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Digg to Further Simplicity in Web Design

informationarchitects.jp — Simple websites are easy to use, easy to understand, nice to look at. In practice, websites are either unusable or ugly and in general filled with too many complicated words. Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple? Let's try and spread awareness, maybe we can influence some people in our own little way.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 7, 2007

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104 Comments

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  • MaynardJK, on 10/10/2007, -4/+38The new comment system is far from user-friendly. I love having to log out just to be able to read all of the posts. I don't know why I bother though, because you can't reply to them anyway once you log back in.
  • digger1942, on 10/10/2007, -0/+30I think Go Daddy needs a redesign...
  • Senn, on 10/10/2007, -1/+29Am I the only one that read the title thinking Digg was changing its web design to be more simple?
  • suxmonkey, on 10/10/2007, -1/+28Simplicity is so much harder than complexity in design. Non-designers often don't realize how much effort and thought goes into an apparently simple layout. Take Digg for example: not a flashy site, but user-friendly and somehow still attractive despite (or because) of its simplicity).
  • Neiby, on 10/10/2007, -2/+25I'm with you. I HATE this new comment system. It often tells me that my session has expired even though it hasn't. Once I start getting that message, I'm not able to reply even if I log out and back in. I've also noticed that if I click on their link at the bottom of the comment page to see more comments, I'm not able to respond to any of the new comments that are displayed.

    I also get really irritated that the system doesn't display replies with positive diggs if they are responses to replies with negative diggs that fall below your current threshold.

    I also hate the fact that Digg pages take forever to load now if there are a lot of comments, and it kind of hangs FF for a few seconds while it loads. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
  • roostersheep, on 01/16/2009, -0/+22Digg [this story in order] to Further Simplicity in Web Design
  • Backdrifts, on 10/10/2007, -2/+21I still don't get the title, but great article.
  • anarchistuk, on 08/11/2009, -0/+17A blank page, it doesn't get more simple than that...
  • tito13kfm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14The joke only works if you say
    Mirror http://www.civilization.ca/hist/verre/images/intr02b.jpg
    Just placing a link to a picture of a mirror without saying mirror is not funny.
  • lordtyros, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Not a flashy site? With the ridiculously slow loading comments, nifty popup embedded videos, and general useless razzamatazz? Which Digg are you on?
  • Dradis, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14"Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple?"
    I find often one of the greatest barriers in keeping it simple is the client. Too often you have to work with 'armchair' designers who think they know how to design for the web - and all too often their vision involves crap like Flash intros, animated GIFs, cluttered layouts ("whitespace is great for totally filling in later!") and more/ worse. A lot my time is spent trying to explain why such things aren't a good idea, and how the web has evolved away from things like that for a reason.

    That said, there are a lot of designers out there who, for some reason, simply can't appreciate elegant simplicity.
  • sgtbutterscotch, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13I disagree. Reddit is pretty simple, but I hate looking at it.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Digg's revised comment system is not very good design. The idea might be nice on paper, but it's painfully slow and unstable in the real world.
  • geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11You forgot to mention the magical new-line removing fairy that makes your well structured posts look like bricks of text.

    They've introduced a hundred thousand new bugs, bugs that I couldn't even imagine existing, into something as simple as forum software. I thought we solved this problem in the 90s? Who knew we'd be having them again in /2007/.
  • spoiled1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12Before I digg this, can anyone explain to me why the hell digg keeps logging me off???
    Does that "Remember Me" thing even works ?
    And why does posting a two line comment separated by ONE line break adds extra line breaks?
  • CaptMonkey, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13No idea, it does that all time to me at work. I try to digg something or reply to a comment and I get "Your session has expired" or "You are not logged in." It's really annoying. I thought it was just me, though.
  • Tecil, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10A blank white website when the link is clicked. Couldn't be more simple than that.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11I think it's more about blogspam than anything else.
  • PueSi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Are you sure you're not talking about Reddit?
  • gutistg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Or how a large number of posts get doubled.
  • championchap, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I read it as though digg was actually going to help further simplicity in web design.
    Glad somebody pointed it out to be honest.
  • NoTiG, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7When I load it all i see is a white page. Dugg for simplicity.
  • fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Another genius huh?
  • spoiled1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6It's been happening both in IE and FF, and I don't use any of those plug-ins.
  • HonoredMule, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Ditto on all points. It's enough to entice me to take my conversation and responses elsewhere.
  • V1ncent, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I love how diggs comment system works. Half the time you have to click the bottom link that says to read comments 51-108 and nothing happens. Genius!
  • bushawa, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6http://www.duggmirror.com
  • carbonetc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4That's why I stopped working for clients. I just couldn't take it anymore.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4i agree. i was about to write a comment saying diggs comment system could be simpler.
    it's a pain in the ass
  • NerdyNinja, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Egh... I don't know. The bottom half of the article wasn't really about simplistic design but about how to keep the rapt attention of your reader. Yes, being funny and concise gives you bonus points.

    Considering their website design sucks, I don't put too much faith in the article, as I felt they weren't really speaking from a experienced position. Some developers like flash, but I'd say the vast majority of decent designers realize that Flash is a double edged sword and has to be used sparingly or at least carefully. I'd say many more designers love CSS. A lot of the rest of the advice was pretty standard, i.e., don't pick a crazy font for your main text, don't overload your site with a billion poorly arranged pictures, etc.

    I've been working on a design for a month or so now, and I don't have a lick of index.php written yet. All of the backend functions are pretty much done and ready for testing, but I haven't perfected what I want yet. My advice to simplistic design is to get all your thoughts onto paper, then spend as much time organizing them into their proper places and deciding on all of the visual aspects and niceties of design as you need. Don't rush it, be patient, and listen to your muse.

    And for the love of God, imitate, but don't outright steal. I've heard too many stories of people simply ripping html source, stylesheets, and images and just using them, to the point that they didn't even remove the javascript hit counter stuff from the page they yanked it from. Take design elements from all your favorite pages and combine them with your own ideas, and then set about making them look right together.
  • jjb123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4http://duggmirror.com/design/Digg_to_Further_Simplicity_in_Web_Design/
  • schoate09, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5***** the digg comment system.
  • fpcyber, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I think he should read his own advice and fix that website up a bit. All white background and black text?
  • Smuikas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"Achieving simplicity is a difficult task not only in web-design but in every discipline (art, business, sports, science…), yet simplicity for websites is a particular challenge as paper derived graphic design and usability on one side, marketing language and user expectations on the other side are in constant struggle with each-other."

    What kind of sentence is this?

    Oh. Right. A poor one.
  • meshman, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Design? How about getting rid of this "your session has expired" bullcrap? A luxury car isn't much use if it stops running every 10 minutes. Or is it 5 minutes? Or is it between every page for an hour? I can't figure it out. The 'remember me' checkbox laughs every time I check it.
  • NinjaBoy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Digg does.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Shopping and news sites generally look more impressive when they're cluttered and have all sorts of scrolly-flashy things on them and numerous columns.

    Every rule has its exceptions.
  • nakani, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3CNN.com is simple and really well done. They recently redesigned it.
  • spoiled1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3@Smuikas
    Ok, I just got new cookies and they're fresh from the oven and I'm still getting logged off even now ... I even got out of the chair and was standing while browsing and it STILL logged me off, I had to login AGAIN and post this comment, so what do I do now...sniff the traffic off of my network grab each IP packet and see if you've been ***** into it or expect DIGG to get this solved?
  • Mikecol, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5It seems pretty straight forward to me.
  • hiPpymIck, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3what if you let your clients play for a day or two with a (demo) Mac laptop that you have ..

    ..dyou think it could turn them?
  • Firehed, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5It's good in principal if poor in execution. Comments should have been threaded since day one.
  • BevansDesign, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I got the blank page too. For a minute there, I thought it was a joke.
  • gutistg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I almost did, but then I remembered that I was thinking about Digg.
  • sgtbutterscotch, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5People actually use that?
  • antdude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Mirror: http://duggmirror.com/design/Digg_to_Further_Simplicity_in_Web_Design/
  • Svenson, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It doesn't validate.
  • gutistg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2***** MySpace. Fixing it is a complete waste of effort.
  • resplence, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They're actually redesigning constantly, and everytime they do so, they add more clutter to the frontpage.

    I think their strategy is to short-circuit your brain so you're only thinking "I have to get out of here as fast as I can" as your body goes through the unconscious motions of buying a domain.
  • scottybowl, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2wireframes and planning are the key to a succesful website - you can have a large amount of graphics or flash on a page and still make it simple to use
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