Design like a hacker, not like an artist.
What is good people!
It's Jim here 😃
This Monday I started writing a new type of UX articles, called atomic essays. Atomic essays are pieces of writing that are under 250 words. They are meant to be to the point and meaningful.
They are a new experiment I am trying so please share your thoughts and let me know if you liked it in the comments bellow!
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What would you like me to write about next?
Leave a comment with your thoughts and ideas with a comment bellow!
Some personal notes
It's been a few weeks that I didn't send you any new UX article. Wondering why? Because I am scared. A lot. We reached 650 subscribers(!!) and I am a bit terrified. It's the first time I have so many people following my content and I am afraid that you won't like my new articles.
I fell into the trap plenty of us here in the IndieHacking community fall into. I didn't ship anything. I didn't allow myself to learn because I was scared. But here we are, I took the leap of faith and shipped it.
Thanks so much for being part this UX community and for supporting my mission - I'll do my best to support you back and help you become a better indie maker ❤️
Your question is kind of a trap because "design" is polysemic :p
But I agree with the sentiment, many UI designers (maybe ex-graphic designers ?) make UI like it's Art.
Also, making pretty UI is cheaper and easier to sell to product owners than making usable UIs, hence the abundance of pretty but obnoxious product.
Having said that, the esthetic and visual aspect of your UI is not an antithesis of good UX.
How much you should care about UI depends on user expectations and those are set by:
++ by society, culture :
++ by industry/competitors standards:
Also, many of us judge everything by its cover : books, people, and also apps and websites.
One example from my own experience : I've came across HN a few times for the past decade, but the UI of HN never get me to be curious enough to spend more than 5 sec in it, I always thought it was the sketchiest ugliest website and had no idea what it was about lol.
I felt that about HN until I joined IH and people reference it here a lot, that got me curious so I paid a visit and to my surprise it was the ugly website I ignored all these years.
Luckily HN is powered by YC and influential people and targeted to nerds who come for the content and dig the 90s look.
Yup! And imagine if someone with enough PR power made a HN clone but with actual NICE UI! I think that would be a strong competitor for them.
Another example - I work on a product called Thankbox among others, which has several strong competitors in the field (online group cards and gift pot) BUT we are smashing our growth targets. If our UI and overall visuals and brand didn't set us apart from the competition in some way, I'd like to think that growth would not be as quick. We've had lots of users feed back that they find it nicer to use than other similar services! 😊 We work hard to differentiate our brand from generic looking sites you get with frameworks, which are pretty but many look the same? (we use tailwind too but modified to fit the brand)
Yeap I totally see your points these are some great insights - In your case you are into the B2C with lots of competition and in this case branding is super important (which also has a major influence on the visual design and UI strategy you'll follow)
If you are up for it it would be very interesting to me to have a call and discuss about your design strategy, how you user test your product and how you talk with your users to validate new ideas and features 😃 I am doing interviews every month with successful indie hackers on these topics and create UX articles for my newsletter here http://indiehackers.com/series/the-human-centered-maker (it's 650 subs at the moment)
I am sure many of us can learn a lot from your approach and get some inspiration as well!
Hey, thank you for asking that! If you'd like to talk to someone all about those topics, I'd recommend contacting the founder, @ValCanBuild to see if he is interested - it's his product and he knows it inside out! 😊
Just DMed him on Twitter - thanks a lot for replying and for being open to it! :-)
Thanks so much for writing all these!
regarding the design trap I wanted to keep my copy short, ideally I should say "product design" haha - that's good to keep in my mind for my next posts!
Regarding your views on the UI aspect I totally agree. It's a great way to sell your designs to stakeholders because humans are visual animals.
And your example with HN is great - ugly UI can cause plenty of issues and skepticism - an interesting fact on this example is that the good UX made it work in the end haha - the content is good, the usability is good and people still use it :D
You make good points - but I think it depends on the product and what competition you already have! If you've solving a burning need and nobody else is doing that yet, then yes it might not matter so much about the way it looks. But the way it looks can influence ease of use - which is super important! If you're creating a product that already has some competitors then your branding, design and overall UX/UI will help differentiate you.
I have seen products that fell down at the visual hurdle of appealing to users, even though they might work really well under the hood. Some developers really don't have an eye for visuals unfortunately (whic his cool, not everyone does) but recognising that and getting a designer to help you with it could make or break your product IMO. :) (posted twice by accident, apologies, deleted old one)
Totally agree with your points and huge thanks for taking the time to write and share your thoughts!
For example if it's B2B or B2C, it also influences the overall design strategy. Snapchat can't afford a boring non-fancy UI. But http://heroku.com on the other side can.
Finally just to make sure it's communicated well from my side (sorry I am a beginner in writing essays), I don't believe UI is not important or doesn't affect usability. What I tried to communicate is that if your product is easy to use but doesn't look fancy it's ok.
For example if you use https://tailwindui.com you have almost everything you need in terms of visual and UI design. This way you can mainly focus on designing user flows that are easy to follow, UX copy that is clear and easy to read, a navigation that is clear and interactive elements that are easy to distinguish and so on 🙂
I agree with this, lots of good points in the essay (and I love the format and conciseness, so easy to read!), but in a crowded market, interaction, ux, ui really makes a difference. for example, fin tech. Lots of apps out there, and lots of them do I want needed to do, but I don't really want something that just works, I want something with good, clear charts and graphics, easy and intuitive so I can operate with trust and understanding. If it actually makes me enjoy being in the app, like robinhood with their little confetti things, that's even better, for me and for them.
Great point! That's exactly what I meant as well! Focus on making it work in a simple clean and intuitive way. If it creates value for you as the user without making your life harder then you've done most of the work. The confettis are also really cool but not necessary in the end of the day. It's just this extra detail that will make the whole experience more joyful :)
Also thanks a lot for taking the time to write and share your thoughts!
Well said! I wish every designer I've worked with understood this.
Haha yes that was my main problem when I was working as a UI engineer!
There are so many designers that treat product as if they are marketing flyers that have to look fancy. And when this happens the developers are just tortured because they have to implement all this bullshit 😅
I like the format! Reminds me of Seth Godin.
https://seths.blog/
Good one! yes it's indeed pretty similar :) The format came from the https://ship30for30.com community - I joined them last week and we call them "atomic essays"
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