[SeoxyS]

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy. Often, people wonder why I spend $50,000 a year going to design school, when I can learn how to make things that are just as shiny by reading psdtuts.com.

The difference is that style is only skin-deep. It's superficial. It's an added bonus on top of design. Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions. It's the soul: what story it tells.

Your redesign, while prettier, does nothing to improve the user experience, or to tell a story. Sure, it's easier on the eyes, but it's a much worse design, in that it makes the user experience worse. It's now harder to read: less information is on the screen. (11 story as opposed to 25, on my screen.) The information hierarchy within stories is less clear. The eye has to jump around more to get the secondary information (poster / point count / comment count / time posted). The flag functionality is simply gone…

You did a good job making it look better, and should be commended for that. But as for the design, try again.

PS: Take this as friendly critique. Take it in, learn what you can, try again. Rise, repeat. Don't be discouraged, but realize you have a long way to go. You'll get there!

--

Note: Check out this redesign, which I think is quite effective, and is installable as a extra stylesheet on the current HN code: http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Hacker_News-20120420-180413.png

[mortenjorck]

I kept reading down the page hoping to see the reasoning behind the choices made, but was disappointed to find none.

This is why I disagree with the notion that style is only skin-deep. It's an integral part of UX, but only when considered within the framework of UX. The points value is now shaded in 3D: Why? The rank is now an orange circle: How does this help the user?

The best visual design is always based on UX. Do users consult the rank often? If not, the orange should be reserved for something else more demanding of the user's attention. Are the point totals interactive? If not, the 3D shading should be saved for use as an affordance somewhere where there is interaction. It's questions like these that turn a pretty visual design into something that not only looks but works great.

[alanh]

> This is why I disagree with the notion that style is only skin-deep.

Semantics, but I think you are agreeing with your parent that there should be something deeper than the gloss applied in this redesign. That design must go more than skin-deep. Arguably the word “style” could refer to paint jobs, so your statement was fairly confusing.

I fully agree with your comments regarding the bizarre amount of visual attention demanded by the rank numbers here and the points’ affordance of clickability (and said as much on a comment there).

[nwienert]

Tried out a more semantic redesign inspired by original submission, OP comment, and the attached screen:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3870982

[iamjonlee]

I've tried one too that I think should really be how HN redesign should look like.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2tjm5GuRF1rtfgd6o1_1280.j...

[tzaman]

I agree, this one is less deviated from the original - it's nice but still 'feels' HN

[mcmire]

Woah, now that is minimal, I kinda like that.

[agilebyte]

better than one by @nwienert, less busy

[iamjonlee]

Here's what I think should have been done: LINK http://www.grooovy.me/HN.jpg

Here are some thoughts on why I made mine this way:

1) Hacker news is read by hundred of thousands of people every month- to adapt to a completely new design would wreck the user experience the users have come to expect.

2) Your patterns and icons, while I appreciate the gesture takes focus away from the headlines. The most important thing should be the headlines on hacker news. That's how it was designed to be. Everything else should pale in color compared to it.

3) As SeoxyS mentioned, I designed mine as to not disrupt the functionality that everyone's used to. What I did was "design" the page to improve readability. I made the background color behind the text a light grey so it's not as gloomy as the current site and used a dark grey font rather than the black on current site to improve faster reading. Black on white is always tiring on the eyes, which is why I tried to adapt different shades of grey.

4) I don't like HN's top nav bar right now because it takes focus away from the logo. The logo should be consistent with the one found and recognized on YC's main site. A logo on the site should be loud and clear. I made the top nav bar a darker grey so that it would give focus back to the logo. 5) The selected links are now orange instead of white. By having tiny accents of color, it adds the kind of eye candy that you want but nonetheless tied in with functionality. UX comes first, then UI. You can make something pretty after think about how you'll first make it user-friendly.

6) To improve eye candy, I gave the bottom nav the bright color of HN to really lighten up the page. I felt that otherwise there would be too many grey areas.

7) I moved the search to the top and yes, this does change what the users are used to, but in my opinion a good change. I've read many posts where people (including myself) have had a hard time finding the search button. To move it to the top nav will adapt to web standards.

Normally, I'd make the search larger and start right aligned at the end of the top nav bar and instead move the username + logout link above it, but I felt that it might be too disruptive, so I sacrificed what looks the best for a better experience (this is important).

[hxa7241]

> 3

The main text is too light and low-contrast: it looks like it is frightened of being there and trying to run away and hide! (and so the most big and powerful thing on the page is the footer, which does not seem the right priority...)

[marekmroz]

RE: 6) The orange, in-your-face footer is very distracting. My eyes are attracted to it constantly, and away from the articles (which as noted by the other commenter are too low contrast). My $0.02

[twelvechairs]

Whilst I don't want to pick on the OP, this is such an important point. Its all too often that 'design' gets confused for 'eye candy'. This doesn't just happen on websites, but in all design based professions. And this is a bit of a case in point.

The HN audience tends to want high-information-density, not necessarily visual joy (or for that matter extra sugar for clarity of new users). Its a very different thing to design than a website-shopfront. Generally I think it works very well as is....

[chevas]

"As is" is still lacking. Reading these comments across almost the entire width of my monitor is not good design. You do get information density, but my belief is that in the case of reading paragraphs, information density is secondary to readability.

[mehulkar]

Agreed. That 70 character width rule would be nice on HN.

[redthrowaway]

All of these things may be true, but the biggest usability issue facing HN right now is load times. HN has undergone exponential growth even in the short time I've been here, and the site hasn't kept up with it. Given that we're all programmers, perhaps we should take it upon ourselves to dig through the source and see what we can speed up.

[eru]

> HN has undergone exponential growth even in the short time I've been here, [...]

Nitpick: Observing exponential growth doesn't depend on the time span.

[redthrowaway]

You're correct; that was sloppily written of me.

[blahedo]

The solution to this is not making a design that is too wide to fit in my window, however.

[rmnoon]

Here's a friendly critique: using the monetary cost of your education to establish your credibility is not a good idea.

[dhugiaskmak]

Check out this redesign

Am I missing something? I don't see any noticeable difference between this and the current design.

It's now harder to read

I find it immensely more readable than the current design, which to me is a left-justified wall of dense, unnavigable text. The low-contrast colors of the secondary information make it hard to pick out information quickly and increase eye strain.

[pacomerh]

Schooled designers are very sensitive to fonts. While he sees a world of difference because of that font change, you might see almost the same design. Because they study them deeply. They see them from another perspective, more like the story behind them. I've worked with many designers from Art Center in Pasadena and this has happened to me many times, where I need to make a further effort to understand them, and viceversa.

[reledi]

> Am I missing something? I don't see any noticeable difference between this and the current design.

The changes are subtle, but they are noticeable. Enough to be visually appealing, yet keep the practical design.

[Alex3917]

"Design, on the other hand, is the core of the product: how it functions. It's the soul: what story it tells."

I find it ironic that this submission is near the top of the front page at the same time as this (excellent) essay about startup culture (among other things) is also on the front page:

http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels...

The design of any website is supposed to be a reflection of your company culture. It needs to make the people you're trying to attract feel comfortable and at home. Sorry to be blunt, but this redesign does the exact opposite of that, for me at least.

Please don't take offense at this because it isn't meant toward you as a person; I fully support people doing redesigns of sites and posting them, but in this case I can't help but feeling like "dear god no." If you watch Rocky IV, the reason it's so easy to root for Rocky is that he's a product of his community, whereas the other guy is a product of some cold and unfeeling scientific process. Hacker News is a community, so you want a website that feels like something that a community would make. This redesign just doesn't do that.

[yellowbkpk]

Some users (like me) simply don't have the ability to flag stories, so the designer might not know about that functionality.

[dhimes]

How can you criticize the design, then, without taking it for a drive to test the functionality? I think this guy got it pretty damn well. I've seen other submissions on this page, including the one you link to, that fail in a major way: the damn up/down buttons. I don't know where the down buttons are going to go, but the current ones (and your linked ones) are too small and close together. On a small screen or with a clumsy (read: touch) interface they are very difficult to use. Designs that preserve them FAIL badly- not because they look bad, but for the very reasons you state: the function suffers for the looks.

And what's the point of the huge margins on the one you linked to? Can't we make better use of the space somehow?

I think the OP has a helluva nice looking start to a website redesign, and I hope he doesn't get discouraged from the hivemind criticism I'm seeing on this page.

[notatoad]

I hate the assumption that higher information density is always a good thing. White space is important, for aesthetics, readability, and usability. HN in its current state is far too tightly spaced.

[reledi]

Very good critique.

Another thing I think the current HN design does well is act as a filter or repellent. Hackers can typically deal with an unattractive interface, whilst the average person would be turned off and leave the site. Those who stay on the site do so for its content, they don't need any extra convincing to stay.

[richardw]

Craigslist seems to work pretty well for Muggles. I'd say most people can handle an ugly UI if reward > cost.

Having said that, I haven't found a mockup I prefer over plain HN either. It's about the content. Design largely stays out of the way.

[entangld]

I think you're a little too harsh. The comment bubbles are helpful.

Your eye might need to jump around more because you're not used to the new design yet. Sometimes an article might say "discuss" which just means 0 comments. This would make that much clearer.

You might say you shouldn't have to "get used to" a good redesign, but after using a website for years, almost everyone would need to overcome old habits.

HN might be designed to compact a large amount of data in a small area, but reading tiny letters isn't exactly good UX.

[true_religion]

I know its a minor point, but perhaps they're mind-boggled by the fact you pay $50,000.... not the fact that you're going to school for design.

[SeoxyS]

The reason it's surprising is both together: that I think it's worth it.

[primigenus]

Thanks for mentioning Cleaner Hacker News! It's available on Github: https://github.com/primigenus/cleaner-hacker-news - pull requests and forks welcome if you have any concerns or improvements.

[taiyab]

I think you're missing the point here SeoxyS. I just put an initial concept out there for everyone to see and maybe get a flavour of how a redesign/reskinning of HN may look. I understand there's a lot to be desired and I haven't sat down yet and put the time into fleshing everything out properly, hence this will probably be iterated on a thousand times.

I appreciate the feedback, and will definitely take it into consideration.

[chmike]

Your design puts too much emphasis on the points. It is important but by far not the most important.

[tedkimble]

I wouldn't call it eye candy, exactly, but I do think that most HN design submissions are little more than illustration. But I also think that design is much more closely related to engineering than any primarily superficial discipline. (Such is my experience after an undergraduate in physics and a master's in architecture.)

Both engineering and design are instances of the same type of problem solving process. But because design is focused more on qualitative and subjective elements, its state space is much larger and, I believe, its design solutions (or attractors) more fuzzy. Because of this, design and engineering actualize themselves quite differently in real life, often requiring different skill-sets.

And I think that because the web and application design disciplines require more engineering-thinking -- architecture, for example, must also consider spatio-temporal qualities -- most design-thinking is delegated only to the most superficial facets of the process. What would really help understanding is for more designers to push into the engineering side of things, and more engineers into the design side of things.

[bitcracker]

> I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of the difference between design and eye candy.

You are absolutely right. Eye candy can quickly become eye straining.

Hacker News is successfull not only because of its content but also because of its design. It's simple and pragmatic, as it should be. I always need only seconds to read the headlines of the whole page.

Hacker News, please don't change anything!

[leejw00t354]

Although I agree with what you're saying sometimes spending more time on eye candy than the actual design can be useful.

Eye candy doesn't help the user with navigation or add functionality but it can make a website look more professional and in-turn more trustworthy.

For e commerce websites getting the users trust is an important consideration and I'd argue eye candy is maybe just as important as the design.

Of course in the case of Hacker News I wouldn't like to see this kind of redesign implemented and would prefer the focus of the site's design to be solely on improving it's functionality and usability.

[meric]

Hi SeoxyS, if you have time do you mind critiquing my side project's design on this page? It's a website for students to find buyers and sellers of used textbooks (usually other students).

http://textbookcentral.com.au/33/university-of-sydney/list/

(Admittedly the page numbers on the bottom are more for search engine crawlers than people)

[SeoxyS]

Sure -- shoot me an email. It's on my profile.

[SkyMarshal]

>Note: Check out this redesign, which I think is quite effective, and is installable as a extra stylesheet on the current HN code: http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Hacker_News-20120420-180413.png

That's really nice. It's not clear where the stylesheet is though. I'd love to use it, where might it be?

[reledi]

https://github.com/Primigenus/Cleaner-Hacker-News

edit: waxjar already posted it further below.

[SkyMarshal]

Thanks man, this soooo much better than the default.

[notlisted]

I want this: http://i.imgur.com/xKRkY.png

My longer reply got lost somewhere.

[205guy]

So far the best. The 3 most important things are the largest: comments, link to story, upvote (though I would've moved upvote to the right of story link--but that's just me, I don't believe in upvoting anymore).

[taiyab]

This is much better. Get rid of the superfluous numbering and put in the comments there.

[fsniper]

That's better but, a comments (46) link would be great on the second line.

[kabanossen]

I agree, Megaupload is far too important. We need it.

[possibilistic]

I never realized HN supported HTTPS until you posted that screenshot. That's absolutely excellent to know! Inadvertent thanks!

[6ren]

> what story it tells

I think of a "story" as a narrative: a sequence of events involving characters. In an epic story, there's a hero, a quest, thresholds, guardians, a special world, obstacles, tests, allies, a shadow, a return etc. Could you elaborate on what "story" means in terms of design?

[SeoxyS]

Think of it as the message. What does it say about you or your company / product. What does it show your values to be. Etc.

[hxa7241]

Fine, yes, functionally -- and that is probably the most important thing -- but not really so interesting for speculative discussion.

It works, but seems to subtract more than it adds. It looks a little less like itself, and a little more like every other site.

[cpeterso]

If you were to redesign HN's home page, what would you recommend?

[yaix]

My recommendation would be: don't!

Its simple and to the point.

[donniezazen]

For people those who do not have bandwidth problems. Resolving the story in Readability like distraction and ad-free style which include comments in bottom would be great. Also Commenting is hard to follow on HN.

[agilebyte]

Target your audience. This is what made HN successful instead of trying to accommodate a large(r) segment of a population.

[BadiPod]

Totally agree with your critique, but maybe you can enlighten me.. whats the advantage of even having the post numbers? Seems like unnecessary information.

[padenot]

Would you mind sharing the extra stylesheet you mention ?

[waxjar]

I believe this is the stylesheet: https://github.com/Primigenus/Cleaner-Hacker-News.

[treyp]

i've been trying out some of the hacker news style extensions, and this one suffers from the same problem as the others -- when you're reading comments, and the comments are centered without a background color for the content div, you can't figure out how deeply nested comments are. it makes it difficult to figure out which comments are top level and which are responses.

[primigenus]

That's a good point that's worth addressing. What do you suggest? Left-aligning the content to the window border or something else? Pull requests to the repo on github welcome!

[SeoxyS]

I would actually love a line à-la reddit that shows the nesting level clearly but subtly.

[SeoxyS]

Yes, that's the one. I made a couple changes to mine, but it's essentially the same.

[speg]

You remind me of Steve Jobs (in a good way).

[rorrr]

Also the current design makes the headlines the most contrast (black), which really is the main information on the page. In his "design" he has all kind of visual and distracting garbage, like the orange numbers (why, why???).

And yeah, insane spacing between the lines makes absolutely no sense.

The striped header is not more visually appealing than the current plain one.