Why is website design so awful today, generally?

[cyb3rdud3]

As bless more ignorance around what it actually means. Just ignore that there are actual standards that are supported by actual testing and science.

opinion is absolutely fine, but let’s acknowledge that for what it is an opinion and not turn it into some kind of fake news reality.

Accessibility standards and responsive design are real and support the multitude of devices and users that are using it.

 

[Akrapovic]

Imagine thinking so highly of your own opinion that you think your versions of accessibility is misunderstood and that people keep banging on about all this legal stuff that defines the technical stuff and they don’t understand you. Imagine thinking so so much of yourself that your opinion overrides legal frameworks.

That remote generally seems fine. We’ve already discussed how accessibility is for reasonable situations. You aren’t making TV remote apps accessible to blind people because they generally aren’t using flat touch screen devices to watch content on a screen they can’t see. There are exceptions of course. But this is why it’s important to understand when it is unreasonable to apply accessibility standards and why remote controls are not treated the same as websites, for example.

Purple text is a bad one for dark themes btw. Just saying. Effort being put into making things harder to use, whilst complaining about how badly designed things are is wonderfully ironic. And dark themes should be taken into account due to popularity of reading them on mobile devices in dark rooms. I have some stats I can share with you if you want to completely ignore some experts and data again.

 

[Tarian]

As bless more ignorance around what it actually means. Just ignore that there are actual standards that are supported by actual testing and science.
opinion is absolutely fine, but let’s acknowledge that for what it is an opinion and not turn it into some kind of fake news reality.
Accessibility standards and responsive design are real and support the multitude of devices and users that are using it.

( Continuing with debating tricks like "appeal to authority" along with the ad hominem.... )

I worked with local government long enough to recognise bs.
Typically assertions would be made about Regulations, Standards or Guidance.
Often the Regs did not say what was claimed (e.g. Highways, Building Regs, Schools)
"Standards" would be cited which turned out to be "Guidance". (There is a legal difference.)
"Guidance" could include bizarre interpretations that might best be explained as "Chinese Whispers" - or irrelevant to the context.

So to the point.
Which "actual standards" include:
i) Removing borders around active/click screen links ?

ii) Using pale grey text on glaring white background (W3C cites minimum contrast not maximum.)

iii) Making text for (active) Navigation identical to text for (passive) Content Headers

iv) Making icons monotone - typically grey/white

vi) Reducing colour variation on a page

vii) Making everything "flat" and lacking in depth (rather than life-like)

viii) Shuffling content when re-sizing a window (for side-by-side work) i.e. Applying "Responsive" to the viewport rather than the device.

ix) Forcing Visitors to work unnecessarily (e.g. scroll past Hero Images and wasted space)

x) Centering content, so increasing scrolling (work)

xi) Infinite scroll (surely one of the least "accessible" abominations of the internet?)

So what are the "standards" that result in the above ???
(Do not most of them come across as justified by "aesthetics" - i.e. opinion ??)


Before you answer, I've read Nielsen Norman on most of these design features. (There you go. An "appeal to authority" !)
To varying degrees NN warns against going in those directions excessively.
I'd go further and say that NN's sub-text is "don't do these things" for everyday, mass-user websites.

On grey text, designers rarely cite studies. Mostly they cite W3C - learnt from design seminars - i.e. without having actually read them.
If they do cite a study, the data contained rarely supports the claimed interpretation. (e.g. Context omitted).

So feel free to provide some "testing and science" ...
...so I can apply 3 mathematical minds to any data cited.


Lastly, a personal example of how "accessibility" has gone down the pan.
My 83 y/o father in law embraced the internet around 15 years ago.
He had worked in telephone networking - but left before the internet took hold.
Sure he needed some early help - but soon was able to explore for himself.
Why ?
Because web-design was still focused on making things close to every-day experience "accessible" - "user-friendly". (skeuomorphic?)

As web-design activists proselytised "remove unnecessary detail", "clean and simple" - i.e. go flat and minimalist - navigation guesswork - so exploration and work became harder.

So please tell us how have all the design features listed improved "accessibility" ?

 

[Tarian]

Imagine thinking so highly of your own opinion that you think your versions of accessibility is misunderstood and that people keep banging on about all this legal stuff that defines the technical stuff and they don’t understand you. Imagine thinking so so much of yourself that your opinion overrides legal frameworks.

That remote generally seems fine. We’ve already discussed how accessibility is for reasonable situations. You aren’t making TV remote apps accessible to blind people because they generally aren’t using flat touch screen devices to watch content on a screen they can’t see. There are exceptions of course. But this is why it’s important to understand when it is unreasonable to apply accessibility standards and why remote controls are not treated the same as websites, for example.

Purple text is a bad one for dark themes btw. Just saying. Effort being put into making things harder to use, whilst complaining about how badly designed things are is wonderfully ironic. And dark themes should be taken into account due to popularity of reading them on mobile devices in dark rooms. I have some stats I can share with you if you want to completely ignore some experts and data again.

Please see my reply to cyb3rdud3.

Just to respond to your implication that I don't understand "legal stuff".....
At a guess, I have printed out and kept more Laws, Regulations, Standards and Guidance (and read them) than you've ever read.
(Then add the number I've read without printing......)

Does that mean I've read all "legal stuff" about internet design ?
Of course not.
But based on the differences between Laws, Regulations, Standards and Guidance, I know that Laws mostly state objectives and principles not design aesthetics !

So if you keep citing "legal stuff" to justify design abominations, then the onus is on you to provide legal sources.

 

[Akrapovic]

Please see my reply to cyb3rdud3.

Just to respond to your implication that I don't understand "legal stuff".....
At a guess, I have printed out and kept more Laws, Regulations, Standards and Guidance (and read them) than you've ever read.
(Then add the number I've read without printing......)

Does that mean I've read all "legal stuff" about internet design ?
Of course not.
But based on the differences between Laws, Regulations, Standards and Guidance, I know that Laws mostly state objectives and principles not design aesthetics !

So if you keep citing "legal stuff" to justify design abominations, then the onus is on you to provide legal sources.

As if to prove my point, you've done it again. Imagine thinking so highly of yourself that you guess that whatever the topic it is, you know more. Since you don't understand accessibility standards are linked to laws and legislation, I'm going to hazard a guess that anything you've "printed out and kept" is completely irrelevant to the discussion. But I'm sure you know more.

Regarding accessibility laws and standards:
I posted why the example website was a complete failure of design. Design includes standards (ask architects about that if you want - I'm guess you're going to claim to be one next). That website failed on almost every accessibility standard.

You then raised that we simply didn't understand "your" version of accessibility. Which is like saying I don't understand your version of a speed limit. You don't have your own version. You can talk about design aesthetics, but too often in this thread people take actual industry terms, pretend they are experts, and say anyone who disagrees doesn't understand. So you were the one that referenced accessibility.

And then your next post you talk about how this isn't related to design aesthetics. Well it's a good thing you didn't bring it up isn't it? Oh. You did.

With the knowledges claimed in this thread, some posters here could easily be on $150,000k a year with these skillsets.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

( Continuing with debating tricks like "appeal to authority" along with the ad hominem.... )

I worked with local government long enough to recognise bs.
Typically assertions would be made about Regulations, Standards or Guidance.
Often the Regs did not say what was claimed (e.g. Highways, Building Regs, Schools)
"Standards" would be cited which turned out to be "Guidance". (There is a legal difference.)
"Guidance" could include bizarre interpretations that might best be explained as "Chinese Whispers" - or irrelevant to the context.

So to the point.
Which "actual standards" include:
i) Removing borders around active/click screen links ?

ii) Using pale grey text on glaring white background (W3C cites minimum contrast not maximum.)

iii) Making text for (active) Navigation identical to text for (passive) Content Headers

iv) Making icons monotone - typically grey/white

vi) Reducing colour variation on a page

vii) Making everything "flat" and lacking in depth (rather than life-like)

viii) Shuffling content when re-sizing a window (for side-by-side work) i.e. Applying "Responsive" to the viewport rather than the device.

ix) Forcing Visitors to work unnecessarily (e.g. scroll past Hero Images and wasted space)

x) Centering content, so increasing scrolling (work)

xi) Infinite scroll (surely one of the least "accessible" abominations of the internet?)

So what are the "standards" that result in the above ???
(Do not most of them come across as justified by "aesthetics" - i.e. opinion ??)


Before you answer, I've read Nielsen Norman on most of these design features. (There you go. An "appeal to authority" !)
To varying degrees NN warns against going in those directions excessively.
I'd go further and say that NN's sub-text is "don't do these things" for everyday, mass-user websites.

On grey text, designers rarely cite studies. Mostly they cite W3C - learnt from design seminars - i.e. without having actually read them.
If they do cite a study, the data contained rarely supports the claimed interpretation. (e.g. Context omitted).

So feel free to provide some "testing and science" ...
...so I can apply 3 mathematical minds to any data cited.


Lastly, a personal example of how "accessibility" has gone down the pan.
My 83 y/o father in law embraced the internet around 15 years ago.
He had worked in telephone networking - but left before the internet took hold.
Sure he needed some early help - but soon was able to explore for himself.
Why ?
Because web-design was still focused on making things close to every-day experience "accessible" - "user-friendly". (skeuomorphic?)

As web-design activists proselytised "remove unnecessary detail", "clean and simple" - i.e. go flat and minimalist - navigation guesswork - so exploration and work became harder.

So please tell us how have all the design features listed improved "accessibility" ?

Sigh, nothing more than a fair bit of moving the goalpost to fit your point and ignoring the important points.

it seems like you are having a bad day and just want to have an argument.

Funnily enough, in the context of this topic especially, employing a highly inaccessible style of putting the argument forward as well. You definitely win my vote for the most unreadable post.

But yes I agree, it is most definitely possible to be AA compliant and still have a **** looking design that doesn’t pass the basics of a good user experience. One doesn’t guarantee the other. However nobody on this thread made that point

 

[Tozovac]

Home

Replace your notebooks and printed documents with the only tablet that feels like paper.

remarkable.com

What a PITA site to navigate. My finger hurts and i have no desire to learn anything about this device now. Ugh.

 

[ghanwani]

Start a not-for-profit and start giving out awards to websites that are well designed.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

Home

Replace your notebooks and printed documents with the only tablet that feels like paper.

remarkable.com

What a PITA site to navigate. My finger hurts and i have no desire to learn anything about this device now. Ugh.

??? What do you find hard to navigate? Scroll or direct jump from menu. Easy.

It is beautifully responsive as well, they really paid attention to the different viewports people may have. So considering your experience and mine are so different, what is your viewport set to; perhaps I can mimick what you are experiencing...

 

[Akrapovic]

Why does your finger hurt? You said real people use proper computers to get things done? So you can't be navigating on your phone? So are you mashing the trackpad and mouse hard enough to injure yourself?

Or are you just making up aliments now, to try and justify that you don't like the site?

I recommend a local Doctor, rather than UI Designer here.

 

[Tarian]

Home

Replace your notebooks and printed documents with the only tablet that feels like paper.

remarkable.com

What a PITA site to navigate. My finger hurts and i have no desire to learn anything about this device now. Ugh.

Not a great website - but I'll raise you:
https://www.picton.co.uk

But let's start with "Remarkable".
Minimal amount of info. for a site supposedly promoting a Tablet.

i) Opening view : .
An apology for a Menu bar.
i.e. Text similar to passive content lower down. Nothing to distinguish from the body, i..e no border or colour difference.
For some reason 3 Menu items have a down arrow - the other two don't ?!?!?

ii) Not much info.

To see more one either has to scroll down...... and down.....and down...... past acres of empty space - or huge photos.
Or one can click the "About" on the Menu.
But either way, the "pay-off" is unbelievably thin for the effort.

So the most bizarre thing for a site supposedly promoting a tech item ... is the almost complete lack of info about it
Merely the most high level, wishy-washy:
"it's really good ... honestly".


Now for "Picton".
It's supposed to be an investment - a fund investing in property.
So what would we like to know ?
Type of property ?
Number of properties (i.e. spread of risk) ?
Location of properties ?
Dividend Yield ?
And of course if your a financial whizz, a load of other data.

So.... Opening view:
HUGE pointless photo of a smiling woman.
Mission Statement : "Focused on occupiers, led by opportunities". wtf ??

At normal, 100% view - no visible navigation.
What's that up in the top right corner ? 3 grey, ambiguous icons. The only one with a semblance of meaning being the simplified magnifying glass - but no actual Search field visible.

Let's zoom out to 80% to view text at a sensible size.
Navigation appears - but like Remarkable, plain text - on the same photo.
Nothing to distinguish the navigation
No separation from the body/content, No borders, No down arrows.

Maybe it's my PC .... but the Menu links don't work.
So let's do the "work" route, i.e. scroll.

Four pointless photos, each behind a short, pithy sentence.
3 out of 4, meaningless drivel.
The 4th answers one of the usual questions - just.
"We invest in a diversified commercial property portfolio across the Industrial, Office and Retail and Leisure sectors"
Click a link to "Portfolio".
Good, now we should see a list of properties - hopefully with locations.
But no.
Another HUGE, pointless photo - of a blurry person, shrouded in mist - against a fake (?) green bush !
More scrolling to .....
4 more HUGE photos ...each with one sentence ...and each with a link.

I give up !

Let's see if we can find Dividend info. Try Menu item "Investors".

Another HUGE, page-filling photo ... with a pithy Mission Statement:
"A track record of consistent outperformance".
OK. so let's see the graph / chart.

More scrolling ....past acres of empty space...more pointless pictures.

Amongst the dross ...a share price chart - but not the most sophisticated.

No obvious info or links for "dividend history".

Let's try the Search.
Unusual. It links to a new page.......with only a Search field ...again, in acres of empty space. Nothing else at all (apart from the Picton logo)!
(It's not as if the Visitor might want to absorb as much info as possible......!)

Results: Nothing obvious - but "Financial Review" links to some useful numbers.
But each line of info is so over-sized (too much space between lines)... that lots more scrolling is required to see ....
...not much.

When analysing numbers, investors should be able to see everything in a single view - to ensure context can be understood.

But still no Dividend History or Yield.
That was a waste of time !


Sadly, the web-designer seems to think "aesthetics" are more important than functionality.

p.s. I found dividend info on other financial websites - much more quickly
Current Yield is about 3.7%.....
....and it's been consistently around 4% for the last 4 years.

 

[Akrapovic]

Speaking of colours and aesthetics, people here should take into account that the site they post on supports dark mode, and not overwrite the sites colour settings using hard coded colour values which do not work on dark mode.

Indeed in this case, the post certainly not valuable aesthetics, nor functionality.

 

[s66]

The "Mobile first" mantra is the cause of it IMHO.

It does not *have* to be, but it ends up being.

Mobile Frist means to make the website first for the smallest supported screen and only then start to think how it would look/work on a bigger screen. One really could add back everything on the bigger screen, reduce fonts to more reasonable sizes, add bigger pictures, etc. with conditional formatting in CSS and the like, but the insane efficiency requirements of the likes of Google Search that focus on mobile devices makes all of that a lot of work for a from a SEO perspective a worse result. So few do that anymore all the way.

If you run websites, you notice more than half of the traffic you get coming from phones nowadays ... so even there it somewhat makes sense to focus a bit more on the tiny screens.

 

[Tozovac]

??? What do you find hard to navigate? Scroll or direct jump from menu. Easy.

It is beautifully responsive as well, they really paid attention to the different viewports people may have. So considering your experience and mine are so different, what is your viewport set to; perhaps I can mimick what you are experiencing...

Blah. I don’t want to take 15 minutes to absorb what’s presented on the first page load. Ever hear of an elevator pitch for getting someone’s attention? There’s a reason they don’t call it a Sunday drive pitch. For this particular example, give me a page load where I can tell within 30 seconds what you’re selling and what’s here, with links for delving in further. Don’t make me spend minutes finger scrolling and scrolling and reading to try remember and absorb what’s on the page. Simple as that. Less can be more if done right. Pique my curiosity and draw me in don’t drown me with the kitchen shelves and cupboards emptied and strewn all over the floor.

 

[Tozovac]

Start a not-for-profit and start giving out awards to websites that are well designed.

The reward is the well designed site itself. ?

 

[ghanwani]

Blah. I don’t want to take 15 minutes to absorb what’s presented on the first page load. Ever hear of an elevator pitch for getting someone’s attention? There’s a reason they don’t call it a Sunday drive pitch. For this particular example, give me a page load where I can tell within 30 seconds what you’re selling and what’s here, with links for delving in further. Don’t make me spend minutes finger scrolling and scrolling and reading to try remember and absorb what’s on the page. Simple as that. Less can be more if done right. Pique my curiosity and draw me in don’t drown me with the kitchen shelves and cupboards emptied and strewn all over the floor.

Unfortunately, that appears to be another poor choice of design that is rapidly becoming commonplace. Even Apple does the same thing when you go to the main page for any of their products, but at least they have links at the top so we can get to the thing(s) that matter most.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

Blah. I don’t want to take 15 minutes to absorb what’s presented on the first page load. Ever hear of an elevator pitch for getting someone’s attention? There’s a reason they don’t call it a Sunday drive pitch. For this particular example, give me a page load where I can tell within 30 seconds what you’re selling and what’s here, with links for delving in further. Don’t make me spend minutes finger scrolling and scrolling and reading to try remember and absorb what’s on the page. Simple as that. Less can be more if done right. Pique my curiosity and draw me in don’t drown me with the kitchen shelves and cupboards emptied and strewn all over the floor.

Right, so this was just another moan, had nothing to do with design, but is it about content that is lacking for you? I thought you hated those big CTA blocks that will give you that 'elevator pitch' and wanted more on a page

And the moan fest continues, and yet again switches the goalposts...

 

[Tozovac]

Right, so this was just another moan, had nothing to do with design, but is it about content that is lacking for you? I thought you hated those big CTA blocks that will give you that 'elevator pitch' and wanted more on a page

And the moan fest continues, and yet again switches the goalposts...

You’ll probably get farther arguing with a mirror than trying to convince me my gripes over bad web/app design have no basis. ?

 

[Tarian]

Right, so this was just another moan, had nothing to do with design, but is it about content that is lacking for you? I thought you hated those big CTA blocks that will give you that 'elevator pitch' and wanted more on a page

And the moan fest continues, and yet again switches the goalposts...

"moan, had nothing to do with design" ???

These "moans" are very much about "design"....
,....and how navigation and content is being "designed" out in favour of "overall impression" typically "clean and simple".
(I've lost count of the number of re-designs justified by that phrase )


You (or was it the other design-defender) went on about "accessibility".
Quite how disguising navigation and reducing visible content .....and spreading down an unnecessarily long page .... interrupted by HUGE pointless pictures improves "accessibility" is beyond me.


BTW, I don't think you ever provided the source for the "Standards" that you claimed claimed support the design features we are complaining about.
Please ??

 

[Akrapovic]

"moan, had nothing to do with design" ???

These "moans" are very much about "design"....
,....and how navigation and content is being "designed" out in favour of "overall impression" typically "clean and simple".


You (or was it the other design-defender) went on about "accessibility".
Quite how disguising navigation and reducing visible content .....and spreading down an unnecessarily long page .... interrupted by HUGE pointless pictures improves "accessibility" is beyond me.

BTW, I don't think you ever provided the source for the "Standards" that you claimed claimed support the design features we are complaining about.
Please ??

I was the one who mentioned accessibility a lot. I don't recall saying spreading things down a long page is what makes something accessible though. But I was the one who made the long boring posts regarding the supposedly well designed website that did not conform to basic design and accessibility standards.

I should clarify at this point that the design isn't just about what colours are used to define things. It includes things like compatibility with screen readers, multiple devices, and can stretch down as far as the actual structure of the code itself.

If you want some standards then fine, here's HTML - https://html.spec.whatwg.org/. Have a read of that and work your way up to CSS. It'll explain the basics of why things are structured in set ways (why we use input labels, em/rem over px, responsive design, alt-text, avoid DIVs where possible, etc). CSS one would be a fun read. You can add JavaScript standards if you want, but JavaScript is more about throwing code at the screen whilst crying.

Once you've finished that, W3C has some stuff you can read up on - including accessibility, privacy design, mobile design (very relevant to what you've discussed), as well as how to present audio and video in a non-intrusive way. https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/ . Some of these accessibility standards are legal requirements in some countries too (including, but not limited to, the US and UK). Here's the UKs take on it: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps

Within the w3c standards you'll find links which have already been posted here before (but ignored), including references to ISO and ANSI-HFES standards. As well as a lot of links to studies on why things were chosen. At this point you might be realising that a standard is an actual document - not a medium.com blog posted by some random guy who once torrented Dreamweaver. They are not fun to read.

Once we've covered that we can move onto things which you may find more relevant, such as determining how a sites design is a success or not. Are these super long pages any good? Should we really be prioritising mobile design over desktop. I suspect this is what you're more interested in. However to go down that route, we have to start discussing Conversion Rates and Bounce Rates (which are actual terms, not just vague things we can apply to what we want). We can talk about heat maps, CTA buttons etc. The last time we approached this topic, we were told the statistics were wrong and being abused by experts.

 

[Tarian]

> edited <

Once we've covered that we can move onto things which you may find more relevant, such as determining how a sites design is a success or not. Are these super long pages any good? Should we really be prioritising mobile design over desktop. I suspect this is what you're more interested in. However to go down that route, we have to start discussing Conversion Rates and Bounce Rates (which are actual terms, not just vague things we can apply to what we want). We can talk about heat maps, CTA buttons etc. The last time we approached this topic, we were told the statistics were wrong and being abused by experts.

Thank you for your lengthy and detailed message....
....but given the slight nod in the last paragraph towards the criticisms of design made in this thread, it is very hard not see all that W3C stuff as an irrelevant distraction.
(Sorry, but it comes across as an opposing lawyer, drowning its counterpart in a mountain of un-related "paperwork".)

The opening line of the first post on this thread was:
"can anyone answer why websites today tend to have so much wasted space, large text, large photos, and seemingly no organization to steer the user?"

How are W3C "accessibility" Standards the answer ??

To non-designers, (and that might mean millions of Visitors) these features are about (impaired) usability - but on web-design blogs they are promoted as improving "aesthetics"

You (or the other dissenter) criticised that Shed website on "accessibility" grounds.
I don't think "we" ever argued against tinkering "under the hood" to make links that work in line with W3C....
....but we (or at least I) argued that the Shed site had;
- more, easier navigation
- more content in one view
- fewer HUGE, scroll-forcing pictures
- readable text (not pale grey)
- navigation that stayed visible when re-sizing the window.

To us, content and navigation that was vastly more "accessible".

So again, please can you advise what are the "Standards" that justify:
"wasted space, large text, large photos, and seemingly no organization to steer the user"
....along with unclear, or hidden navigation.

That W3C link goes to the Home page.
Sorry, but I don't know where to look.
As you are the expert on "accessibility", perhaps you would be kind enough to provide a link that connects those (emboldened) "aesthetic" features with W3C "Standards".

Thanks very much ?

 

[Akrapovic]

You make a good post there with some good points. I won't do the whole multiple quotes thing as it's just combative and I don't think either of us can be arsed with that lol.

- you are correct that the original opening post was indeed about wasted space and what not. Accessibility has come into it a bit later on. However it has come on as part of a natural thread evolution, so I don't feel it's irrelevent

- you are correct that my god standards are long, boring dry reads. But these are what standards are. The USB-C standard that we all use is not a bit of bedtime reading either. If you would like something less formal but more down the graphics design route, then this is worth a read. I don't agree with it all, but it isn't terrible. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid...exceptional-website-design-and-usability.aspx

- whilst many standards are about accessibility, some are actually just technical to define how the site should be built. Such as input labels being defined, and H headers being in the right order.

- You asked for a standard that defines "wasted space, large text" etc, but I have already addressed that in my final paragraph, which I will copy and paste into this post too -

Once we've covered that we can move onto things which you may find more relevant, such as determining how a sites design is a success or not. Are these super long pages any good? Should we really be prioritising mobile design over desktop. I suspect this is what you're more interested in. However to go down that route, we have to start discussing Conversion Rates and Bounce Rates (which are actual terms, not just vague things we can apply to what we want). We can talk about heat maps, CTA buttons etc. The last time we approached this topic, we were told the statistics were wrong and being abused by experts.

The elephant in the room here is that the changes you dislike (and you are 100% entitled to dislike them) are driven by results, nothing else. Google Analytics will graph your visitors, graph how long they spend on a page, graph the bounce rate, the conversation rate, map the cursor and a whole bunch of metrics of other metrics. Combine that with A/B testing, and you get design teams coming to conclusions based on pure numbers. Now, we talked about this before in this thread and we were told that statistics can be abused. The only facts we had were immediately disgarded.

When a design change directly reflects with better user engagement, it is incorporated. These large hero images that you hate so much work. I know this as they even worked on my own site when I ran theracingline.net. The feature images like that had a lower bounce rate when linked to from an external source. Google analytics also showed me how long people stayed on the page without scrolling (in other words, looking at the photo), and it was a good 3-4 seconds at times.

Accessibility and technical standards are clearly defined, and often legal documents. They are not fun, and are usually not followed.

More traditional design standards as we'd discuss here are driven purely by results.

So - why are wasted space, large text and large photos used? Because the website saw an increase in engagement when they were used. That's all.

 

[Tozovac]

When a design change directly reflects with better user engagement, it is incorporated. These large hero images that you hate so much work. I know this as they even worked on my own site when I ran theracingline.net. The feature images like that had a lower bounce rate when linked to from an external source. Google analytics also showed me how long people stayed on the page without scrolling (in other words, looking at the photo), and it was a good 3-4 seconds at times.
....

So - why are wasted space, large text and large photos used? Because the website saw an increase in engagement when they were used. That's all.

These are good discussions, I appreciate and enjoy them. Griping makes me feel better for one thing, and secondly it’s good when I read others “get” the inefficiencies and design boondoggles I gripe about.

I quoted the above snippets to capture the idea of valuing “time spent engaging on a site.”

I used to work at one of the then-big-3 automotive makers in the 90’s when Focus Groups were the secret sauce of the day. The Big 3 would treat prospective (or desired) customers to food/treats and would solicit feedback for specific new features/technology or would mine for new ideas/perceptions via roundtables.

From what I observed at several, 1% of the customer observations/comments/suggestions was ”aha, lightbulb!”, 10% were hmmmm possibly intriguing, and the rest either conflicted others’ input, were nothing noteworthy, or even just silly. But for the 99% after the “aha’s,” it was never really clear whether the comments/suggestions would hold after 6 months of ownership. Were the positive inputs driven by dopamine from sitting in a new fancy car with new things to see and touch (and maybe a subconscious desire to ”thank” the gracious hosts for the treats)? Were the negative inputs driven by too much unfamiliarity upfront without time to let things sink in and get acclimated to...things the customer would later love after poo-poo’ing them at the focus group? I walked away with the thought that the expensive focus groups didn’t produce enough concrete, dependable results for the money due to that uncertainty. Can’t get into the customer’s head, and the focus group doesn’t last long enough to know the holding power of most comments.

So now for valuing time spent on a site. Consider the situation where someone is introduced to something new they’re not necessarily shopping for, and the site has an elevator pitch of attention span to try to engage, keep, and convert. Considering only sites that sell something, regardless of a purchase being made, how is a customer spending a lot of time engaging with a site clearly identified as “hey, they’re super interested” vs. “there’s a lot to look at....let’s first scroll down some to get to the bottom of the page so I know what’s here first and then know where to focus some time...wait more scrolling?....wow that’s a lot of scrolling...now I’m getting annoyed, why couldn’t they have organized this more efficiently so I could get the idea within just 2 or 3 at most screen-height views?“....Followed by either

1) “Ah forget it I’m not convinced to spend money on something I wasn’t shopping for anyway,” or
2) “ah that was frustrating but I’ll buy,” or
3) “I love this product and the more I can read about it the better,” followed by a purchase.

How do you know what’s in the mind of the user who spent a lot of time engaging and looking around, whether they purchased or not?

 

[Akrapovic]

How do you know what’s in the mind of the user who spent a lot of time engaging and looking around, whether they purchased or not?

Because they know exactly what you're looking at. They can see the cursor position. The scroll position. The drop downs you clicked. The way the mouse hovered around certain areas. If the area you're on is an area of interest (technical specs of a device, or a review), if it's an area you're meant to progress through quickly (a payment section), whether you're swiping/moving images of a product, etc etc. If you're just quickly scrolling through things at a rate that is too quick to read, then the analytics can show that, and you know you've structured your site badly as the person is clearly not engaging with the content.

By the way - nobody scrolls straight to the bottom of a page to get an idea of what is on it, then scrolls back to the top to then progress through the page. It is not an exam - it is a web page. The number of people who navigate through a site like this is so small it would not even come out as a single data point.

However, given this is the way you navigate websites, it appears we have found the crux of the issue and why you dislike them so much. You have a rather particular way of navigating and consuming web data, that nobody else I've ever seen in any analytics data has ever done. Developers do not build for the 1 in a million person. They build for the 999,999 people who navigate web pages in similar ways. This does not make you wrong of course - but it does mean it doesn't suit you.

I think we can now answer the original question - Why is website design so awful today? The answer is that the person with the awful experience is unfortunately the outlier in how they use the product. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about that.

I would be interested in a mock up of how you would lay out a page though. The Remarkable tablet site for example. Do you have any interested in scribbling down a 2 minute mock up on a piece of paper? I won't lie, it won't make a difference (I'm doing iOS apps and internal stuff you won't care about), but it will be interesting.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I share Tozo's same gripe with flat UI design and I HATE HATE HATED iOS 7. In a different universe, I imagine that given Microsoft's utter flop known as Windows 8, that Apple didn't bother even competing with another flat design, and iOS 7 never happened, and we'd never have flat UI dominating everything. I still use older Samsung stuff that kept the skeuo look up until 2014 (Samsung at least gave the better design era two more years) and to replace the crap websites (such as Facebook, YouTube, or Gmail) I use the built-in apps on those devices which still work un-updated, and retain the better website layout. (Facebook 3.x still retains the 2010-12 website UI. Buttons still look like buttons, there are no ads on the feed, the old Timeline is still present. YouTube 2.x still worked last I used it, and has a darker theme, and plenty of gloss, buttons which look like buttons, and no ads even without premium).

I find it awfully ironic though, given how UI design since 2012 (2014 if you're a Samsung user) has gone utterly flat and white, while movies (especially animated films) have trended towards a shift away from 2-D to CGI/3D ala Pixar and those are the new trends today. Also, car interfaces seem to retain skeuomorphism, even in 2019. Two examples:

Mom's 2019 Sante Fe Infotainment screen, UI from Android 2.3, a 2010-era UI design:

Ford Focus Sync system from a 2018-era car:

Oddly enough, even 2020 cars aren't showing any trends to flat UI in 2020, either.

2020 Chevy Cruze Infotainment system (flat-er, but still skeuo buttons):

2020 Lincoln MKC Instrument cluster. Those guage needles aren't real. they're skuomorphic, and 'grow' from the middle of the gauge when the vehicle is started. The gauges themselves are actually LCD screens:

So far the only real flat UIs in vehicles remain confined to aviation, and have been unchanged since at least the early 1990s:

Airbus glass cockpit:

People keep saying flat UI is 'modern' but all I see are regressions to the early 80s-late 90s flat UI design which used to be blamed on limited hardware spec. Today, there's more than enough CPU and screen resolution to evolve to even more beautiful skeuomorphism, which would also extend to holographic design in the future, and even better augmented reality effects, and we might have gotten there by 2020 if we weren't nostalgic for the era when Amiga WorkBench and Tandy DeskMate were a thing.