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Comment by ryanSrich | Hacker News Reader

> Design is not how something looks

You're right. But it certainly includes how it looks.

You can't silo off certain aspects of interaction between products and users. The visual aesthetics of a product are subjectively at the front of the line when it comes to design.

Design is a "why not both" profession. You can't have a pretty looking site that doesn't function properly and still have a great product. You also can't have a functioning site that looks like shit and still have a great product. You need all aspects of design; visual, experience, functionality, etc. to come together at the same time to deliver a great product to the end user.

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Many companies with lots of designers will actually have designers that specialize in visual (or animation, or even sound) as well as interaction (who might not be trained in visuals at all). My wife, for instance, has a graphic design background, so is perfectly capable of visual design work, but focuses on interaction design (aka usability), and even here one can specialize in things like different kinds of input (touch, gesture, speech). Her old boss (and my former colleague) was a visual designer who specialized in...color...and was quite good at that. And then you have jack of all trade web designers that do a bit of visual, a bit of interaction, a bit of CSS/Javascript, and maybe even SEO. And then industrial, material, packaging, ..., designers, of course.

Designers are really analogous programmers in the sense that there are tons of specializations and skills to consider from within.

I personally self identify as a programming language designer...which is a completely different rabbit hole.

>> You also can't have a functioning site that looks like shit and still have a great product.

craigslist will beg to differ

and is an example of why functioning site with shit look is better than great look with bad function

the guys at 42 floors figured this out by testing. http://darrennix.com/our-homegrown-ab-testing-framework-at-4...

I still don't get the "craigslist looks awful" or "craigslist has terrible UI" stances. It is simple and bare, unflashy, things are where you expect them to be on the first or second guess, there are no gotchas, the colors are balanced adequately such that they aren't glaring or distracting, sections of a page are appropriately positioned and proportioned, and even relatives who have to ask me how to put files on a DVD for the hundredth time seem to be able to navigate and use craigslist with ease. By what actual measure does craigslist have bad design? All I can think is that HackerNews readers have some kind of kneejerk to it because it's in minimal old-HTML style rather than the new pseudominimalist style with pointless animations everywhere instead of static page linking, text that's too big, buttons with no text on them instead replaced by icons you have to guess the meaning to rather than simple textual hyperlinks, and no Konami Code. I have never seen an actual Craigslist user complain about the interface, only internet armchair designers.

I am perfectly fine with craigslist look and as you said things are where they are supposed to be and do what they suggest they will do.

I know of designers who rail against that look though. I think HN follows most of the same craigslist principles.

Success != a great product.

Often times users have no choice but to use the only choice. That's like saying people choose Comcast because it's a great product. No. People choose Comcast because it's the only product.

Craigslist became popular at a time when thoughtful UI design wasn't repeated or regarded as necessary.

Why is craigslist still popular when there are better looking sites around?

Why are sites like HN and the one linked earlier following a similar style.

Cause core of design != look which is how the 3 apps mentioned above seemed to be looking at.

Function needs to be the core of design.

Because all of those sites are established and have unparalleled content. There are no competitors to those websites.

established sites with good content go out of business day in and day out... that happens when they don't have a good functional design and when better options come along.

If they are the only game in town, then I will put up with bad functional design and if needed crawl on my knees to solve a problem of mine.

I remember years back trawling through multiple expertsexchange pages to solve some coding issues.. Now I don't as better options have come along...

Why is the same not happening with craigslist, cause they do the basic job well.. have a functional designed site which solves peoples problem easily.

You know, I'm not sure I want to take advice about what makes a great product from somebody whose own homepage fails to properly hyperlink to their own projects.

Sure looks like good design though. Pity about the functionality. :P

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378532

A few years back I used to hear people complain about google's shit looking design. As a software engineer, I thought it was the exact opposite, elegance and simplicity. I don't hear that much any more, I think the complainers have finally worked it out.

>> Design is not how something looks

> You're right. But it certainly includes how it looks.

I hate to use this example because it was so hyped at the time but... Pinch-zoom is awesome functionality and has NO look, only function and feel. There is no visible UI, you just grab the image/map with 2 fingers and resize it. It's one of the best UI concepts in ages. The only thing it may not be is discoverable. This is what IMO sets Apple apart - they want you to interact with your stuff, not their app. Microsoft basically builds an industrial control panel where you push buttons to get something to happen to your stuff. The difference can be stunning when done correctly and has little to do with looks, but rather how it works.

At this point it's semantics. I feel like we mostly agree. However to me pinch to zoom is incredibly visual. Yes it's gestural but the feedback is visual and therefore does have a look.

> ...Apple...they want you to interact with your stuff...

I don't think you really made the case for this. How exactly do you equate using pinch-zoom to "interacting with my stuff" rather than "interacting with Apple's software"?

I feel like I own my Microsoft products way more than my Apple products. Whenever I use Apple's stuff, I feel just like an apartment renter who isn't even allowed to control my own thermostat.

The phrase "looks like shit" borders on begging the question. If it means anything at all, it's presumably referring to an appearance that's inherently as repellant as, well, shit, and sure, that's tautologically no good.

It's also not clear to me that the appearance of even most bad apps reach repelling depths. My experience is that utility failures are a lot more common than complete aesthetic failures.

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