[justjimmy]

Just wanted to give my 2 cents:

What you are doing is really dangerous. "In an effort to refine my design skills, I’ve decided each week or so to redesign the landing page of a YC company I dig and whose website I don’t feel so similarly about."

Doing a facelift on just the landing page, or rearranging elements around a page is not design. It's a subset of design. What's worse, is that these redesigns you offer gives zero context, no interaction, no brief, no reasoning. It's purely visual reformatting. Every placement of content, layout has a reason – you need to provide those in order for us, the reader, to understand your thought process and why you did the things you did.

I'd suggest taking it a step further to give more 'meat' to your posts. Use services like Invisionapp to create clickable hotspots to allow users to explore the redesigned site. Offer your thoughts as you go through the process.

A simple image with a few words on the product and why it's awesome doesn't really tell us anything about your process.

(Design is about solving problems – you also need to identify what is wrong with the original design, then offer your solution and explain why they are better)

[pbreit]

Calling this effort "really dangerous" is a tad hysterical. The current Pebble page is OK, not great. This redesign is an improvement. While it would be nice to hear more about the thought process, etc, t's not always necessary to detail out what can be inferred from observation.

[aaronblohowiak]

tip: the word "hysterical" is misogynist, having its origin in proto-psychology blaming being overly emotional on disturbance of the womb. i assume you didn't know this when you used it. now you know! 'melodramatic' would work just as well.

[smanek]

tip: the original meaning of a word doesn't necessarily have any relation to it's current meaning. I assume you didn't know about the etymological fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy) when you used it. Now you know!

Seriously, stop being overly PC. You're just being annoying.

[scott_s]

"Hysterical" is one of those words that the original meaning has been completely replaced by common usage. I think we can all safely use it without being misogynists. Similarly, I feel safe using the word "idiot" without fear that listeners will assume I am insulting people with mental retardation.

[replicatorblog]

This is a popular sentiment among designers, but it is equally dangerous. The flash, sizzle, and aesthetics are a HUGE part of design. People make judgements in fractions of seconds, well before they have a chance to experience interactions or any of the deeper level design issues.

I've seen three of these redo's on HackerNews and each time the redesign is aesthetically much nicer. Sure there are some things that could be better if he understood the market or product context at a deeper level, but each service looked more professional/desirable.

I manage a team of designers and these would be great deliverables if the goal was to help establish a style guide for a brand. After this round, I would have a PM and a marketer work with the designer to optimize flow/content, but this is exactly what I'd expect from a visual designer.

[va_coder]

This whole thread is getting really dangerous

[aaronblohowiak]

managing "flow" post-hoc visual design is a ux nightmare.

[jenius]

Justifying design decisions is often extremely difficult. Although there is a science buried deep behind design decisions, unlike programming, design decisions are often very subjective and opinion-based in a debate, unless you have done A/B tests extensively before said debate. Most of the time, a designer will do something because 'it looks better' or 'it feels right', and redesign something because 'it looks bad'.

I can see what you are saying here, but at the same time you are proposing something very difficult for this designer. In my past, whenever I have been in a debate over design decisions, there is no objective criticism involved. Even if I've done extensive research beforehand and am citing what I imagine users will do and artistic theory that backs the decisions I made, it can always be disagreed with. "Yeah that might be the case, but it doesn't look as good." or "No, users would do this instead, and want this." Yes, surprisingly that flies in design debates.

I don't think that Kyro should attempt this unless he is going to run A/B tests so that he has actual data to back his reasons. Debate based solely upon opinion are fruitless, never-ending, and are bound to come up all the time in such a public and critical forum as hacker news.

That being said, I don't even think that he should be running A/B tests, and shouldn't need to provide any additional justification. Not only is this a ton of work for something he is doing for personal practice in his free time, but it's often a waste of time. A good designer must be trusted. You hire a designer if you like his work and trust his design decisions, not if you are going to nitpick and tell him to justify and test every shade of color he has used.

I think the most famous case of this happening is with with Douglas Bowman quitting at google to move to twitter as the lead visual designer. Mr. Bowman is quite clearly one of the best design and ux guys out there, and is widely respected. This article provides a lot of insight into his decision, and it came down to them questioning his decisions and asking him to prove everything, which was in the end a waste of time.

http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

[bmelton]

While I agree with the sentiment of your message, I think that the designer loses something when people give him props for a good looking page that doesn't work. "Not working" is a relative term of course, but assumptions should always be based on something, and decisions shouldn't be arbitrary.

I think it would be worth it to the designer to justify the decisions to himself, and let us try to tear them down, as that will further his learning. I'm assuming that by doing these exercises, he's trying to grow, and that puts him in an entirely different situation than with Bowman.

The flip side of that coin is that no design is proven until it's A/B tested. You can have awards for the site's beauty, but if a significantly uglier design increases sales, then you've lost the plot. Keats writes really great poetry. The writing is beautiful. I would no sooner put a Keats poem as my website copy than I would an Ansel Adams photograph as my website's visual design.

This is why website design is harder than people think. This is what separates the good from the great.

The designer is of course under no obligation to us to do this, but it may help himself. Even if he doesn't bother to justify things out loud, sometimes the act of thinking through justification in your head is enough to solidify (or compel change to) a design decision.

[DLarsen]

In the first few seconds of viewing the facelift vs the original, I preferred the facelift in each case. There are plenty of folks who do judge a book by its cover. "Will first time visitors think our company/product/service is legitimate?" is a valid design problem, and I think the facelifts likely improve that important first impression.

[kyro]

Thanks for the feedback. You're not the first to suggest the need to include my reasons for design decisions I've made with these. I'll work on that for the next one.

[wdewind]

It's not only that you need to explain your reasoning...it's also that you operate in a vacuum. The constraints of actual designers are rarely "you get a shittily designed page, do WHATEVER you want with it." (Not saying the current YC pages are shittily designed, in fact while some of them are not aesthetically pleasing they all look reasonably well thought out).

I think all OP is saying is "beware, you're only getting the aesthetic practice, and in design it turns out thats really a very minor part of what's important."

[grey-area]

I really don't think you can fairly characterise this as pure aesthetics - "an eye, but what an eye!". Clearly producing a new home page without knowing a company and with a superficial understanding of their products and requirements is quite a shallow exercise which does not encapsulate the totality of design practice. I'm sure the poster is well aware of that, but that doesn't mean it does not involve thinking about the products and requirements, and only focussing on aesthetics.

This is not design in the holistic sense, but that does not mean it is not a useful short exercise and potentially a useful collection of user feedback for non-designer founders who have neither the time, the money, nor the inclination to hire a designer - perhaps seeing a redesign will prompt them to think further on the designs they have, which probably grew organically with the sites.

In short it is only dangerous if you mistake this sort of exercise for a complete design process. No designers would, and no clients I'd want to work for would either. I think it's an interesting and useful thought experiment, though obviously limited in scope, and the designs so far have had some useful hints for the site concerned - I particularly liked the wave one, which humanised the product and neatly summarised it in one image.

On the Internet it is easy to criticise or run things down. This sort of exercise brings back constructive criticism which is so hard to do well - the sort of thing that starts conversations, not arguments. If you see it as only the start of a process (one of many possible starting points) perhaps it will come to seem less dangerous and more fruitful.

[bmelton]

I was about to post something similar, but saw this, and it's close enough to what I was going to say, so I'll piggyback.

First, let me start by saying that I think that in every case, Kyro's redesign has been superior to the original page in the broad sense.

Most of what I'm seeing as complaints have to do more with copy and content than the design, which for a designer should be a good thing, right? Maybe.

In my opinion, content and design are interlinked so heavily that it's impossible to separate the two. Good design accentuates the copy, and good copy accentuates the design. The design should visually reinforce the message at every step.

While I think these redesigns are great exercises, and are sure to benefit Kyro more than not, I think what they're missing is the key to good design, which is interacting with the product team, learning the message, figuring out how to surface hints of that message at every turn, but without beating users over the head with it.

The only other complaint is that yeah, these designs look a little stock. There's nothing to stop me from coopting this design as a WP theme and selling it to 100 other companies looking for a good product page. Nothing wrong with that, but a great design is unique, and can only work for the product it's for.

http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/ is a good example. There's almost nothing else that page could exist for. Nobody can steal that design because it's way too close to the product.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound like I'm coming down on anybody -- I think these designs are good, but since Kyro specifically mentioned that he's trying to improve, thought I'd offer some of what I consider to be important in design that isn't just aesthetic.

[dmils4]

Kyro - I think it's ridiculous that people are so possessive of free design concepts, but one cool blog post to take a look at is Metalab's theoretical redesign of the Zappos homepage few year's back: http://metalabdesign.com/zappos/

They do a pretty nice job of explaining why and what they did - might be a nice framework if you're planning on justifying your decisions.

I personally find these designs more "fun to look at" than anything - it's always cool to see what and how someone who isn't a part of the day to day sees a product as. To me, these designs are just a super detailed pieces of user feedback. Keep going at it!

[cemregr]

That page does mention some good design principles, then proceeds to just throw a couple gradients and Gotham on a Photoshop mockup. The HN thread about it discussed at length why it's a weak redesign.

[dkrich]

Or you could realize that you're talking about a hobby that has likely achieved his objective of getting some people to take notice of his work. What he's done is better than nothing, which is the default. Is it the best use of his time? Maybe, maybe not. But consider the alternative- he could have spent three weeks wondering what the best way to redesign a page would be and produced nothing. I tend to think this was better.

[edash]

I agree that an explanation would be an interesting glimpse into the designer's process. However, the author clearly put more thought into this than simply "rearranging elements around a page."

The "Quickstart" link was removed, a menu was created below the main graphic with various uses described, applications (and their practicality) were featured much more clearly than in the previous design. All the changes I noticed seemed thoughtful and intentional, both from a design as well as a marketing perspective.

So sure, an explanation would certainly add to the post and spur more discussion. However, the author has demonstrated that they know what they're doing and should be spared a lecture on what design is or isn't.

[pclark]

I'm a designer and if I were hiring these blog posts are the best portfolio I can think of. I'd like to see more commentary, but these are a great idea. someone needs to make this a "aaS" business to hire designers or he hired.

[JoelSutherland]

I disagree. The best way to become better at basketball isn't to play pickup games exclusively. It's also important to engage in deliberate practice on individual skills and micro-skills.

In this case he is turning out several designs a week. This would be impossible if he were diving in completely on each one to understand the problem perfectly. Instead he's making some assumptions about each company and executing against those assumptions.

Perhaps you're just arguing that it is more important to practice the skill of understanding a project instead of the skill of executing a design. I don't really have an opinion on that, but I hardly think this project is dangerous. If anything, internalizing design execution skills will free his mind to think about design projects on a higher level.

[justjimmy]

For those saying that he shouldn't have to explain his process:

Take a step back and understand the OP's original intention – he wants to improve and showcase his work, he posts on HN for feedback, he wants to strike conversations with those companies.

Will he have a higher chance to achieve those goals if he included his thought process? By including his process (which is something he already done, just needs to upload them), his case would be that much more convincing and impressive – won't that improve the probability of snagging the attention of those he intended?

It's hard to start a conversation with just an image and people going "Oh, looks pretty." It's much more compelling to to take it a step further and include the process, not just for his benefit, but the readers too.