They have been trying to kill the desktop/workstation for years. The "new" design makes no sense unless you use smartphones/tablets for everything. It gets even worse: not only web sites suck now, apps' UI has become ugly and unusable. I can only laugh looking at miserable users trying to do something more on a tablet than just consuming media and wasting time on social media. Can't navigate, can't type, can't search, can't highlight, can't move the cursor, can't do anything that is not the default. And that's coming from someone who uses both post-pc devices and computers for half the day (many times even more). I just don't pretend that smartphones can replace tablets, that tablets can substitute laptops, or that laptops can supplant desktops. I'd rather use them all efficiently, each one for its scope.
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Why is website design so awful today, generally?
- Thread starter Tozovac
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As for all the white space, well, that's just the current style. It'll pass like all such things.
It's nowhere near as evil and stupid as when everyone started copying that ridiculously lazy hamburger menu icon / link dump area.
There's still millions out there who have no idea that it's a menu, either. At the least, designers should put the word Menu in it. Good God.
Don't even me started on iOS and its cryptic (to many people) icons with no label inside core apps like Mail. Heck, many elderly cannot even tell the icons apart. A label would really help with that.
It's nowhere near as evil and stupid as when everyone started copying that ridiculously lazy hamburger menu icon / link dump area.
There's still millions out there who have no idea that it's a menu, either. At the least, designers should put the word Menu in it. Good God.
Don't even me started on iOS and its cryptic (to many people) icons with no label inside core apps like Mail. Heck, many elderly cannot even tell the icons apart. A label would really help with that.
First, get off my lawn!
Second, HTML was developed to describe what the content is, not how to display it. And it was up to the browser to display the content in the "best" way, so that the column widths and font sizes would be dependent on the the browser. But in the commercial world companies want to control how their "brand" is displayed, so they control the fonts and column widths, and if your display doesn't match, tough!
Second, HTML was developed to describe what the content is, not how to display it. And it was up to the browser to display the content in the "best" way, so that the column widths and font sizes would be dependent on the the browser. But in the commercial world companies want to control how their "brand" is displayed, so they control the fonts and column widths, and if your display doesn't match, tough!
I don't think it's awful - I actually prefer bright, flat designs as long as the content is easily presentable (in the older days of the Internet, as far as I know, darker, less flat themes were the norm) - in the case of the Apple Support community that was shown in a previous post, it's simply moving with the times and how modern people think and such. I think as an older internet user, it may seem daunting to keep up with the modern changes, but me being a newer Internet user, I'm more used to these kinds of formats. However, what I definitely dislike about the modern Internet is the abundance of advertisements everywhere: no wonder many people install ad-blockers, if companies used unobtrusive advertising banners, instead of pop-out auto-playing videos and the like, ad revenue would actually rise. The other thing is the lack of consideration for low-speed connections, I know someone with very bad Internet who lives in Malaysia and she has to use her mobile Internet. It seems as we make more progress in Internet speed, the page bloat makes it worthless our efforts, same goes for metered data plans increasing and the page size increasing with it.
If users could try to rely on making minimalist, bright and flat designs like they seem to be these days but without the additional ridiculousness of extended 'bloat code', then it would be better. The actual presentation is okay for me but what marketers and profit-makers ruin a good web design with is the problem.
If users could try to rely on making minimalist, bright and flat designs like they seem to be these days but without the additional ridiculousness of extended 'bloat code', then it would be better. The actual presentation is okay for me but what marketers and profit-makers ruin a good web design with is the problem.
Makes sense. Forget the "User Experience"... all that really matters now making the boss think that something is getting updated quick and cheap. As long as the website owner can see that the info is on there somewhere, their job is done.
Feel free to pitch "we're building two separate sites and we have to update both of them" and see how that goes
Despite the odd dislike of responsive design on this thread, it's the best option for a large number of reasons.
I am not against responsive design, that ship has sailed. All of the sites I have built for the past 3 years have been responsive. I also have no problem with the never-ending stacked scrolling of images and text on mobile devices - there is no other choice - if someone is stranded on an island with nothing but an Internet connection and they have all day to scroll the web, be my guest. About all you can do on a mobile device is maybe choose the font and the background colors, not really much to "design" just has to work to get the info out so that people on a date won't have to look up at each other at the restaurant.
What I am saying is that the computer and large screen experience should be far better than just a larger version of a stacked mobile column. You can take advantage of multiple columns and create a more immersive experience. While the sites I build are responsive, the large screen experience has very little in common with the mobile experience - only the content is shared across the two (with some being stripped out for phones of course).
Many of the sites I see today on the large screen all have that same Bootstrap look and feel - just a list of horizontal strips of info stacked and if any contain links, you can really get lost since they all have different menu implementations.
What I am saying is that the computer and large screen experience should be far better than just a larger version of a stacked mobile column. You can take advantage of multiple columns and create a more immersive experience. While the sites I build are responsive, the large screen experience has very little in common with the mobile experience - only the content is shared across the two (with some being stripped out for phones of course).
Many of the sites I see today on the large screen all have that same Bootstrap look and feel - just a list of horizontal strips of info stacked and if any contain links, you can really get lost since they all have different menu implementations.
Horrible mindset, if you don't mind some honesty.
1) Condescendingly calling some users' preferences for a certain optimization/appearance/functionality as "odd"
2) Assuming what you think is best for everyone without compromise, or: Risking designing more for yourself and not the user, otherwise known as JonyIve-itis or the iOS7 flu.
That makes much more sense, fair points.
1) Not being condescending at all, I work with a lot of web design and dev and it's something you don't often hear. Odd because it's unusual.
2) The sites you're talking about, especially for big companies, are hugely data, marketing, and budget driven, and are built based on thousands of user surveys, personas, etc. The preferences of a few users don't override your overall goals, you can't cater to a handful of opinions that would compromise the bigger picture.
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If you put it that way, I'll buy your comment a little more. More below on perhaps why you don't hear it often.
Can't argue with the extra/double work aspect but man, at what point will things teeter totter back towards valuing the experience, content, and appearance on different platforms over ease of updates? Everything said by @choreo in this thread resonates with my inspiration for starting this thread. I'm one of a billion consumers but I recall more & more instances of being so turned off by a new (to me) poorly-organized website looking like blocky sticky-notes on white backgrounds on my 30" monitor that I often turn away instantly never to return.... or instances of websites I used to use regularly with joy but now veer away from unless absolutely necessary (inthestudio.net...Apple's community help forums....)
Kudos to sites like Amazon retaining "what works" on large monitors. I even prefer using the desktop view on my iphone 5s as I'm one of the rare who prefer prioritizing the desktop experience and I can deal with some moving/zooming around the screen because everything is where I expect it to be.
Well there you go again, back to assuming. How do you know there are only a few/handful, and do you work directly with surveys/polls to answer this first-hand? I've personally seen enough decisions at small & large companies made purely on cost & perception/preferences of a small handful of management to know that very, very often, what's given to the consumer is not exactly what the consumer wants. And the fact that only a few around here seem to be inspired as much as me to frequently raise pitchforks & torches often & loudly against what I deem to be pretty lousy website design nowadays (as well as pretty lousy iOS UI coming from Jony Ive's studio) is no proof that only a few would not prefer separate, detailed, platform-driven content.
Sadly, I am realizing more and more that the majority of consumers will just take what they're given and just accept & deal....many not able to even recognize what they're missing. I showed my 10 year old nephew my ios6-driven ipod that I use for a security camera and he loved the look of buttons and "artwork," as he was too young at age 5 to recall what a UI was like before 2013, when the world went (to sh*t) with adopting dumbed-down flat design and compromising desktop experiences to prioritize the mobile experience.
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Actually, yes. I work for a mid-size tech company, and we regularly review user visits to our site and adjust content accordingly. Most viewers are only getting to X point on this page, so relevant content is shifted up. This type of headline got more clicks than this one so let's adjust how we refer to these things, etc.
As I've mentioned before, websites at any decently managed larger company are marketing and data driven. The emphasized sections on websites are there either because marketing and management are prioritizing that product/service or because most consumers are visiting the site looking for that item. A few might be dictated by some totalitarian CEO, but that's certainly the exception rather than the norm.
It's not, but it's totally anecdotal the other way as well and may very well just be your opinion. Is it possible a bunch of people out there hate most websites and just aren't saying so? Um, I guess so.
The thing is, for as much as you've posted on this thread, I really don't have an understanding of what it is you'd want to see on a website that you'd consider "good design".
And again, unless there were some overwhelming reason to do so, very few companies are going to pay to develop two entirely different websites, especially when they don't need to.
Good conversation! Honestly, amazon.com is a good one. They have a system that works and haven't bent over and kow-towed to revising to meet a certain look. Then again, I much prefer shopping on amazon via a laptop or desktop than ipad or iphone, and hopefully they recognize that may be true for others and have no plans to change just to change.
Macrumors forum here (when viewing on a laptop) is pretty good. It has reasonably resisted the urge to flatness and white-outed-ness vs. say the Apple user community forum, which I find completely unusable. Also both macrumors & Amazon have resisted the also-awful sticky header fad. On the flipside, I dislike the macrumors interface for the apple buyers guide...there was no need to flatten it and spread things out so much into menus and sub menus, and there was no need to make the info presentation look iOS-like, where the "Buy now" and "Just Updated" appear to be iOS-esque buttons....again, misguided unnecessary homogeneity of mashing up an iOS look onto a desktop look. Why did every web/iOS designer suddenly think users were smart enough to not need buttons to look like buttons but they weren't smart enough to be able to differentiate different designs/interfaces that didn't all look alike?
There are two good examples and a bad one, above.
Or more very generally: Just look back to most anything pre-2013, pre-flat design, pre-Hero Images, pre-sticky headers, and pre-tiles-on-all-white, and there....there you shall find good design. Before people thought too hard.
As far as analyzing user statistics, I've said it before here or on other threads. Counting where someone clicks is again risky and no foolproof proof of anything. Assuming others' experiences match mine, I think often someone picks something not because it's the most obvious choice but it's that they've picked one to end the confusion and just get on with things, hoping that click will take them where they were looking to go. Too often I come across tiled pages optimized for mobile view, where there are multiple places to click the same action - one in a banner on top, one in the lower text menu groupings, one found when clicking on the hamburger icon, and one buried somewhere in the middle page areas. I can't tell you how often I just pick one, any one, and not by any preference or obviousness but more with a desire to end the frustrating scrolling/swiping, a wonderment whether that one will take me somewhere different than the other similar-looking one did, and then a hope that it does take me where I wanted to go.
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Today's design standards are about accessibility, flow, consistency, and usability. Visual design is reserved as more branding flare and emotional vibes, but not the true centerpiece. The site you linked to has one intent: to sell you a watch. The page is designed to show off the product to entice you and make for a clear actions by removing distractions (thanks to less clutter and size). It is not intended that every user reads/interacts with everything on that page. Instead, the order on the page is in the highest use case to the lowest. People that do not see their option right away, will continue down the page.
This page is a good example of Hick's Law, which basically says that the more options there are, the longer and least likely the user is to make a decision. By making it spacious, focused and limited, you're increasing the likelihood of an intended engagement. There's also a lot more going on here than just that, but it's just an example of learning from the past and embracing newer, proven success.
In the past, web design was less an in-depth expertise/analyzation and more from business goals, maximizing page real estate, restricted by technical limitations, fit more to the era's standards, and making things look subjectively "pretty" to sell it to shareholders (not to the demographic). As a result, you gained sites (circa 2002) like Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Google, NYTimes, Apple, and many more.
Believe it or not, there's a science to design. And thanks to technological improvements and maturing of a medium, design has progressed the way it has over the last 1.5 decades to value accessibility, flow (goal oriented), consistency, and usability. That's why even the successful companies that we exampled have continued in this direction.
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Actually, Amazon.com's design is far flatter and more white-space driven than any of their past designs. As my previous post linked to, their old design had tabs for different sections, a hidden search (small and in the top left), lots of clicking to get to things, and no real structure.
I also recently used their mobile web UI to buy three items from my iPhone. I found the experience simple enough to navigate, get the information I needed, and checkout. Do I think the desktop version is better? Sure, but that's less of a fault to the mobile version and more of a preference. Also take note that most companies these days don't invest much in their mobile web apps, and instead invest a lot into their native apps.
What? MacRumors forum is very much flat design. There are no gradients, textures, or lots of colors used. It's relatively simple. It's not as white-space centric as other designs, yes, but it is flat and based off of current design trends.
As for Apple, without actually being part of their design decisions to know for sure and more basing off my own similar experiences, I agree with their change. While there is definitely a community there that is used to the traditional forum UI pattern, the use for the majority of visitors is finding an answer to a question. So, the main thing there is to search.
Going back to Hick's Law, it helps to be more focused on a smaller number of actions than it is to be flooded with it. And in Apple's case, they value a customer's primary action with their communities than they do in forcing the "forum" idea to people that most likely weren't familiar with the traditional forums UI pattern ever.
This is what their buyer's guide looked like in 2010. And here it is in 2012. The change since has been minimal between 2012 and now, mostly just removing the latest news posts right sidebar and using that new space to better balance out the data. But in general, the move has been to improve focus on the information relative to the use case of the page while helping usability with clearer structure.
My previous reply goes into more depth on why the old design isn't better design. And usability analyzing is far more than counting clicks. It's about making rewards more valuable to the user than the effort they spend. That can be a lot of clicks, that can be a single click. But each interaction needs to be meaningful.
Not everyone will be happy, but that's the nature of the industry. Hell, not everyone agrees with your idea of good design, right? The job of qualified designers in this industry is balancing the majority of end user values with that of the business's values. Help the business succeed while keeping value for users.
This page is a good example of Hick's Law, which basically says that the more options there are, the longer and least likely the user is to make a decision. By making it spacious, focused and limited, you're increasing the likelihood of an intended engagement. There's also a lot more going on here than just that, but it's just an example of learning from the past and embracing newer, proven success.
In the past, web design was less an in-depth expertise/analyzation and more from business goals, maximizing page real estate, restricted by technical limitations, fit more to the era's standards, and making things look subjectively "pretty" to sell it to shareholders (not to the demographic). As a result, you gained sites (circa 2002) like Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Google, NYTimes, Apple, and many more.
Believe it or not, there's a science to design. And thanks to technological improvements and maturing of a medium, design has progressed the way it has over the last 1.5 decades to value accessibility, flow (goal oriented), consistency, and usability. That's why even the successful companies that we exampled have continued in this direction.
[doublepost=1499906341][/doublepost]
Actually, Amazon.com's design is far flatter and more white-space driven than any of their past designs. As my previous post linked to, their old design had tabs for different sections, a hidden search (small and in the top left), lots of clicking to get to things, and no real structure.
I also recently used their mobile web UI to buy three items from my iPhone. I found the experience simple enough to navigate, get the information I needed, and checkout. Do I think the desktop version is better? Sure, but that's less of a fault to the mobile version and more of a preference. Also take note that most companies these days don't invest much in their mobile web apps, and instead invest a lot into their native apps.
What? MacRumors forum is very much flat design. There are no gradients, textures, or lots of colors used. It's relatively simple. It's not as white-space centric as other designs, yes, but it is flat and based off of current design trends.
As for Apple, without actually being part of their design decisions to know for sure and more basing off my own similar experiences, I agree with their change. While there is definitely a community there that is used to the traditional forum UI pattern, the use for the majority of visitors is finding an answer to a question. So, the main thing there is to search.
Going back to Hick's Law, it helps to be more focused on a smaller number of actions than it is to be flooded with it. And in Apple's case, they value a customer's primary action with their communities than they do in forcing the "forum" idea to people that most likely weren't familiar with the traditional forums UI pattern ever.
I agree that their use of UI elements like the iOS tab buttons is off putting and is less a result of an educated design decision and more focused on visual design (make it look pretty and iOS-like, regardless of intent). However, I applaud more white space. It helps me better identify different sections and different data within a section.
This is what their buyer's guide looked like in 2010. And here it is in 2012. The change since has been minimal between 2012 and now, mostly just removing the latest news posts right sidebar and using that new space to better balance out the data. But in general, the move has been to improve focus on the information relative to the use case of the page while helping usability with clearer structure.
My previous reply goes into more depth on why the old design isn't better design. And usability analyzing is far more than counting clicks. It's about making rewards more valuable to the user than the effort they spend. That can be a lot of clicks, that can be a single click. But each interaction needs to be meaningful.
Not everyone will be happy, but that's the nature of the industry. Hell, not everyone agrees with your idea of good design, right? The job of qualified designers in this industry is balancing the majority of end user values with that of the business's values. Help the business succeed while keeping value for users.
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Typographers have long known that you can read faster if the width of the text you are reading is selected to minimize side-to-side movement of your head. That is why newspapers are printed in columns: it reduces the width of the text which makes it possible to read faster.
With the trend of using wide-screen monitors, sites which are not designed to use columns will then need to have relatively large margins (leading to scrolling) in order to provide the benefit of being able to read the text faster.
When I looked at some of the screenshots above, what I noticed is wide margins, which I immediately associated with the various complaints that have come up over the years related to the wide default margins from documents produced using the LaTeX typesetting package - as others have pointed out on various forum posts, it is not that the margins are too large, it is that the paper is too wide - to make the text fit the width of the paper (or monitor in this case) would actually slow down reading instead of speeding it up. Going to multiple columns to counter this effect makes much less sense with on-screen media, unless the page scrolls left to right and more columns are added instead of more lines per column - but that would likely be more awkward than simply having large margins.
As to designs which fail to make use of those margins to provide navigational aids, which leave out helpful visual cues to separate different parts of a page, etc., I would need to agree that is simply bad design.
Of course there is also the issue of balancing against sites that are too noisy and cluttered...
With the trend of using wide-screen monitors, sites which are not designed to use columns will then need to have relatively large margins (leading to scrolling) in order to provide the benefit of being able to read the text faster.
When I looked at some of the screenshots above, what I noticed is wide margins, which I immediately associated with the various complaints that have come up over the years related to the wide default margins from documents produced using the LaTeX typesetting package - as others have pointed out on various forum posts, it is not that the margins are too large, it is that the paper is too wide - to make the text fit the width of the paper (or monitor in this case) would actually slow down reading instead of speeding it up. Going to multiple columns to counter this effect makes much less sense with on-screen media, unless the page scrolls left to right and more columns are added instead of more lines per column - but that would likely be more awkward than simply having large margins.
As to designs which fail to make use of those margins to provide navigational aids, which leave out helpful visual cues to separate different parts of a page, etc., I would need to agree that is simply bad design.
Of course there is also the issue of balancing against sites that are too noisy and cluttered...
I think we will eventually devolve into a species with only one eye that only moves up and down, so mobile design may just represent another major change-point in the human species.
Most well designed sites on the desktop act more like a "map" where I can quickly go to any number of places with one or two clicks. With a mobile site, there is not even room to keep a nav menu visible on-screen - so to get where I may want to go, I may have to travel "through" lots of content "vertically" I have no interest in and since I am flying blind when I scroll, there may be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! It is almost like being hit with a series of pop-up ads in the way of where I want to go - I just don't have to dismiss them by clicking a close box, I just have to keep scrolling. That said, MOBILE DEVICES ARE NOT GOING AWAY (the "watches" are coming!) - you would have more luck getting Tyrion Lanister to put down his glass of wine and take up yoga.
Most of my recent clients come to me with an example(s) of another website they like. What I have noticed is that 9 times out of 10, they now have a big Hero image that fills the screen - and that is about it. What many really like about the example is the "photography" in the image or composite - they really are not looking at how a user might "navigate" the site. As a test the other day, I took one of the examples one of my client's gave me and sent him back a mockup of the same home page, but just substituted another Hero Image and he said that was not what he had in mind at all - he wanted a site more like the example! Works for "Game of Thrones" - not so much for a Roto-Rooter site.
Most well designed sites on the desktop act more like a "map" where I can quickly go to any number of places with one or two clicks. With a mobile site, there is not even room to keep a nav menu visible on-screen - so to get where I may want to go, I may have to travel "through" lots of content "vertically" I have no interest in and since I am flying blind when I scroll, there may be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! It is almost like being hit with a series of pop-up ads in the way of where I want to go - I just don't have to dismiss them by clicking a close box, I just have to keep scrolling. That said, MOBILE DEVICES ARE NOT GOING AWAY (the "watches" are coming!) - you would have more luck getting Tyrion Lanister to put down his glass of wine and take up yoga.
Most of my recent clients come to me with an example(s) of another website they like. What I have noticed is that 9 times out of 10, they now have a big Hero image that fills the screen - and that is about it. What many really like about the example is the "photography" in the image or composite - they really are not looking at how a user might "navigate" the site. As a test the other day, I took one of the examples one of my client's gave me and sent him back a mockup of the same home page, but just substituted another Hero Image and he said that was not what he had in mind at all - he wanted a site more like the example! Works for "Game of Thrones" - not so much for a Roto-Rooter site.
Some things never change. This is little different than, long ago and far away, debating newspaper design; information-dense front pages like the NY Times and Wall St. Journal vs. the tabloid styles of the NY Daily News and NY Post.
There are different kinds of readers/site visitors, and design varies based on the target readership. Asking for an information-dense format with lots of page navigation elements at your fingertips... I think that can be and often was overdone. The notion of "one page, no scrolling, give them everything" can result in confusion - careful scrutiny of every part of the page in hopes of finding what you need, or simple tune-out (eyes glaze over, move on to a less-complex site).
Simplicity can also be overdone, but one thing's fairly certain at this point - mobile devices greatly outnumber desktop computers, so either you design for two separate media, or you design for the dominant medium.
White space has been an issue of debate in print and web. There's a difference, though. White space in print costs money, white space on web costs nothing. In print, there was always tension between paper and shipping costs vs. readability. On web the focus can solely be on visitor behavior. If a "clean" layout encourages visitors to stay and explore, while a busy layout results in short visits... guess what's going to win?
Regardless, there will always be examples of "good" designs that are poorly executed or used for the wrong reasons, just as a great-looking design may deliver poor-quality content (or vice versa). Not much the readers can do about that, other than vote with their feet (or mice, fingertips, etc.)
There are different kinds of readers/site visitors, and design varies based on the target readership. Asking for an information-dense format with lots of page navigation elements at your fingertips... I think that can be and often was overdone. The notion of "one page, no scrolling, give them everything" can result in confusion - careful scrutiny of every part of the page in hopes of finding what you need, or simple tune-out (eyes glaze over, move on to a less-complex site).
Simplicity can also be overdone, but one thing's fairly certain at this point - mobile devices greatly outnumber desktop computers, so either you design for two separate media, or you design for the dominant medium.
White space has been an issue of debate in print and web. There's a difference, though. White space in print costs money, white space on web costs nothing. In print, there was always tension between paper and shipping costs vs. readability. On web the focus can solely be on visitor behavior. If a "clean" layout encourages visitors to stay and explore, while a busy layout results in short visits... guess what's going to win?
Regardless, there will always be examples of "good" designs that are poorly executed or used for the wrong reasons, just as a great-looking design may deliver poor-quality content (or vice versa). Not much the readers can do about that, other than vote with their feet (or mice, fingertips, etc.)
Thanks for taking the time for a thorough reply that I know took time! Appreciate and respect that.
Honestly though, I'd contend that some of the sites you say promote a quick look-thru (and then hopeful purchase) are ones that I find distracting from requiring so much looking around to get a sense of what's on the page that I often just move on & away in frustration.
I do believe there's a science to design, but I believe more that it's possible to overthink...over-science...analysis from paralysis. I guess like pornography, it's hard to define but someone knows it when they see it -- I find too much of today's websites & OS's & iOS's to reflect too much thinking and focus on "a certain stripped-down look" and not enough on simplicity, tastefulness, attractiveness, and intuitive usability.
I'm so glad you introduced the Amazon site here. I'm not flat-out against all flat design. (hehe) It's possible to bend over towards the flat design fad yet do 5 things so super effectively well (which very much appeal to my web design sensibilities) that for me there's zero frustrations with Amazon's site:
1. They fit enough on the main screen you land on so that a user can click and then go to 95-100% of what they need instead of scrolling all over, down and up, then down and up again just to get a sense of what options exist on that page. Here, everything under the top area is just gravy/extra, as 99-100% of what I do at Amazon involves either instantly performing a search or logging in to "Account & Lists" or "Orders."
2. They retained a desktop-centric website instead of a white checkerboard mobile-centric website. Major kudos to them. If this has been decided to be best for one of the biggest retailers out there, why shouldn't it for smaller retailers?
3. The site isn't a white-out grey-font low-contrast super-flat uber-minimalist wasteland. They haven't bent over like Instagram did to their site, app, and icon. They use dark colors and colored/bordered "zones" to help guide the user and let him recognize that different areas have different functions. They HAVE A SEARCH WINDOW READY FOR TYPING INTO instead of kow-towing to the "minimalized stripped-down screen" look of showing just a search magnifying glass icon which then requires two clicks to start typing to search for something instead of one (one click to expand the magnifying glass icon into a search window, a 2nd click to enable the cursor in the search window to start typing)
4. Their buttons look like buttons, even if flattish and w/o gloss, to help prompt the user almost subconsciously. "Proceed to checkout" looks like a button to me by its orange color on the dark background and slight, slight shading.
5. THEY HAVEN'T RADICALLY CHANGED THINGS JUST FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE AND TO BE DIFFERENT. They stick with what works. Any changes have been very subtle and hardly noticed, and always an improvement. Like Apple's OS & iOS's were until Timmy let Jony Ive start meddling via iOS7 & Yosemite.
And then on the other hand you have a site like Walmart that's so space-wasting and blindly obedient to flat design and dumbed down-looking that I feel like I'm looking at a kindergarten cardboard cutout project.
Agree. Amazon doesn't mess around and bend over/give in to silly fads. They are good.
I look at the 2012 version and see a completely better presentation. More stuff fits on the screen....less scrolling required. More effective use of shading/borders....less thinking required. Overall less whiteness...much preferred to me.
Eh....I don't know that I agree. That gobbly gook sounds good maybe to a manager looking for metrics to report so-called "improvements" to his management, but I still say the cons outweigh any pros for all the so-called improvements. I'm not making up that I tend to feel like interaction with today's websites/iOS/OS results in just micro-frustration and micro-delays...just tiny bits of increased thinking & physical effort (scrolling) that just start to add up noticeably after a while. Let me ask -- if I compare my interaction daily with dozens of flat/white/minimilized websites/OS/iOS's to your daily routine...if the # of stairs you climbed daily was increased by 1 per stairwell, if the distance you had to drive to work was increased by a minute, if the distance walked from car to front door increased by 10 feet, if the bathrooms at work were 20 feet farther away, if you had to work 8.25 hours a day instead of 8 for the same pay....find 3-4 dozen instances daily that, by themselves, would hardly be noticed but when added up just give a sense of requiring more work for the prior same result. That's what interacting with many (often most some days) of today's websites (and OS/iOS's) feel like vs. just 4 years ago (before iOS7, which really boosted this flat/white fad I'd say).
I guess so. Somewhere here or in another thread about iOS11, someone posted something about watching to not design mostly for the designer than the user...that's sure what many of today's sites feel like. To me. Regardless of supposed statistics (for which I'd ask: if yesterday's sites are no longer available, how can it be known they wouldn't work as well as today's whited-out scroll-heavy portable-OS-focused websites, especially since they were generally full of more intuitive cues that "the digital design intelligentsia" have virtually bleached away, claiming the world no longer needs them?
Oh, and one last thing.
Let's say for a minute that today's mobile-focused whited-out websites are the epitome of efficiency and click through/purchase nirvana perfection for every company. Well, for every website that uses that look, that is, since not all websites are about selling something. Would it not make sense that nothing should change from now until any next huge, radical shift in computer interfacing methods? I have zero doubt that sometime within the next four years, designers are going to get bored, and clueless users are going to clamor for something new just to have something different, and what we'll see then will look radically different than what we have today, regardless of whether it's an improvement or not. And even if it's not universally deemed an improvement, there will be technical justifications for why it is just so much better now, regardless of many users' subjective sensibilities. Just wait and see. I'd ask: what's more valuable: quickly as possible, or engaging, enjoyable, & informative experiences that occasionally show some unique design talent?
I'll take a thoughtfully & intuitive & attractively & creatively-designed website that that isn't the fastest to be read over a blockish mobile-centric white-out scroll-heavy website full of blocks having 7-10 word sentences any day of the week.
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I feel like you're sort of looking for things in the wrong places with regards to this.I'd ask: what's more valuable: quickly as possible, or engaging, enjoyable, & informative experiences that occasionally show some unique design talent?
I'll take a thoughtfully & intuitive & attractively & creatively-designed website that that isn't the fastest to be read over a blockish mobile-centric white-out scroll-heavy website full of blocks having 7-10 word sentences any day of the week.
You're just not going to find something like that in a big corporate site, which is the types of sites that are being bought up in this discussion. Those sites are going to be metric/marketing driven and responsive, for good reason.
There's interesting, innovative work being done for smaller brands, but don't look to Apple/Microsoft/etc. for that.
So companies like Apple & Microsoft who want to sell engaging, enjoyable, intuitive, attractive, creative, thoughtfully-crafted and unique-to-their-brand designs/products should prioritize somewhat overly-homogenous websites based more on customer metrics and optimized click-thru than customer engagement?
Well, Apple at least used to seem to prioritize intuitive, attractive, thoughtfully-crafted and unique-to-their-brand products rather than peddle an experience looking not only too similar to the competition but too similar (whiteout look) across even their own apps, so thus the current antiseptic stripped-down white/bright/flat/minimal interface experience...
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I know one of the senior web designers at Amazon. I gather that every design change at Amazon is A/B tested to within an inch of its life, and that there are scores of A/B tests going on at any one time. It's all about the metrics.
Derekmlr has explained far better than I ever could (am not a designer) and is clearly far more knowledgeable.
Sort version, minus your obviously skewed comment, yes.So companies like Apple & Microsoft who want to sell engaging, enjoyable, intuitive, attractive, creative, thoughtfully-crafted and unique-to-their-brand designs/products should prioritize somewhat overly-homogenous websites based more on customer metrics and optimized click-thru than customer engagement?
Well, Apple at least used to seem to prioritize intuitive, attractive, thoughtfully-crafted and unique-to-their-brand products rather than peddle an experience looking not only too similar to the competition but too similar (whiteout look) across even their own apps, so thus the current antiseptic stripped-down white/bright/flat/minimal interface experience...
Of course those sites are designed to be appealing and engaging, but a site aiming to direct thousands of potential customers an hour to a point where they can buy X product more than likely isn't going to try to do so in a unique, creative way. They're going to design something that's straightforward and usable to as many users as possible with their biggest product drivers up front.
And while you find these sites "overly-homogenous", if you were to stick a bunch of printed out webpages on a wall you could point to the Apple product page in an instant. Despite your opinion it's a very carefully crafted look that's now often imitated.
I also think you're romanticizing some of the past designs you refer to a bit, but that's a separate issue