Less Aesthetic, More Design | Hacker News Reader

Less Aesthetic, More Design

blog.wells.ee

27 pointsckarltorp4 comments

As a developer trying to gain more insight into proper design methodology this really spoke to me. With all the articles and discussion around "design" really focusing more on aesthetics, for some time I thought that was all design is about.

For example, I work mainly on mobile apps, and it took some time for me to view another app's design with an eye for more than just "looking pretty". You really have to think a bit differently to begin noticing the small things the designer did to make the experience more enjoyable.

There are tons of projects (even some open source projects) investing heavily into AB testing and other usability testing. Unfortunately, nobody ever seems to publish the data from these studies.

To really move user interface forward, it would be great to have a large list of UI design tips that are backed by real world data.

  Do X and not Y : 72% of users found X easier.

Nearly everything I read about UI design these days seems to come down entirely to the authors opinion. Surely there is a better way?

Wait, since when does "Design" not include aesthetics?!

[Indeed, I'd say that most common uses of the word "design" are almost synonymous with aesthetics... "industrial design" => making cool looking cases; "graphic design" => pretty pictures; "web designer" => someone who makes pretty websites]

Not really. Think of design as the core, while aesthetics is the chrome. In my opinion, design has purpose. Something is "designed" to do something. You know, as in 'intelligent design'.

Take an example here. In this website, which what people call a github for recipes [0], note how the recipe pages are made. The recipe page is an example of a high design, low aesthetics page. It was designed to do one thing and do one thing well: display a recipe. It was designed to draw attention to the FORK button, because that's what the aim of Fork the Cookbook is all about: to get people forking recipes.

It is lacking in aesthetics. It's not that beautiful to look at honestly, but in my opinion, it does its work well in doing its task.

[0] http://forkthecookbook.com/recipes/white-chocolate-passion-f...

disclosure: I designed the layout for Fork the Cookbook

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