this 10000%. Been in that position a few times and more often than not devs/designers want to do a better job than what ends up being finalized, but have to play ball.
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Why is website design so awful today, generally?
- Thread starter Tozovac
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this 10000%. Been in that position a few times and more often than not devs/designers want to do a better job than what ends up being finalized, but have to play ball.
Nice, and interesting. I read this as: it's realized at times that a substandard website interface is being created but the developer's hands may be tied.
To any developer reading this, I'd love to suggest trying what professional sound producer/engineers I know do, who invite relatives and friends (where shareable) to listen to in-process mixes on different speakers from tiny desktop speakers to phone speakers to car/home stereos in order to get feedback from different users using different platforms. Perhaps inept management who are unable to listen and accept the developer's input about the bigger picture can be coerced to seek input from their relatives & friends who could try an in-process site on different devices. Potentailly get the management to communicate your message themselves for you rather than risk insulting the emperor wearing no clothes...
That already happens during the development process, testing in different browsers and devices, sometimes A/B testing is done with people, who are invited to test the app/website/whatever. But that depends on, whether there's a budget for that.
I wasn't talking about external A/B testing (when funding exists) or internal A/B testing during development. I jokingly but yet literally meant that, for instances where a developer recognizes a poor app/site/program interface exists but the management won't listen (due to reasons you and @theluggage cited above, and with or without any meaningful A/B testing), then encourage the customer/management to solicit input from their family or close friends from whom they may receive unbiased input and to whom they may actually listen.
I worked for Ford Motor Co for 9 years and after sitting thru several expensive voice-of-the-customer sessions, I grew pretty convinced that it was a pretty rare feat to get useful insight from a paid voice presented with a new thing and asked to provide feedback that stands the test of time after a quick intro and relatively short get-familiar-with period. And like you said, sometimes those in charge will do what they want and not what you think, for whatever reason.
Comments from you and @theluggage strengthen my beliefs that certain key Apple design & marketing management types may very well be pulling versions of what you said above...unable to look beyond certain short-sighted personal priorities and/or unwilling to admit they may not understand what's best for the real-world customer nor listen to external inputs.
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I should have titled this thread "awful website, apps, iOS, and OS design." Just noticed CNET's redesigned app on my iPad, and it's even worse than before. Lots of white space lots of wasted space. Just awful. It's specifically designed for iPad, so no need to pretend to need to accommodate different screen sizes. Just awful...
Really need all that artwork space and then scroll scroll scroll instead of showing the various options on one screen?
At least the icon is re-designed "updated" to be nice and flat and has incorporated a gradient just like every other lemming-designed app icon needs to be.
Really need all that artwork space and then scroll scroll scroll instead of showing the various options on one screen?
At least the icon is re-designed "updated" to be nice and flat and has incorporated a gradient just like every other lemming-designed app icon needs to be.
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Haha f*cking hell... I was curious and have just looked up the update description on the App Store:
CLEAN.
SIMPLE.
Yep, recipe for disaster.
It's so terribly sad that it becomes laughable in some way.
Haha f*cking hell... I was curious and have just looked up the update description on the App Store:
CLEAN.
SIMPLE.
Yep, recipe for disaster.
It's so terribly sad that it becomes laughable in some way.
For a laugh, go to the App Store and check out all the one-star ratings for this app update.
Honestly, for the life of me I can't guess why such bad designs are coming out from probably a bunch of good designers. You know what most websites and apps and operating systems look like nowadays? Like the page you get when you type an incorrect or dead website address and you're sent to a whitish, washed-out looking page (a 404 page). Back before around 2013 and iOS 7, these white, space wasting, light-colored-text pages were meant to indicate you were not where you wanted to be. Now, this is the norm.
When will this go away?
Because that's obsolete? Mobile websites were terrible and desktop ones were also terrible. They looked so dated before responsive design really took over.
My only issue with the web is when it tries to do too much, with slow crappy picture in picture autoplay videos and the like. Some websites are true memory hogs. No website should ever use more than ~200MB, but it happens all the time now.
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You're annoyed by scrolling too much on the desktop but have no problem with pinching and zooming to read anything on mobile? Truly odd.
I for one don't miss the dark days of zoomed out desktop sites on mobile.
Question - In your mind, is this so-called Responsive Design the only solution to making a website look less dated?
I'd agree with you. There is way too much trying to make something do too much now to the point that some things are losing their easy usability in favor of trying for too much. Like expecting an iPhone to do so much that things like the text input window in Messages & Facebook for instance are cluttered with icons for photos, movies, gifs, emoticons, fireworks, art, etc. Or Apple trying to convince people that the iPad is equipped enough to replace a laptop. An iPad will never ever fully replace a laptop w/o a mouse to hover as an input device, vs. touch.
Yes that's correct, and shouldn't be called the least bit odd when you consider that there are pros/cons to each (not just pros for one and cons for each) as well as how large phones are getting, let alone ipads, to the point that these so-called responsive designs look as out of place and inefficient on a larger mobile screen as they do on a laptop/desktop. Much of my thoughts are based on preferring being able to see all or most that I need to see to make major decisions to be on one screen and then zoom in or scroll from there, rather than have to always swipe up & down then back up again to get a sense of what's available on a page since responsive designers remain blindly obedient to an arbitrary "design method du jour" and use 4 square inches to display what should take 1/5 the space.
Would you be OK if your fridge had a 3 foot tall opening and you had to scroll up & down most each and every time you accessed it just to see everything, or do you prefer a full-length door if given the option? Or if your car had doors on only one side? That's what this so called Responsive design feels to me even on a small mobile device it's supposedly optimized for and especially on a large desk/laptop screen.
Being that I view most every site on both a desk/laptop & mobile, once I have a feel for a site, zooming/moving on a large iphone is much better than a responsive design where only 2 or 3 useful things are presented at once on the screen.
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Who exactly is trying to kill the desktop? It's users... Sorry.
It's kind of sad how bitter some people are here about how popular mobile is. News flash: the average user never enjoyed using a desktop computer or an 8 pound laptop. Smartphones and tablets on the other hand? People love them in a way they never loved using a Windows box.
Ha ha, you think saying something like that makes it true?
And when was the last 8 lb laptop, 1998?
You really feel it when you try loading a site on a PowerPC Mac. I just want my websites to be simple and light-weight.
I am. For good reason too.
Smartphones are a terrible idea.
So is the cancer that is social media.
That contradicts Apple's advertising claims for the past 30 years, in a way, but I find it belivable.
But why should operating a computer be enjoyable at all, as opposed to efficient, comfortable and not getting in the way of actual work (whops, sorry, Windows 8, you're out)?
You make it sound as if it were okay to love your phone.
Or as if that was "love" instead of built-in addictivity kicking in.
Or as if that addictivity ought to be replicated everywhere else, including the website for the NHS.
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No offense, but I must confess your comment slightly angers me.
Since when a web page - one that is not advertising - is under an obligation to look fresh and trendy (as opposed to "dated")?
I've never heard any such complaint about books and newspapers, phone books and take away menus, surely books typeset in 1920 are still perfectly usable today and no-one complains that black text on white paper looks "dated".
And since when "obsolete" means "not trendy"?
"Obsolete" used to mean "we have more efficient technology for that", but I don't think 10 megs of CSS and movies and Flash are more efficient technology to disseminate a page of text and some hyperlinks.
For that matter, I disagree altogether with the notion that a website - again, not an advertising website - must look like something at all.
If you ask me, I'd strip all CSS and let the user's browser render it so that it blends with the rest of the on-screen interface (which by the way would benefit Mac users more than everyone else).
If you ask me, websites should look - or rather, non-look - sort of like this.
The idea that the Web is about design rather than hypertext is a terrible one, if you ask me, and the hundred-millionth way in which advertising and branding bullcrap has seeped into our daily life.
Just last month our township spent a few hundred thousand bucks in taxpayer money to make a new logo for the municipality. A new logo. For the municipality. As if it were a box of cereal.
The idea that websites that are not trying to sell you something should look "fresh" irks me in a similar way.
P.S. You might ask what I'd like to do about websites that are advertising, then. Simple: nuke them into orbit. Hey, a man can dream.
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Here here. I've never felt seeing a full-screen HD animation of a woman getting coffee in a café underneath some faint white-colored text aided my use of the PayPal site one iota. Though it was probably a fun week or month for the development team, making their job more interesting for a while.
Users like @thingstoponder are certainly allowed their preferences, as are you @villicodelirant and myself. But it's a damn shame that we users are forced to accept one and only one style of UI/website/app that's nowadays plagued with a certain minimalistic and imagined-improvement gotta-be-fresh mindset, resulting in sites/apps/UIs that often seem less easy, less fun, and less attractive than just a few years ago. How odd is it that something that's labor-intensive, expensive, & slow to produce like automobiles come in thousands of styles & colors while websites/apps/UI's that are "easier" to change & turnaround, by comparison, come in such a limited one-size-must-fit-all package nowadays? It's like the days of the Model T where users could have any color as long as it's black, and then each and every competitor similarly produced only black. Hell, even windows 7 permitted one to very easily change the UI skin to mimic windows xp for those who recognized how useless and often distracting the aero/translucent Ui was.
Ha ha, not sure I buy into that, but you are certainly allowed your opinion!
I agree efforts & $ like that are often sad & unnecessary. Look at the change in Starbucks' logo over time. It's pretty minimalistic now, and for sure cost $$$ to strip away all that detail. So it's fresh as compared to 15 years ago. Is it better? Does it sell more coffee? Think customers enjoy it more? But it did give a design/management/marketing team a fun few months I'm sure. If Jony Ive and today's Apple designers redesigned it, we'd probably see a white borderless coffee cup on a white circle, with grey coffee inside. Invigorating, and fresh. Less distracting, easier to get consumers to buy things quicker, etc.
For the record, I am on your side, in terms of feeling like modern web design is obnoxious and disorganized. But I wanted to point out that Starbucks' logo was more likely "simplified" to save money on ink. Surely printing logos on billions of paper products would benefit from going from a 2 tone logo design to a single color. But then, I'm of the opinion that nearly every decision companies (especially giant monoliths) make is guided by cost-cutting and profit-maximization (which unfortunately much of the world seems to think is acceptable).
If I knew for a fact that ink savings was a prime reason, and they realized significant savings, then I could stand behind that. However since "pixel conservation" is preetttttty unlikely, I stand behind my critique that today's flat-design monochromatic too-spaced-out too-white webdesign of today is just a dumb fad with more cons than pros for various users. Designers/marketers constantly need "something new" and too frighteningly often, "new" is accomplished by stripping down details like some design school contest to see who can do the most with the least. This "give something new by giving less" strategy is pervasive in the worlds of auto design, web/mobile UI design, logo "upgrades," etc. How can so few not realize how unsustainable a strategy it is to keep taking things away... Hopefully we’re not too far away from some influential designer “discovering” the "next big thing" and return to tasteful, thoughtful detail-rich designs/UI's that don't look like a half-talented 8th grader could create with MS Paint.
Here's another website I stumbled upon yesterday that was just a nuisance to review. Up and down and up and down...trying to get a complete picture of what’s being offered to me here, but what was that detail I saw up above now that I'm reading something down below? Scroll up up up...
http://www.jbl.com/link.html
Too much wasted white space, too inefficient a layout, just a fad that designers feel the need to stick with because everyone else is doing it. Looking forward to this fad passing.
It's just completely baffling to me that what's considered the "state-of-the-art" and "best we can do" for web/app design within today's ultra-high-resolution billion-color large-screen-mobile-device offerings is monochromatic simplistic low-contrast space-wasting flat-design that's supposedly catered to the mobile experience, desktop/laptop user experience be damned.
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From my professional experience in digital these are the simple reasons why web sites fail:
- Incompetence from Product Managers who use cognitive biases and build safe ala '09 designs.
- C-Level management who over design the product featureset with bloated stuff no user would ever use.
- Teams disregarding UX input.
- Businesses who don't actually speak with users/customer for 1) what they want to achieve on the site 2) what they actually are doing on the site.
- Doing design on the cheap and putting either too junior designers in the the mix OR people who have never delivered a digital experience to design.
- Not understanding concurrency and interstitial on a digital experience, this means that the design when delivered is incomplete.
- Investing too much in the fast to market approach, planning and designing takes longer than delivery.
- Designing in silos.
- No doing any user testing post launch, or improving the site post launch.
- Not understanding the difference between data and customer insights.
- Going full stack developers for the entire build (I cringe every time a company says "We don't need a specialist frontend and backend, we'll go full stack because it's cheaper).
- Businesses and management not getting the basic of Adaptive Design vs. Responsive Design and where/how to use it.
- Doing it on the cheap.
- Not respecting the simple fact, if you work at the company you are not a user or customer.
- Using Agile as a silver bullet.
- Using BAU as an innovations initiative.
- Non designers designing.
- Using crowdsourcing to get cheap/fast designs.
Thanks. That was an interesting post about what can make websites fail. Are all those bullet points general "failure points" that would also apply for back in the "good old days" when websites weren't all such lemming copies of each other? Back when websites didn't seem to all be following certain faddish trends in parallel that I complain about in this thread? The basis of my original post is how I feel that too many websites today utilize certain UI/layouts that weren't so pervasive just a few years ago, and which now have resulted in (to me) websites (and apps, really) that feel so very unintuitive, cumbersome to use, and just too uncreatively similar to each other than just 4-5 years ago. Hero images, full-page hi-res videos, functions buried/hidden behind hamburgers/ellipses and clicks/clicks/clicks and scrolling/scrolling/scrolling, too much obligatory use of light blue & white flat design, page layouts that are way, way, way too vertical and with too much wasted space. Gone are the days a user can get a good sense of a website's offerings from the initial page load. Gone are the days that a user can click once in an actual search box up top. Now you have to often first click the hamburger or a magnifying glass icon, after which the search window finally opens, after which you have to click yet again in the search window to start typing. Gone are the days that grey font meant "unavailable." Now light grey font is actionable. Stupid stupid stupid fads.
The bullet point I quoted above caught my attention of a very likely reason why some sites (and ESPECIALLY iOS apps) are confusing -- seems the only way to intuitively navigate an app or website is to have been the designer who knows all the right paths to follow. I don't recognize many of the other terms/acronyms. Do any apply to my personal critiques above?
Also do you know where the UI elements originated where an underline is used to signal a chosen option? I'd tend to guess it came from Google's material design.
If I see Amazon ever switch over to an all-blue/white flat interface with round images/buttons in favor of square/rectangular arrangements, I'm moving Canada!!
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https://www.essential.com/
Here’s a website that was just godawfully painful to navigate, I got frustrated and popped out of it before figuring out what they were offering. Too tricky, too crafty for its own good.
IMHO a truly good website should prioritize effective communication for ~80% of its focus and then allocate ~20% of its focus for the surprise & delight "unique entertainment value," not the other way around. This particular website is laid out more trick/unique than most any other website I've come across, and my guess is only those involved in its development can effectively navigate it without first devoting several minutes to figuring out the site navigation first before even starting to internalize the message/content.
Anyone agree, disagree?
Here’s a website that was just godawfully painful to navigate, I got frustrated and popped out of it before figuring out what they were offering. Too tricky, too crafty for its own good.
IMHO a truly good website should prioritize effective communication for ~80% of its focus and then allocate ~20% of its focus for the surprise & delight "unique entertainment value," not the other way around. This particular website is laid out more trick/unique than most any other website I've come across, and my guess is only those involved in its development can effectively navigate it without first devoting several minutes to figuring out the site navigation first before even starting to internalize the message/content.
Anyone agree, disagree?
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It's a sad day...looks like Amazon is slowly poisoning itself to the Apple-arrowhead UI & blue/white theme. UGH...besides Amazon no longer looking like Amazon but instead looking like Ebay or any other site that's lemmingly-copying Apple's iOS/OS UI aesthetic, it takes 3 clicks to get to select the print size while it used to take just 1.
Why is this considered to be good web design by some pretty smart (maybe not so smart) people?
Step 1 to select print size/cost: arrow to the right for "Select Options" (right side of screen shot) and click once:
![Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.09 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.09 PM.png")
Step 2: Opportunity to select options is presented, but you still have to click a 2nd time below on the down arrowhead.
![Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.31 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.31 PM.png")
Step 3 click a third time on the print size you want.
![Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.40 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 8.07.40 PM.png")
Why is this considered to be good web design by some pretty smart (maybe not so smart) people?
Step 1 to select print size/cost: arrow to the right for "Select Options" (right side of screen shot) and click once:
Step 2: Opportunity to select options is presented, but you still have to click a 2nd time below on the down arrowhead.
Step 3 click a third time on the print size you want.
From a technical perspective, it's because Front End Developers who used to be responsible for only the UI of a website are now server-side javascript developers, or as we called them 10 years ago "back end programmers." When I started doing development in the early 00s, good Front End Developers were from design backgrounds and had little interest in coding, they were visual people. But over the last 5 years javascript has taken over to such an extent that you will struggle to find a design-focused Front End Developer in 2017, they are all programmers. IMO this is why websites now all look the same, Front End Developers are too busy doing server-side code like NodeJS rather than doing what they used to do, UI.
Thanks for the responses - I *think* I understand where you're coming from @eddjedi, but wonder whether your comments apply to some pretty large companies which I'd *think* would have deep enough pockets to apply appropriate web-design resources? I guess I should ask: Do you think sites like paypal, skype, dropbox, aetna.com, etc. websites are "awful" like I do?
If so, are your reasons given above possibly why they all look alike from 10 feet... Why they have the large hero image that *maybe* looked interesting the very first time but quickly turns into a hurdle preventing being able to quickly & efficiently access usable content on a website on a mobile-prioritized layout that's awfully inefficient on desk/laptops to where it's no longer possible to "get" what a site is about upon first load w/o having to scroll like mad... But mostly: is it why all the the light-blue, medium-blue, grey, and white-colored flat-deisgn layouts exist that are unnecessarily plagued with Apple iOS UI elements (see my post #121 above)...iOS UI elements which even themselves I consider to be sub-standard (i.e., awful) compared to the better UI elements that used to exist in iOS before Jony Ive unnecessarily reinvented things with iOS7...
I just remain curious why it seems even the "smart" and "appropriate" designers of large-company sites lemmingly employ the same awful aspects mentioned above that are now turning into silly cliches!
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It applies to companies of all sizes. They all now use frameworks like Bootstrap and React which to an extent dictate the UI (especially Bootstrap) and therefore websites all look and behave the same. Developers these days see design as a hindrance rather than an art form (sorry to sound pretentious but I used to take real pride in my web design.)