Why our website looks like an operating system

Yeah, and only when (I think) Google got a hefty fine did the banner implementations start to add an instant "opt-out" button. The tech companies really try to skirt the rules as closely as possible.

I'm glad I'm not in EU legal, it's gotta be like dealing with internet trolls ("I didn't ACTUALLY break any rules because your rules don't say I can't use the word "fhtagn"")

Hi, OP here. I was employee #13 at PostHog, joining as a designer (who now moonlights as a design engineer). I'm responsible for the website. I've been part of crafting the brand for 4.5 years – joined when the company just started monetizing.

There are only two of us who work on the website, myself and a front end engineer. (He was hired to work on the website and doesn't directly work in the product.)

We've spent roughly half of the last six months on this site. Other than our incredible graphic designer, no other resources were brought in.

A lot of our time is spent on brand-related side quests – they're consistently a net positive for the brand. You can see some examples under "Some things we've shipped" at https://posthog.com/teams/brand

This was a passion project of mine. I'm the one who ultimately chose to spend time I did on it. I think what we built is really cool, and I hope it serves as inspiration for other designers to think outside the box when it comes to solving their unique challenges.

Every company operates differently. Yes, many companies do have employees with too much time on their hands. Others do waste a lot of money in advertising. And a lot of companies are stagnating.

But I can assure you, PostHog is none of those.

So, this story is from people who heard things? I can guarantee you that regulators have zero time for proactively looking for MISSING cookie banners. If they had time, they'd crack down proactively on the cookie consent management systems used by thousands of websites that do not comply with the regulation, because they implement the reject option as a dark pattern. Furthermore, this weird fantasy request you just described can easily be dismissed by the website operators with a single sentence: We don't use cookies, hence no cookie banner.

Individuals and other businesses have to complain to regulators about others not complying with the GDPR.

That'd be great if I could navigate the in-browser browser with my pgup/pgn or arrow keys, but I can't. If you're going to go this route, you really should do comprehensive accessibility testing.

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts.

But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large SaaS products, and also being the target audience for such websites (director or VP Eng): the speed and ease with which I can find what I want (as a potential customer) using that top navigation menu is superior to anything I've seen done so far.

I could see immediately they have 34 products under 7 categories; 5 are popular, 4 are new. If I want to try out one: Docs > Product OS > Integration > Install and configure > Install PostHog.

And if I wanted to learn a bit about their engineering: Company > Handbook > Engineering > Internal Processes > Bug prioritization.

Pricing: Pricing calculator > select product > set usage, select addons.

Each of these interactions took only seconds. And I could switch between the product overview page I opened earlier and the pricing page I just opened, without waiting for any entire website to reload (or having to right click, open in new tab, and then scroll).

As I said, there is something here beyond just aesthetics. And one of the conclusions may be that our current UI/UX philosophy has inadvertantly become user-hostile.