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Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

blog.microlancer.com

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Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#41

Post by PuerkitoBio »

poissonpie wrote: post #40

Are cars too formulaic? There's always a steering wheel. And pedals. A gear lever. And wheels and breaks. And headlights. And...... Are books formulaic? Cover, Title, Author, Chapters, Writing, A beginning, a middle, an end? formulaic allows us, the users, to easily begin using something new without a learning curve. Personally, I don't want every website to be innovative, requiring me to re-learn or figure out how t…

Your metaphor, to me, would be more along the lines of the browser frame, the clicking, the scrolling, ... Not the content and the design.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#42

Post by GrinningFool »

This is asking the wrong question.

Web design has generally been formulaic - but the formula changes and evolves over time.

No, this is the question to be asked: is the current formula the correct one?

My opinion is no. The giant picture-banner that takes up half (or more, depending on device) the page and conveys no useful information is annoying. The odd vertical scrolling behaviors -- almost as if in rebellion against the previous pattern of never requiring users to scroll: now we must always require them to scroll -- are frustrating, particularly for the majority of people who do not have a mac trackpad.

But that's just my opinion. One could just as easily argue that every formula is correct for its time, or else it wouldn't have come to be a common formula.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#43

Post by jlcummings »

Audience matters to the equation.

Is it product motivated? Who is the product for, a consumer or a contributor?

Is it interpretive, art, or otherwise? In other words, as a producer, do you simply have a statement or rhetorical to present?

When conversion rate is no longer relevant, the formula is staggeringly more permissive.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#44

Post by nzp »

nnq wrote: post #30
abraxasz wrote: post #11

I think a more relevant question should be: is a certain degree of "formulaicity" desirable or not? I believe that it is, yes. When I browse a website for the first time, I like it when it's clean and unoriginal in its presentation. First, I can find my way quickly, and second (maybe it's just an illusion) I find it less mentality taxing. A lot of startups adopt a layout similar to that presented in the article for t…

worrydream.com is basically impossible to scroll on Chrome on Windows. This is basically unforgivable for an UX/I guy and together with other peculiarities this makes it basically unusable. If I could afford to hire this guy (note: I don't, even if he were available :) ), I wouldn't do it just because of his website.

> worrydream.com is basically impossible to scroll on Chrome on Windows.

I was so confused by this and abraxasz's remark about original design. Not scrolling in Chrome on Windows? What? Why would it not scroll, and what's so original about it? I was browsing in FF, so I took a look in Chrome... Oh, wow, this is the best example of graceful degradation I've seen and it's so simple (I didn't know can go into , you learn something every day). I had NoScript turned on if FF, so it kicked in the simple CSS which I must say to me looks more beautiful and more functional.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#45

Post by asdasf »

hnriot wrote: post #26
null_ptr wrote: post #19

Oh, this is not modern web design. This is just the web design pushed by San Francisco hipsters onto their brethren. None of the web sites average people visit as part of their normal life look like that nor will they ever.

I know you're just trolling, but I think "normal" people visit google quite often, and that's an example of modern web design.

Which of the things the article talks about does google do?

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#46

Post by normloman »

Same buttons, same navigation, same layout is a good thing. Users are already used to the design, and can navigate efficiently.

Same typeface, same graphics (mac book with graphs), same style (flat) is a bad thing. You won't stand out and everyone will forget you.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#48

Post by wushupork »

When you get into a new car, do you want all the controls neatly laid out where you know them to be or do you want "originality & creativity". I think most people would find it less stressful and taxing and more comforted if they knew how to navigate it.

Same with a website. I always want to know where the navigation is, how to login, where the call to action is - the basics. The value isn't the website "design" - it's either the product or the content.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#49

Post by microcolonel »

normloman wrote: post #47
microcolonel wrote: post #14

Breaking conventions without good reason is bad design.

Following conventions without good reason is bad design.

No, breaking them may be. You don't need a good reason to follow a convention, since conventions themselves are good reasons, if you have no compelling reason /not/ to follow the convention, you should stick with it. This is why people use Helveticoids.

Just because you have a facetious comment to drop in doesn't mean it's correct.

Re: Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

#50

Post by normloman »

microcolonel wrote: post #49
normloman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following conventions without good reason is bad design.

No, breaking them may be. You don't need a good reason to follow a convention, since conventions themselves are good reasons, if you have no compelling reason /not/ to follow the convention, you should stick with it. This is why people use Helveticoids. Just because you have a facetious comment to drop in doesn't mean it's correct.

But in order to understand when and how to use conventions, we have to know the reasons why it exists in the first place (so we may judge whether the same reasons apply to the problem at hand). This is what I meant by my comment. If you don't know the reasons for the convention in the first place, you're doomed to applying the same convention in situations where it doesn't make sense.
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