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24 Comments
- joehobbes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Very well written.
You can tell they actually know what they are talking about and have a few top-notch designers give their imput as well. - Daniel591992, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ok :)
- gcnaddict, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Designers look at a bunch of web apps and decide what does/doesn't work when it comes to getting people to sign up."
This could help digg get the giant spectator crowd which only views digg to sign up (or so we hope), which would then result in other sites falling apart much faster as a result of a digg.
Ouch. - mamavision, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thanks for the design info. Excellent samples for review
- hoegaarden, on 03/31/2009, -1/+3100% agree...GREAT story. i like this site :)
it's a bit above my head at times, but really intriguing stuff to be honest - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@r2d7
You're absolutely right. Any serious web app would do much better with a simple plain HTML layout. What's the use for an interface anyway?
And if it's really really necessary, just leave it to the techies to make it aesthetically pleasant and compelling enough to get people who will never even use the product tempted to sign up and spread the word. That's what they're really good at. Since they were the ones who did ALL the REAL work and actually KNOW how the product works from the inside out (since they were the ones who actually built it, thus making them superior), noone could be any fitter for the job.
Just out of curiosity, if you were to launch a web app, how would you turn your visitors into users? Would you print (or echo) on the front page a thorough description of how the system works, detailed changelogs and all? - BassJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A very interesting article, especially on the comparisons between similiar sites.
I also find it makes an excellent and quite accurate point about Youtube, which is true for most sites in the same vein but aren't mentioned, that you rarely visit Youtube via the mainpage! It's always from a link sent or posted by someone else, in which case most of Youtubes traffic is going to miss the homepage!
I find it quite odd to think that only a few years ago (7+ come to think of it) when broadband was still quite new and most people had 56K dial-up a site like Youtube wouldn't have existed!! All we had back then was Realplayer where you where lucky if you got more then a blocky image unless you have ISDN :-)
Yet now we can stream full screen broadcast quality video with little or no lag from a website;
http://digg.com/software/Amazingly_High_Resolution_Yet_Very_Rapid_Video_Streaming
It's an exciting time for web design and the internet in general and it can only get better! I for one am looking forward to it. - sprintmarathon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2r2d7 I wonder, have you ever worked with a real designer? By "real" I mean one that has gone through rigorous academic and practical training. We actually do work with focus group and study data and countless other bits of relevant information to make informed decisions. Yes, there is a talent to being able to pick out the right colour or a nifty font but there is also a great deal of higher level intellectual calculation that goes into making good design. Far more than the 1% of application development that you indicate.
I acknowledge that this is just one level of the profession though. There are smaller web companies out there that hire junior designers fresh out of school to push graphics for them. But you'll probably find that these places enjoy significantly less notoriety and success than larger ventures that actually bother to invest in a high quality design process. I'd venture a guess that this is precisely why we've probably never heard of you or your product. - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ r2d7
> "designing the layout is one *very* small aspect of a decent sized application."
Why? Because it's such a "thin layer"? Isn't it at all important that it's ONLY what the end user will be staring at, and interacting with, *the whole time*?
> "So now designers are marketers too? Do you guys use Adobe ViralAdShop?"
Ok, this is a fair point. It's still not clear to everyone what belongs to marketers and what belongs to designers. My take is that marketers plan for a market while designers plan for the individual that makes the market. Marketers should study and understand the human behaviour regarding ideas and people's reactions to them, while designers should study and understand the human behaviour regarding stimuli (mostly visual, but different projects may require different experiences) and people's reactions to them. Designers study all different aspects of human perception, so to know the right button to press in order to achieve a desired result. Designers should not be the ones responsible to come up with punchlines just as the marketers should not be the ones responsible to come up with page layouts. In short, marketers should plan the strategy and designers should make it happen. In a web app as the ones discussed in the article, the marketers should define the 'voice' and 'tone' of the sign up button while the designers should define its color, shape and placement in the overall layout.
> "Generally speaking the team who creates something do know it better than the guys who design the box."
Naturally. But does the same team also knows how to display it in a way that makes people want to have/use it?
> "Copy writing is another skill entirely. Please don't for a moment throw that in with graphic design ...."
Well, the article is all about how to get people to use your product. Since you prefer not to rely on anything visual, I was just wondering how you would attract them.
Good luck with your clever registration form. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Designers typically have a .. glorious .. opinion of themselves and the 1% role they play in any serious website or application.
They're experts on usability and human behaviour now too ... I guess they just want to feel involved after they've emailed the psd's. - addicted68098, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Web sites seem to be losing their identity, Web 2.0 is a fancy way of saying I think we have gotten as innovative as possible, lets just stop here. The same happened to applications 5 years back.
- sprintmarathon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1r2d7 - That's some pretty breathtaking reductive reasoning; a designer's value is somehow directly correlates to the number of hours that they bill to a project. Is this what you are saying? If that is the case then you might want to recalculate your numbers. By the figures you've quoted, 2 weeks for the designer and 12 for a developer, you'd have to at least concede a 15% share for the lowly graphic artist. In order for their share to drop down to 3%, you would have to add another 50 resource hours, presumably to marketing, editorial, senior management, and whatever else you can pad things out with, perhaps some flashturbation.
My point here is not that designers are better at math than developers, but rather that you seem to be missing the intangible value of what design adds to the process. Deploying good development without well thought out design is akin to walking out of the house naked. Some may argue that the clothes don't make the man, but like it or not nice clothes sure do increase what you can charge per hour. This analogy relates directly with how you present your companies presence online. - poohneat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sometimes designers argue usability,accessibility and some even do take test users and survey their reaction to the design ...
but some are adamant on the exact # 232534 they comped up ..
the latter are mind boggling...
the former i respect
/ developer - BillDoE, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For me the design has almost nothing to do with it. I look for feedback from other users. I want to know if these sites actually value my privacy before giving them any info what so ever. I can't say how many countless times I've signed up for decent looking sites, only to get spammed to death a half hour later. Be honest, value your customers, not just the money, and you will get repeat customers and visotors no problem. If a website like the New York Times wants personal info just to see the news. I'm gone, or going in the back door just to spite them. Its all about pravacy for me. No one can sell me anything by pushing it in my face. They can however be put on my blacklist quite easily. The old "Don't call me I'll call you!" adage. I live by it.
BugMeNot is my friend. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"The same happened to applications 5 years back."
yup - choobacca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This was a good article and the use of different site comparisons is great....definitely helpful for more jumior web designers who don't have the marketing expereince - aspect of web design down-pat yet.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"You're absolutely right. Any serious web app would do much better with a simple plain HTML layout. What's the use for an interface anyway?"
That's not what I said. I said designing the layout is one *very* small aspect of a decent sized application.
"And if it's really really necessary, just leave it to the techies to make it aesthetically pleasant and compelling enough to get people who will never even use the product tempted to sign up and spread the word. "
So now designers are marketers too? Do you guys use Adobe ViralAdShop?
" Since they were the ones who did ALL the REAL work and actually KNOW how the product works from the inside out (since they were the ones who actually built it, thus making them superior)"
Generally speaking the team who creates something do know it better than the guys who design the box.
"Just out of curiosity, if you were to launch a web app, how would you turn your visitors into users?"
A registration form.
"Would you print (or echo) on the front page a thorough description of how the system works, detailed changelogs and all?"
Copy writing is another skill entirely. Please don't for a moment throw that in with graphic design .... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1FYI, Interaction (http://www.interactionchat.com) is a free AJAX application that allows you to convert more visitors into customers. Looks great.
- terrenceshaw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I like that they laid out different designs to compare and contract them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I've worked for and with numerous design firms and these days I work for a company who's got an in-house bunch of wankers that do that stuff (really badly).
Most of the people I've worked with have had formal education or extensive experience (excluding aforementioned wankers). Some have held prestigious positions - one fellow I worked with on multiple projects was head of design for 2 years for eBay Australia, another used to work for a (now defunct I think) major flashturbation firm Who's We.
I'd go as high as saying designers contribute to 2 or 3% of the project. You spend 2 weeks on a project, during which you're working on 2 or 3 other projects while you're waiting for approval/feedback/changes. That boils down to a few days. I spend the next 8 - 12 weeks pretty much exclusively on the rest of it.
There's going to be projects where the inverse is true and that's why I said a serious website or application. - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Wrong post! mod me down!
- AW4L, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I never bothered siging up for shoutwire, but digg seems to be quite decent.
- jasvanth, on 10/12/2007, -10/+0what the hell is this. its stupid and lame digg
- smrty, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1Really nice summary of web2.0 design trends and best practices
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