[sameji]

I have to disagree. In an absolute sense you are correct, however you're missing the relative benefit of each point.

#2.1: Yes, this would be an issue if overused, especially in paragraph lengths of text. However, inconsistent font sizes are worse.

#4: Why are you worried about white-space? If you have space, you can use it. If you run out, then you have to start rationing and using other visual tools. Borders have their place, but white-space should be preferred as the most neutral and inobtrusive strategy.

#4.3: So create a responsive layout for mobile that uses more borders where necessary.

#7: This is a major (and valid) criticism of flat UX, but slightly adjacent to the point in the article. The article says you don't need a background colour for every button, which is good advice.

[Nadya]

I actually just got done running an A/B analytics test on a large website (>100k viewers/day). Statistics say you're right, least about the buttons. ;)

The client wanted a "button" without a background color because it looked bad to have two buttons side by side. My company told them that was a bad idea based on data, so we added tracking to their site and A/B tested their home page. Button with a background color had 40% more conversions than the "button" they wanted without the background color.

Several pieces of the advice given on that article are proven to be bad ideas for most websites if you track your users. What "feels" right and what is right are often two different things.

If you're ever making a change because you think it will perform better you better be tracking the statistics. Often times you'll find out you were wrong. Another, similar, example is that a client had a button they wanted to "draw attention to" so wanted to inverse the :hover background color with the normal background color so that it would stand out from other buttons. It looked different - but hurt engagement because it no longer looked like every other button on the site.

E:

This was meant to be a response to cpburns2009, the parent of the comment I responded to. Thanks to metalliqaz for pointing that out.

[hammock]

>The client wanted a "button" without a background color because it looked bad to have two buttons side by side. My company told them that was a bad idea based on data, so we added tracking to their site and A/B tested their home page. Button with a background color had 40% more conversions than the "button" they wanted without the background color.

Of course it did, it looked more like a button! But at what cost? It sounds like this button was not the primary action. So how many clicks were lost from the primary action - how much usability was lost from the page?

[Nadya]

It was a primary button on the hero image in the standard "Header/Subheader/Call to Action" format. It was basically the only thing they wanted users to interact with.

>Of course it did, it looked more like a button!

And buttons without the look of a button are just called links. Links without visual distinction may as well be invisible. Like the infamous "black text link with no underline in the body of a paragraph of black text".

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/GQdeBO

[madeofpalk]

Designing is just like coding. You've got to be pragmatic about knowing when and where to use the tools in your belt.

You might have your little favourite programming trick, but a good programmer will know when and where to use it - you don't want to use a map function everywhere.

Note that the article's point about buttons isn't prescriptive and doesn't say "always do buttons like this". Instead, it talks about a common specific use case and talks about how you can improve the situation. It's up to you to take that information inboard and judge where to use it. It sounds like the specific example you cited was a good time to not follow this approach.

[Nadya]

It's form over function and I'd be shocked if anyone ever shares statistics where making the button more difficult to see increased user interaction with it or made it easier for users to do other tasks by "getting the button out of the way".

The only time I'd use a 'button' without a background color is something I don't actually want the user to use. For example, a 'delete' option on their profile or the 'unsubscribe' link in a newsletter.

But I'm not user hostile so I'd still make those options easy to find for users who wish to use them instead of trying to pad my "user retention rate" or whatever numbers the marketers are trying to make look good.

[madeofpalk]

> The only time I'd use a 'button' without a background color is something I don't actually want the user to use.

Yes! You've got it! That's exactly what the article says!

And that's what I'm saying - good design is learning these tricks and identifying when and where to use them. It's not form over function, but how the form influences the function.

[hammock]

>It was basically the only thing they wanted users to interact with.

Then why did they put another button side-by-side of it?

[Nadya]

My bad, I misread and thought you had referenced my first example (button/no background) but you had referenced the button/button example.

The button/button was for a search. They wanted to draw attention to the 2nd button that sorted the results alphabetically. Why wasn't the alphabetical sort the default? Well... doctors are all very bothered about who gets shown above who - so the list of doctors has to be sorted randomly to please the doctors. The hospital doesn't want to piss off the doctors but also wanted to make it easier for users to search. They wanted to draw attention to the button that would sort the list alphabetically by changing the color of the button to stand out more.

I'm positive doctor names would look like Yellowbook pages back in the day with "AAAble AAApplebottoms" just so they could be the first shown. You'd think users being able to find their doctor would take priority over the order the doctors are shown in, but apparently not.

I work in Healthcare. The only thing that irritates doctors more than listing them alphabetically is forgetting one of their various titles. Dropping the "MD" after their name is a cardinal sin.

[wuliwong]

"Primary actions should be obvious. Solid, high contrast background colors work great here."

If you made the primary action a button without a background than you did not do what was suggested in this article.

[metalliqaz]

Replied to the wrong comment?

[Nadya]

Yes, this was meant to be a response to cpburns2009, woops. Was in a rush and originally posted it as a parent level comment, deleted, then reposted under what I thought was the right thread. Looks like I still need more coffee.

[cpburns2009]

> Yes, this would be an issue if overused, especially in paragraph lengths of text. However, inconsistent font sizes are worse.

I should have clarified this better. I dislike low contrast text because it makes it hard to read which is popular with the flat UI trends. Opacity isn't used so much from my experience, but light grey text on white is which has the same effect. I agree that inconsistent font sizes are bad too.

> Borders have their place, but white-space should be preferred as the most neutral and inobtrusive strategy.

In the example from the article I think the bordered version is much more concise and clearly delimits the search box and list. White-space seems to be used too carelessly in an attempt to avoid any clearly defined borders.

> The article says you don't need a background colour for every button, which is good advice.

You don't need to give every button a colorful background. But each button should have at least a border or background to distinguish it from standard text. The background can be just a boring grey like the classic Windows dialog buttons.

[kemitche]

I disagree on #4. For me at least, a page with no borders and just whitespace looks like a jumble of elements. Not that everything should have a border, but plenty of websites could go for a couple more lines.