Comments on: Web design is dead

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:34:36 +0000

I'm going to start by putting a big picture of Lil' Wayne in my sidebar.

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:32:35 +0000

Agree that the redesigns don't work for Craigslist. It's like once a community hits critical mass it doesn't matter how ugly the UI is because the community itself *is* the UI.

By: Jason Terhorst

Jason Terhorst — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:52:04 +0000

The Craigslist article was written by a reporter. For a magazine.

Magazine reporters don't understand usability.
Magazine reporters don't understand web development.
Magazine reporters are easily attracted to shiny, flashy things with little or no substance, rather than usability or long term development or maintenance.

Don't listen to a magazine reporter to when/how to do a web redesign. Wisdom is careful reiteration and gradual changes - keep the thing up and running, and focus on making it easier for *users*, not to impress a reporter.

By: Eddie James

Eddie James — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:32:11 +0000

I read the Wired article when it first came out and thought the redesigns didn't really make Craigslist better. Instead the features and visuals they added made Craigslist more like other sites. And a prettier, more similar-to-other-popular-websites Craigslist doesn't make it more useful to me as a user.

As for Web design being dead. I think even "ugly" sites are designed; it's the visual design that becomes less important. So, I'd say "Visual design on the web is dead", but that feels wrong too.

Visual design is still important, but functionality and usefulness have emerged as by far the most important aspects of design on the web.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:08:43 +0000

Great post. So how are you going to ugly up UXHero?