Ouch. So ideas are not bad but the language hurts someone's ego. Guess Andy Rutledge won't get any recognition because of "the wrong approach".
Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
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Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#32Based on the timing, I believe he's talking about the redesign exercise Andy Rutledge did @ http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php Khoi Vinh is being a poor sport here. Criticism is an important part of the design world. In school we're taught to use criticism as another resource and learn from it. The design team at the New York Times could have learned a lot from this 'unsolicited' exercise. Instead, they chose to…
I can assume by your response you didn't finish the article. The last paragraph is the opposite of what you are saying:
"I will say this, though: unsolicited redesigns are terrific and fun and useful, and I hope designers never stop doing them. But as they do so, I also hope they remember it helps no one — least of all the author of the redesign — to assume the worst about the original source and the people who work hard to maintain and improve it, even though those efforts may seem imperfect from the outside. If you have good ideas and the talent to execute them and argue for them, the world will still sit up and pay attention even if you take care in your language and show respect to those who don’t see things quite the way you do."
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#33...the argument that the redesign’s author makes is not quite so persuasive, mostly because it makes some rash assumptions, misses some critical realities and, perhaps worse of all, takes a somewhat inflammatory approach in criticizing the many people who work on the original site. This guy sounds like the redesigner really hurt his feelings. Why not share the design constraints that the redesigner failed to consider…
It's fairly plain to see that the "redesign" completely disregards any presence of advertisement. I'd say that would be a constraint failed to be considered.
That simply isn't true.
> Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like in olden times.
http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/nyt-redux-article....
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#34What I find ironic is that when Pump was posted, the alternate to WSGI - everybody jumped on the author and trashed everything about it. Meanwhile some designer suggests that the New York Times trash their entire business and turn it into an ugly looking blog (with padding!) and it gets 500 upvotes. At least the Pump/WSGI proposal was genuine interest and enthusiasm and not condescending. This is a total repeat of th…
It's ironic, but predictable.
A site full of hackers is good at picking apart a naive technical idea... not so much a naive design idea.
The bigger irony is if you had these discussions on news.ydesigninator.com, the designers would have no opinion at all on the code, because they would realize that they know nothing. But with visual arts, it's easy for us programmers to bike-shed and act like we know something.
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fairly plain to see that the "redesign" completely disregards any presence of advertisement. I'd say that would be a constraint failed to be considered.
That simply isn't true. > Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like in olden times. http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/nyt-redux-article....
"Considering" a constraint using magic fairy dust and an imaginary world where people pay for news content isn't really addressing it, unfortunately. It's like saying "since people can levitate, we can ditch their shoes. They can wear minimal shoes for times when they might want to land, but unencumbered feet will keep people happy".
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#36Based on the timing, I believe he's talking about the redesign exercise Andy Rutledge did @ http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php Khoi Vinh is being a poor sport here. Criticism is an important part of the design world. In school we're taught to use criticism as another resource and learn from it. The design team at the New York Times could have learned a lot from this 'unsolicited' exercise. Instead, they chose to…
I don't really think it would be sporting to feign appreciation for a critique that starts by declaring your your product "terribly-designed" and concludes with an even less effective design.
Perhaps more importantly, if I were current or former staff of NYT, I would have a hard time taking even the valid criticism found in Rutledge's post to heart, given that he implies exceptionally bad faith on the part of the Times staff. We all can cite a truly terrible online news design that would benefit from some of Rutledge's suggestions, but the focus on NYT seems like a oblique strategy to accuse the Times of something almost like yellow journalism, what with of the suggestion that opinion is shamefully placed in context with reportage, that popular news is pandering, etc.
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#37What I find ironic is that when Pump was posted, the alternate to WSGI - everybody jumped on the author and trashed everything about it. Meanwhile some designer suggests that the New York Times trash their entire business and turn it into an ugly looking blog (with padding!) and it gets 500 upvotes. At least the Pump/WSGI proposal was genuine interest and enthusiasm and not condescending. This is a total repeat of th…
Having worked for a couple billion-dollar companies, I am pretty sure you are giving them too much credit.
Why do you say that? It seems fairly certain that if NYTimes one day looked like a blog, then their revenue would dry up. It would scare away a lot of people, such as my dad, who don't like change and who don't care about whether a website has rounded corners.
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#38When Andy's link was first posted here it struck a nerve with many people, especially myself (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806257).
The big problem that myself and many others have with Andy is that he is a professional. He is known in web standards and design circles. He builds web sites.
The big point here: He has been on the other side of the design process (I presume) explaining to people why things were built the way they were.
In Andy's "redux" he seems to forget this. Blatantly. Thats not to say he isn't right on some obvious things (the Times left-navigation on the Homepage) but for almost everything else he was pretty damn disparaging and ignorant of the process that churns out the end result. To a shocking level IMHO.
What Khoi is saying here is a very level-headed and polite response to Andys redesign. (BTW Andy himself says it wasn't so much a redesign, more like "I examined pressing issues for digital news").
If it had been a graduate who did the "redux" I would have smiled and said, "Come back in a few years working in the real world and you'll see things differently". So I was a little shocked that this came from someone like Andy.
Background Info: Khoi joined the Times in late 2005 or so. At that time the redesign for the NYT was well underway so he was not responsible for the look-and-feel that emerged. For the most part he has been trying to improve on the legacy he inherited - the Sectionfront and Article layouts, the Navigation bars on the Homepage - not Khoi's idea and he fought to change that (take a look at the Opinion section for example http://www.nytimes.com/opinion for one single sample of his stewardship).
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#39But as they do so, I also hope they remember it helps no one — least of all the author of the redesign — to assume the worst about the original source and the people who work hard to maintain and improve it, even though those efforts may seem imperfect from the outside. Redesigns, solicited or not, are very helpful to me. I don't care what internal politics the original product designer is grappling with. It's refres…
You wouldn't want to work for someone who responded to critical thinking with equally critical thinking? I sure would.
Rutledge did indeed rant generally in his opening paragraphs a bunch of stuff about poor standards, lack of ethics etc in the industry with little to back it up, then segues to the Times as his example of the design problems (see what he did there?).
Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
#40What I find ironic is that when Pump was posted, the alternate to WSGI - everybody jumped on the author and trashed everything about it. Meanwhile some designer suggests that the New York Times trash their entire business and turn it into an ugly looking blog (with padding!) and it gets 500 upvotes. At least the Pump/WSGI proposal was genuine interest and enthusiasm and not condescending. This is a total repeat of th…
Not condescending? Maybe just because there's less text.
>What WSGI should have been.
That sentiment goes through nearly the entire page. And it's the same problem. But yes, it attracts more critique here because (I'd imagine) the majority of vocal ones here are less designery and more programmery.