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Your website is not for you

websmith.studio

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Re: Your website is not for you

#141

Post by citizenpaul »

notpushkin wrote: post #115
jerf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when the CEO says "Hey, we really need to make our contact information more visible because I get a lot of customer reports that they can't figure out how to contact us", sure. When the founders say they want the picture bigger and the logo a bit more purple and can we add underlines to all the menu items and also bold them, probably not. Which one is more common?

> When the founders say they want the picture bigger and the logo a bit more purple and can we add underlines to all the menu items and also bold them Simple: they’re trying to give you the solution , and it’s your duty as the responsible designer/developer to find out what problem they see. Here’s a nice set of questions I’m using (from Managing projects, people, and yourself [1] by Nick Toverovskiy): 1. What did yo…

My problem with most of these books is they are indirectly trying to solve the real problem. The problem that IME HN is allergic to discussing.

Power Dynamics.

The reason the CEO is nitpicking your job is because he is not a good CEO and doesn't know his place or how to do his job. Almost all these books are about an indirect way of dealing with the fact that, this person is a ID10T and you have to deal with them because they have more power than you. Yet it is literally NEVER discussed.

The books(IDK about this one) really summarizes indirect ways of how to be subservient and not accidentally antagonize your "superiors" which are frequently people just born into a better lot in life than you, without feeling like that is what you are doing.

What is the CEO's primary duties, networking?, Sales, COMMUNICATING yet its your job to read books on how to tiptoe around how to sus out what they cannot COMMUNICATE?

Re: Your website is not for you

#142

Post by satvikpendem »

simpaticoder wrote: post #140
satvikpendem wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not talking about personal websites, they're talking about business ones.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were less of a distinction? Think of old school mom-and-pop shops, which were actually a reflection of who they were, personally, vs. Wal-Mart or Target. Which main street do you prefer?

Whichever converts better is good for their business and actually supports the mom and pop business materially over merely aesthetic views on their website design.

Re: Your website is not for you

#143

Post by jstummbillig »

simpaticoder wrote: post #140
satvikpendem wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not talking about personal websites, they're talking about business ones.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were less of a distinction? Think of old school mom-and-pop shops, which were actually a reflection of who they were, personally, vs. Wal-Mart or Target. Which main street do you prefer?

In a mom-and-pop shop you still want good electrical wiring.

Re: Your website is not for you

#144

Post by malfist »

simpaticoder wrote: post #140
satvikpendem wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not talking about personal websites, they're talking about business ones.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were less of a distinction? Think of old school mom-and-pop shops, which were actually a reflection of who they were, personally, vs. Wal-Mart or Target. Which main street do you prefer?

Depends on what I'm trying to do. I don't need your whole life story, Sarah, about how this recipe reminds you of your great aunt's second cousin's half sister's second home balcony plants. I'm just trying to figure out what seasoning blend makes up blackening spice. I'm not even here for the meatloaf recipe, just the spice blend.

Re: Your website is not for you

#145

Post by quaddoggy »

This problem is inevitable in all but the most egalitarian workplaces. It's called HIPPO—The Highest Paid Person's Opinion. Organizations tend to favor the opinions of senior, high-earning leaders over data-driven evidence. And it manifests to the user in various ways, enshittification being one of them.

Re: Your website is not for you

#146

Post by antisthenes »

miki123211 wrote: post #139
xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

A bad designer can design a good-looking password form. A mediocre designer anticipates that they need to design for the case where the passwords don't match. A great designer can figure out that this particular product should actually be using magic links and not passwords.

> A great designer can figure out that this particular product should actually be using magic links and not passwords.

If your designers are needing to generate input on technical issues like this, your product is already in trouble.

Re: Your website is not for you

#148

Post by notpushkin »

citizenpaul wrote: post #141
notpushkin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the founders say they want the picture bigger and the logo a bit more purple and can we add underlines to all the menu items and also bold them Simple: they’re trying to give you the solution , and it’s your duty as the responsible designer/developer to find out what problem they see. Here’s a nice set of questions I’m using (from Managing projects, people, and yourself [1] by Nick Toverovskiy): 1. What did yo…

My problem with most of these books is they are indirectly trying to solve the real problem. The problem that IME HN is allergic to discussing. Power Dynamics. The reason the CEO is nitpicking your job is because he is not a good CEO and doesn't know his place or how to do his job. Almost all these books are about an indirect way of dealing with the fact that, this person is a ID10T and you have to deal with them bec…

With this particular book, the prerequisite is that your client is trying to achieve something, yeah. I think know the type of CEOs and CTOs that you’re talking about, the ones that only want to sound smart and don’t really care about the end result. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do in this case apart from looking for a workplace where people do care about what they do.

Re: Your website is not for you

#149

Post by mikepurvis »

citizenpaul wrote: post #141
notpushkin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the founders say they want the picture bigger and the logo a bit more purple and can we add underlines to all the menu items and also bold them Simple: they’re trying to give you the solution , and it’s your duty as the responsible designer/developer to find out what problem they see. Here’s a nice set of questions I’m using (from Managing projects, people, and yourself [1] by Nick Toverovskiy): 1. What did yo…

My problem with most of these books is they are indirectly trying to solve the real problem. The problem that IME HN is allergic to discussing. Power Dynamics. The reason the CEO is nitpicking your job is because he is not a good CEO and doesn't know his place or how to do his job. Almost all these books are about an indirect way of dealing with the fact that, this person is a ID10T and you have to deal with them bec…

I'm a pretty opinionated engineer but I'll still volunteer that in a majority of "engineering" disputes, I care more about having a coordinated and consistent approach than I do about the absolute tack taken.

Maybe I've just been lucky to mostly work with decent managers, but basically I consider the tie-breaking function to be intrinsically valuable.

Re: Your website is not for you

#150

Post by groby_b »

> Here's what I find genuinely strange. A patient doesn't lean over the operating table and tell the surgeon where to cut.

This is extremely funny given we're the industry full of folks that brought the world QS and longevity hacks, together with the peptide boom.

"But that is only because doctors don't keep current/have preconceived notions"

Which would never happen to designers?

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