.

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