Why is website design so awful today, generally?

[Akrapovic]

I think when we start comparing websites to cars, we're jumped the shark. The reason car designs are skeuo is because the majority of the car is a 3D physical object, and having the graphical representation of a physical button keeps it in 'theme' with the rest of the car - rather than the brain processing 2 different interfaces when it should be concentrating on the road. There are however, many different car interfaces which are flat design.

Aircraft interface is 'flat' yes, but no not like you describe. The majority, if not all, of the interface is not touch screen. A read only screen and a screen which responds to touch -and- is the primary input device are very different interfaces. We're also comparing highly sophisticated systems which take years of training to be allowed to use, to car interfaces which any idiot is allowed to drive. Oil rigs also largely use a flat design. I know this because I designed those systems (see posts earlier in the thread).

However saying something cannot be modern because it has traits from the 80s is of course being a tad unfair. A lot of modern things are retro designed. Cars often have throwbacks to the past. Computer design. Clothes. Hairstyles. When we talk about the word "modern", we're down into the fashion discussion, and fashion is a rolling thing, which is different around the world. Also, if we're using simple dates to decide what is modern, then it should be remembered that computers went full 3D buttons in the 90s. Windows 3.1 / 95 really started that one. That makes skeuo design for computers 25 years old. This can hardly be considered modern.

Websites and vehicle instrumentation are not trying to display the same data under the same circumstances. They should not be treated the same.

 

[Tozovac]

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.

Funny, with all the rationale given in this thread how the VAST majority of users are mobile nowadays, why are you even talking about cavemen who use a mouse & cursor.

Do analytics study each and every user in the world? Or are these folk monitored in ”the lab,” where eye position can also be studied on any device? My point about focus groups would apply if only a special population of users are being studied, in your example. I can say with confidence I’m very likely to look at a site differently than I would normally if I were aware that others wanted to see how I engaged with a screen. I’m fairly positive that would apply to many being studied (some of which who might not want to look like a psychopath if they scroll to the bottom or wildly around at first, to get a sense of the information being offered....

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.

Nobody? Are you stating that each and every user in the world is being monitored? And once again, how truly sure are you that those being studied are not changing their patterns when being studied, even if they say they are?

So no, it’s not that I IMMEDIATELY scroll to the bottom of a page first, each and every time or at least, often. Rather, when I come across a site that seems to be going on....and on....and on....where I have to scroll quite a bit to get to the next “nugget” of info, then I’ll look to the right to see how much the cursor is moving for each screen swipe, and then I’ll scroll to the bottom in frustration to see how much darn screen height of info there is, before I get caught up in taking 10-15 minutes to take in this sky-scraper sized page of information. Maybe there’s a comparison table that summarizes the information presented and compares it to others, that I can jump to instead of taking in the developer’s amazing animations (often I’m looking for information and not entertainment on a certain page, like my recent example above).

It’s these types of instances when I scroll to the bottom to get a comfort level with how deep is this swimming pool that’s starting to feel bottomless.

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.

Outlier? Now get real. There are quite a few users who dislike certain offenses in interface design after the emergence of flat design and monochromatic interface elements, after the heavy-handed reinventing of certain key interface elements a la iOS7, after the general abandoning of support of the desktop experience in favor of the mobile/tablet interface, etc.

Many responders in this thread with certain gripes show we’re not talking 1 in a million or even 1 in 1,000...

Many like me have expressed a lot of issue with certain basic concepts I rail against...the too-often vagueness of today’s flat design interface...the time-wasting indulgences of many sites with wasted space and certain animations and hero images that take away instead of add (not ALL sites with hero images/animations just MANY sites)...the dumbing-down of a once very well put together site (Apple refurbished store and Apple community help/bulletin board being two of the very worst offenders)...

Now with Apple and others starting to realize their errors, I’m slowly seeing a reversal and undoing of the errors, where “buttons” are staring to be better-differentiated from other nearby offerings (instead of all looking like similar flat hard-to-differentiate rectangles), and where flat design is starting to be rounded.

Perhaps my biggest gripe is general dumbed-down monochromatic interfacing a la Windows 10 and OS after Mavericks where most everything on the page is white (or dark/black) and the icons/buttons are black & white wireframe and look alike, which increases comprehension time and abandons the previous functional benefits of quick, almost subconscious recognition of certain interface elements via differentiation by color/shape and spacing (the folder hierarchy in Windows 10 and Big Sur email apps now use wireframe monochromatic icons small side-pointing arrowheads to indicate subfolders such that the indenting between folders & subfolders is much less than before, and differences in groups seem to mix together in your peripheral vision and are MUCH less easy to quickly navigate).

In fact, I contend that the “magic solution to the white out problem” of Dark Mode has made things temporarily worse, since now designers have another driver for making as many things as possible either white or dark, with less differentiation of “zones” at times.

I am not an outlier in recognizing decreases in function from certain newish (post-2013) interface & design elements.

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.

No mock-ups necessary. This is easy, just go back to the pre-Jony-Ive Apple community bulletin board. Go back to the pre-Angela-Ahrendts Apple online refurbished store. Facebook before its current dumb mobile interface reinvention. eBay before going flat white & blue. IOS calendar & voicemail before iOS7. OSX and Windows email before Windows 10 and Big Sur (to be fair, I lept from High Sierra to Big Sur, so perhaps sometime between the two did Apple email go so monochromatic). OSX stoplights & top menu bar before Yosemite. Adobe Professional (PDF) before its current space-wasting flat-design somewhat-monochromatic less-efficient-layout abomination in Windows 10. Go back to most any mobile app before it changed the interface to be all white and with light grey or pastel buttons/interface controls. I.e., before those in charge started thinking too hard and/or prioritizing the keeping up with the Jonyses.

 

[Tozovac]

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.

Fantastic post. Couldn’t agree more. Earlier discussion years ago in this thread pointed to flat design being a benefit for quick comprehension in interfaces in industrial applications.

Thar make sense when those flat, simple interfaces are kept constant or gently revised over time; once you learn it, you’ve learned it and can execute it.

Today with so many apps that developers seem to radically reinvent or nip/tuck way too often instead of sticking to a good thing, that’s where vague flat design fails the user. Those gages above you speak of are kept “real looking“ for a reason...because the real items are easy to recognize use, so why not emulate them? However, using flat vague design and light pastel/grey icons on white backgrounds in websites/apps/interfaces that are changed on a user way too often is often an exercise in frustration...you have to relearn a new interface w/o the prior skeu/color/shading/3D/non-flat/non-monochromatic interface benefits that help speed along comprehension.

 

[Tozovac]

I think when we start comparing websites to cars, we're jumped the shark. The reason car designs are skeuo is because the majority of the car is a 3D physical object, and having the graphical representation of a physical button keeps it in 'theme' with the rest of the car - rather than the brain processing 2 different interfaces when it should be concentrating on the road. There are however, many different car interfaces which are flat design.

I’m sorry but that’s a very poor “excuse” to limit helpful design cues to a car since it’s a 3D object.

That desk that your tablet is resting on...that living room you’re sitting in when you’re using your phone/tablet/laptop/desktop...the device itself.... Isn’t it 3D? So why limit what’s on the screen to vague flat-tery?

Aircraft interface is 'flat' yes, but no not like you describe. The majority, if not all, of the interface is not touch screen. A read only screen and a screen which responds to touch -and- is the primary input device are very different interfaces. We're also comparing highly sophisticated systems which take years of training to be allowed to use, to car interfaces which any idiot is allowed to drive. Oil rigs also largely use a flat design. I know this because I designed those systems (see posts earlier in the thread).

Any idiot, eh? Nice.

Once again - flat design/simplicity is GREAT on that ONE system used in an industrial/work environment where there’s a high density of info in a system isn’t radically updated every 8 months in the App Store.

That argument does not hold in the app/website world with so many apps that are introduced and changed often.

Websites and vehicle instrumentation are not trying to display the same data under the same circumstances. They should not be treated the same.

Well, Amen to that. Leave flat design in the worlds where it is beneficial...highly-repetitive information-dense commercial/industry applications.

Return to interfaces prioritized for desktop/laptop use and mobile/tablet use. Return to certain efficient interface design cues in the world of personal non-industrial use.

 

[Akrapovic]

Not going to quote things because it's going to be short -

Is everyone being monitored? Yes. This is how live analytics work. Google Analytics is one of many systems. There are some more in depth, others not. But Google Analytics will give you much of this data. More specialist ones will give you even more.

Is it focus groups? You can do that, but largely, no. It's live analytics.

Are you really unique in how you browser pages? Yes pretty much. I've never seen that scroll pattern before.

Are you being monitored? Yes, to various extents. JavaScript can be used to track all this easily. You're subjected to A/B tested on headlines on news sites multiple times a day, for example. And that's the simplest of all examples.

So let's put it like this. You know those old fashioned websites that gave you cursor trails and did fancy stuff as you moved your mouse along the screen? If the website knows where the cursor is, do you think it can't log it? You know those websites that react differently as you scroll down them? (Apples is a great example of this being used in extreme ways). If it knows the scroll position, do you think they can't log that? JavaScript does timers. Do you think the systems aren't logging cursor position vs time and generating metrics?

I'm just throwing some of the basic stuff out there, and I'm by no means an expert in it. But the general rule you should be considering here is - if you're interacting with something on the internet, it is being logged and analysed. Websites now are not just static HTML pages that are hosted on simple servers. They have complex back ends and as you do things are continually communicating back and forward between your browser/app and the server. It has the ability to know everything you're doing. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok even know how much of a video you watched before deciding it is rubbish and moving to the next. That's why YouTube video design is all trending towards similar designs for videos - because those videos get better views.

Start thinking more about what a computer is actually capable of, and then you realise how this data is collected. And there is no arguing with results - if a website change results in a greater conversion rate/more sales/more ad clicks/lower bounce rate, then it was a success - regardless of how users 'feel'.

Or another example - you know how Facebook is famous for messing with its timeline? (Most of us probably don't use Facebook, but we're all aware it stops using the basic chronological time line and tries to force people to use an algorithmic timeline). Well the reason for that is purely results. People complained and wanted a chronological linear timeline, but the fact is, people engaged less with the site when they used that. When it was decided by some magic Facebook code that we don't trust, people used the site more, stayed on the site more, and clicked more things and left more comments. Yes they complained about it more too, but ad revenue went up. So what are Facebook going to do? Go back to the old system?

tl;dr - yes everyone is being monitored. yes it's creepy. no you can't do much about it. yes your browsing style is pretty unique. Sorry if you don't like this. I'm not a huge fan of it either. But it's how the web works.

Edit - if it makes you feel better, I'm currently releasing an iOS app (in Test Flight beta atm) which has absolutely zero analytics in it beyond Apples built in stuff (which is very good on privacy). So there are exceptions.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Actually car interfaces were mostly flat UI design until around 2012.

Honda Ridgeline radio/climate control/instrument cluster circa 2006:

What was the excuse back in 2006? Cars were still 3D objects and all

 

[nickdalzell1]

Given how much I hate flat UI design, I don't just give up and 'get used to it'. I find used devices on Amazon that retained skeuo. I don't just 'upgrade for the hell of it' I keep what I am used to and which work for me best. After iOS 7 ruined the Apple experience for me, I literally downgraded. On devices where I cannot downgrade the look, I resort to jailbreaking or themes and NEVER update my apps. Updates to apps tend to throw the new look around or change what shouldn't be changed, and end up no better than the website.

While I have zero control over the look of a website like Facebook, I do have control over the app's UI that accomplishes the same thing. I also have many older apps backed up on an NAS (I also don't trust 'the cloud')

Samsung devices I still use that were circa 2012:

These devices are from a bygone era. Samsung, much like Apple, have a flat UI these days and look nothing like Samsung devices (they and others don't even bother differentiating anymore). These devices ran Android 4.0-4.2 which, while stock variants used a mostly flat UI design (called Holo, the predecessor to Material Design) Samsung devices tended to keep the Android 2.3 Gingerbread UI well into 2014. They eventually flattened the interface somewhat to mirror Holo with the Galaxy S5 in 2014, and that lasted until 2015 with the launch of the Galaxy S6, but a later update to that phone brought over Grace UX, the replacement to Nature UX, which was proto-One UI and completely flat. That update didn't come though until 2016

 

[Tarian]

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.

"Google analytics also showed me how long people stayed on the page without scrolling"
Tozovac has made a useful point about "time on page" - but I'll put it another way.
Just because someone stays longer doesn't mean that they want to stay longer.

Developers of Retail Shopping Centres would talk about "dwell time".
They claimed that if customers stayed for 4 hours they would spend more money.
Fine in theory ....if conscious, willing choices are made.

In practice, Designers and Developers would devise twisted, longer routes to and from everywhere - "features" (landscaping, statues, walls) that blocked shortest routes.
Curved routes that can disorientate.

To a sub-set of potential customers, a visit to such a place becomes a logistical exercise.
Knowing that a visit will take minimum of 2 hours, visits become fewer.
Many People actually value "convenience" shopping.
(In fact Covid lockdowns have seen an upturn in visits to small, local shopping parades.)

Have you ever been through Gatwick or Heathrow Airports ?
I forget which Terminals - but Passengers are sent on the most tortuous snaking route past perfumes and other (supposedly) Duty Free - that one can easily forget which direction the Gates are.
Yes. Greater "dwell time" ...but unnecessarily pissed off passengers !

Lastly, how many times has a Park designer created a winding path ?
Apparently they think that people prefer "wandering" to straight lines.
Meanwhile, the more pragmatic, maintenance side of the Council understands "desire lines".
These are the bare grass / muddy "shortcuts" that people actually want - when they have the choice.

So Google Analytics may well show that "people stayed on (a hero image) page without scrolling".
Not because they wanted to dwell - but they were unsure where to go next.

"What is this site about" ? (A pithy one-liner tells me little or nothing.)
"Where is the Navigation ?" (Increasingly Nav has become guesswork.)
(If it's even visible) "Is the Navigation clear ?" (ditto)
(If the Nav is clear) Is the Navigation meaningful ? (Some bizarrely vague Nav. titles have been appearing)

I believe that these are the sort of "design" features that are the substance of this thread.

And to repeat, how do such features improve "accessibility" ?
My (our ?) contention is that they do not.
They are "aesthetic" features pushed on web-users - esp. by "influencers" (see web-design blogs) pushing designers down a route of "clean and simple" ...
....competing to see how much design detail they can remove.....
.....without asking what users actually want.
(see User comments where "Comments" are allowed)

 

[nickdalzell1]

A lot of websites these days cheat the system and implement 'back button trapping' to keep users on a site against their will just to skew the stats their way as well. I stop going to sites that do that or use fake virus pop-ups to retain users. It's hostile in so many ways.

The web is a faster, much better place once you disable/blacklist Javascript.

 

[Akrapovic]

God, you explain why websites the way they are and the fact that they are built purely on results, and all you get are people who don't like flat buttons telling you hundreds of thousands of experts (including the largest multi-billion dollar companies in the world) are wrong, because here's an example of an airport layout.

Well. I'm sorry you don't like the answers. But if you want an answer to the original question on why websites are so awful - because that's what raises revenue (or contacts, or whatever metric you need for your business to be succesful). And this is in then verified with some advanced analytical software. You can still dislike it - but if it produces more sales or interactions then they don't care - it has served its purpose. That's the answer, that's the truth. If you disagree with it then fine - but then we're basically a Facebook group of mothers who think they're smarter than Doctors at that point.

 

[Akrapovic]

A lot of websites these days cheat the system and implement 'back button trapping' to keep users on a site against their will just to skew the stats their way as well. I stop going to sites that do that or use fake virus pop-ups to retain users. It's hostile in so many ways.

The web is a faster, much better place once you disable/blacklist Javascript.

Some browsers are going as far as overriding known JavaScript libraries which hijack the back button. It's a horrible practice that should not be happening.

 

[Tarian]

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.

I do ("scrolls straight to the bottom of a page to get an idea of what is on it, then scrolls back to the top.")
- when faced with a Hero or unclear Navigation

A) Because the first view (Hero Image / pithy one-line) tells me nothing.

B) Because the Navigation items (if visible) are too few or ambiguous.
(Once upon a time, Visitors could rely on a Contents Table down the left side - to get a good sense of what was available.)

C) I want a quick sense of how "easy" exploration will be.
Too much scrolling for too little info and I'll go elsewhere (unless I need to stay longer)

If I "need" to stay (and familiar with site) I want to go straight to the task - not scroll past obstacles.

"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."
That's a sweeping statement. Not sure what conclusions you can reach from this thread.

Noting your "caveat" about data ... I've already indicated how Google Analytics might be mis-read.
I've certainly seen designers claiming "studies" that support grey text - when mostly they do not.

"nobody else" ?
How often are Users asked what they "want" - as distinct from what they "do" - because they have little choice ?
(I must revisit those Design blog "Comments" where non-Designers complain bitterly about various design fads.)


"Mock up". Perhaps.
Unfortunately the Hoist Shed has re-designed its website - so I can no longer cite it.
On Page 17 of this thread are screen shots of the London Stock Exchange - before and after.
"Before" isn't perfect - colour scheme not distinctive ... but it's way better than the "after" - for reasons given there.

Here is a Share Price site that is better than the new Stock Exchange
https://www.lse.co.uk/SharePrice.asp?shareprice=PCTN&share=Picton-Prop
Again, not perfect -- but at least plenty of colour to aid navigation - and the Menu bar has:
a) plenty of Menu items (aiding Content discovery)
b) borders between each item.
c) Side Contents links (also aiding Content discovery)
d) Multi-coloured icons (instead of grey ****e) - with labels
e) Plenty of content within easy view.

 

[Tarian]

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:

View attachment 1696701

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.

How is this "flat" ?
A) There's more "3D" navigation than anywhere else I can think of.
B) There's lots of it. (heaven ! )

"Clean & simple" minimalist designers would scrap the lot !
"Too cluttered. Let's remove that fussy altimeter ..."

As someone hinted....
With processor power, graphics (games , movies) becoming ever more detailed and realistic... why, oh why have web-designers gone in the opposite direction ?

 

[Tarian]

Actually car interfaces were mostly flat UI design until around 2012.

Honda Ridgeline radio/climate control/instrument cluster circa 2006:

View attachment 1696853

View attachment 1696854

What was the excuse back in 2006? Cars were still 3D objects and all

Surely the "excuse" for those 2006 displays was that they were still primitive LCD ?
(Consider those numbers constructed from 10 fragments.)

Car-makers had yet to install "proper" screens.

And as for that radio .... I'd much prefer those real, raised, tactile buttons to touch screen vaguery.

 

[Tarian]

God, you explain why websites the way they are and the fact that they are built purely on results, and all you get are people who don't like flat buttons telling you hundreds of thousands of experts (including the largest multi-billion dollar companies in the world) are wrong, because here's an example of an airport layout.

Well. I'm sorry you don't like the answers. But if you want an answer to the original question on why websites are so awful - because that's what raises revenue (or contacts, or whatever metric you need for your business to be succesful). And this is in then verified with some advanced analytical software. You can still dislike it - but if it produces more sales or interactions then they don't care - it has served its purpose. That's the answer, that's the truth. If you disagree with it then fine - but then we're basically a Facebook group of mothers who think they're smarter than Doctors at that point.

Just because people are forced to act in a certain way (scroll a website) doesn't mean that they "want" to.

I can imagine a multi-million company being persuaded by designers that they can "channel" Visitors. (On Web-design blogs I've seen a word other than "channelled .. but it means "steered". Maybe "funnelled" ?).

Design blogs use this desire by billion dollar companies to "steer" Vistors as justification for reducing links, reducing content.

Tracking may record apparent success in steering Visitors.
Can it track "approval / disapproval / satisfaction" ???

 

[MBAir2010]

I recently (July) was “laid off“ from a web design company because “google something program“ found 2 mundane grammatical errors in a 500 plus word content describing the benefits of outdoor lighting for suburban homes in Connecticut. I was replaced by an outsourced web content firm in the Philippines were their incoherent rubbish is transformed by this google program, then published.
the outdoor lighting landscaping site has great search analytics, but no phone calls!
ahh teh internets of 2020!

 

[nickdalzell1]

How is this "flat" ?
A) There's more "3D" navigation than anywhere else I can think of.
B) There's lots of it. (heaven ! )

"Clean & simple" minimalist designers would scrap the lot !
"Too cluttered. Let's remove that fussy altimeter ..."

Oh really? I don't see the 3D or skeuo, but perhaps I'm just not seeing it?

I used to be involved in aviation, and I greatly preferred actual instruments over this digital nightmare they'e going towards today.

Now THIS is an instrument panel:

Unfortunately, 'dumbing everything down' seems to be the fashion for reasons unknown.

 

[Tozovac]

Well. I'm sorry you don't like the answers. But if you want an answer to the original question on why websites are so awful - because that's what raises revenue (or contacts, or whatever metric you need for your business to be succesful). And this is in then verified with some advanced analytical software.

I don’t buy that as the main or only motivation and never will. I believe the significant thing that got us here was Jony Ive’s expressing his minimalist preferences and and narrowly selfish vision and desire to show Scott Forstall how things *should* be around 2012 when Jony gained power in the Apple software/interface works and was inspired by Microsoft’s metro design language, which I fully believe, ever so ironically, was itself inspired by need to differentiate itself from Apple’s then class-leading, super intuitive and beautifully articulated interface design. And since the world follows everything Apple does, because it must be the right way, it bought in from there.

Show me one person who thinks Apple’s simplified, re-designed refurbished store page leads to more sales and easier navigation, and I’ll eat my hat. The prior format, which was more list-oriented and permitted better differentiation amongst the various items for sale, was infinitely more helpful and enticing to make a purchase decision. Now, you can tell very little differentiation from each offering without first clicking down into each. Hard drive size? Memory? Click down, take notes or utilize your hopefully good memory, then hit the back button and look at the next offering. And the next. And the next.

Same for Apple’s user/community bulletin board which doesn’t even involve direct sales. Much less easy to get useful information on the same amount of screen space. I’m picking mostly on Apple here, but they deserve quite a bit of grief about those two things that are representative of what’s wrong out there – too much less intuitive than before, too much more work required now to do what previously was easier to perform.

 

[Akrapovic]

Just because people are forced to act in a certain way (scroll a website) doesn't mean that they "want" to.

I can imagine a multi-million company being persuaded by designers that they can "channel" Visitors. (On Web-design blogs I've seen a word other than "channelled .. but it means "steered". Maybe "funnelled" ?).

Design blogs use this desire by billion dollar companies to "steer" Vistors as justification for reducing links, reducing content.

Tracking may record apparent success in steering Visitors.
Can it track "approval / disapproval / satisfaction" ???

Ok I'll say it again -

I'm not saying you want to act in this way. I'm saying that when sites are designed like this, you get better results. It will generate more sales, or more ad clicks, or more comments, or more contact forms filled out. And to be completely blunt - companies don't care about you. They care about getting sales/clicks/engagement. If it goes up, despite you being annoyed, they're happy.

That's it. If you boil it right down to "why is the site like this?", it's because when they tried it, it generated better results. If it generated worse results, they'd roll back - which does happen.

In terms of the analytics data, we've already been through this, yes. We've gone from not believing they are tracking you, to suddenly accepting they are tracking you, but questioning their abilities. It's amazing how quickly people here go from "X doesn't exist" to "I'm an expert in X". Yes, it can generally tell disapproval and disatisfaction with a site from scroll patterns and click rates etc. A very obvious example is closing a YouTube video when an ad comes on. YouTube knows how many close it and when, and adjusts the positions of the ads to get maximum number of people viewing them.

 

[Akrapovic]

I don’t buy that as the main or only motivation and never will. I believe what got us here was Jony Ive’s expressing his minimalist preferences and and narrowly selfish vision and desire to show Scott Forstall how things *should* be around 2012 when Jony gained power in the Apple software/interface works and was inspired by Microsoft’s metro design language, which I fully believe, ever so ironically, was it self inspired by need to differentiate itself from apples then class-leading, super intuitive and beautifully articulated interface design. And since the world follows everything Apple does, because it must be the right way, it brought in from there.

Show me one person who thinks Apple’s simplified, re-designed refurbished store page leads to more sales and easier navigation, and I’ll eat my hat. The prior format, which was more list-oriented and permitted better differentiation amongst the various items for sale, was infinitely more helpful and enticing to make a purchase decision. Now, you can tell very little differentiation from each offering without first clicking down into each. Hard drive size? Memory? Click down, take notes or utilize your hopefully good memory, then hit the back button and look at the next offering. And the next. And the next.

Same for Apple’s user/community bulletin board which doesn’t even involve direct sales. Much less easy to get useful information on the same amount of screen space. I’m picking mostly on Apple here, but they deserve quite a bit of grief about those two things that are representative of what’s wrong out there – too much less intuitive than before, too much more work required now to do what previously was easier to perform.

You're right. Apple sacrificed sales to please Jony Ives web design preferences. It's a giant conspiracy - all companies are attempting to make less sales by building websites which perform worse.

Your opening line summed it up. You don't buy it and you never will. In other words, no matter how many people try and explain things to you, you will not budge. That is your own words. So you aren't interested in why things are.

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion, but you don't really want answers to your questions. You just want everyone to tell you that you're right. But sorry, you are not. You may like the old sites, and I 100% respect that (and the Facebook timeline is the perfect analogy for the situation - nobody likes the new one, but it keeps people on the site more), but it doesn't produce better results.

 

[Tozovac]

Just because people are forced to act in a certain way (scroll a website) doesn't mean that they "want" to.

I can imagine a multi-million company being persuaded by designers that they can "channel" Visitors. (On Web-design blogs I've seen a word other than "channelled .. but it means "steered". Maybe "funnelled" ?).

Design blogs use this desire by billion dollar companies to "steer" Vistors as justification for reducing links, reducing content.

Tracking may record apparent success in steering Visitors.
Can it track "approval / disapproval / satisfaction" ???

Before around 2012, the only websites I would see that seemed to scroll on noticeably forever were infomercial type websites I was led to often unintentionally that were selling something I wasn’t necessarily looking for. Methods on how to meet women, invest in stocks, completely redo your golf game, etc. I was always left feeling that they used 10,000 words to say what they could have said in 100, to try to keep me there and keep looking until I gave in and purchased something. Instead it only annoyed me and felt like a waste of my time, ultimately resulting in me leaving and not even wanting to learn more and be enticed to purchase something. Honest to God truth. Now, this is the norm and no more liked now vs. then.

 

[Tozovac]

You're right. Apple sacrificed sales to please Jony Ives web design preferences. It's a giant conspiracy - all companies are attempting to make less sales by building websites which perform worse.

Your opening line summed it up. You don't buy it and you never will. In other words, no matter how many people try and explain things to you, you will not budge. That is your own words. So you aren't interested in why things are.

You're absolutely entitled to your opinion, but you don't really want answers to your questions. You just want everyone to tell you that you're right. But sorry, you are not. You may like the old sites, and I 100% respect that (and the Facebook timeline is the perfect analogy for the situation - nobody likes the new one, but it keeps people on the site more), but it doesn't produce better results.

Interesting, I have answers and you have answers. I’m wrong for feeling mine are correct and not believing yours. Is that not the case?

 

[Tozovac]

You may like the old sites, and I 100% respect that (and the Facebook timeline is the perfect analogy for the situation - nobody likes the new one, but it keeps people on the site more), but it doesn't produce better results.

It’s not that I like the old sites, I like certain prior ways that were much more efficient and got the job done quicker and with less clicks and less hunting around. I’m not alone.

 

[Akrapovic]

Interesting, I have answers and you have answers. I’m wrong for feeling mine are correct and not believing yours. Is that not the case?

Your answer is that all the companies around the world are throwing away free money because Jony Ive decided that things had to be flat.

My answer is that companies don't care how you feel if their product funnels you into producing better results for them.

You believe what you want man. But either way, it does appear we have an answer for the original question of "Why is web design so awful today?".

 

[Akrapovic]

It is astonishing how quickly people in this thread learn entire new industries. We've gone from "They aren't tracking you" to "they can't know this from the tracking" in record pace. How do you go from not believing something exists, to being enough of an expert in it to declare facts in the space of a day? Just remarkable. I wish everyone in the world learnt new skills at this pace. I'd be an Astronaut by lunch time tomorrow, and a brain surgeon by Monday.