I do question it. I am happy to have substantive conversations, and improve things. You may not realize it but the current site(s) other than the Development page are the result of years and hundreds of iterations with people who expressed criticism just like yours. Including professionals. And thus what you say at this point is one data point — but you can’t please everyone.
People often point out problems in design aesthetics, and imagine that the opposite solution somehow can be realized in a consistent way that makes everyone love the result and will make the difference in platform usaage, but no. That’s not how it works at all. It’s like the people who say “your app doesn’t work” to a developer (with no details on a solution should be), and imagine that somehow this will lead to a much better app with no bugs that everyone will use.
At the end of the day, adoption matters far more. Facebook is cluttered and ugly compared to many other clean beautiful apps, but people are super used to it. Discord is totally bewildering, with tiny gifs for flair and many controls are extremely hard to discover and operate, but people are used to where things are. Craigslist is ugly but at least it’s straightforward. Many more beautiful sites fell by the wayside as they tried to take it on (remember kajiji? others?)
As for Yang 2020… your criticisms are fine but you should realize the design wasn’t ours. It was, in fact, following the design guide here since each community designs their own portal:
You see, when you are designing a tool can be reused in many different environments with hundreds of variations that could go either way, and still has to work, then you realize that the design decisions aren’t so simple and that these may be the least bad after having gone through exactly the process you described.
Look, if Payload’s GIANT SCROLLING TEXT and white text in black over white text on black was the unavoidable result of hundreds of iterations, then I’d accept it. I personally think there are good reasons for what we have done, having tried tons of other variations. But I don’t think the GIANT SCROLLING TEXT, or making all links look exactly like the text, is necessary or the inevitable result of iterating. We HAVE been listening to criticism and THIS is the result.
People often point out problems in design aesthetics, and imagine that the opposite solution somehow can be realized in a consistent way that makes everyone love the result and will make the difference in platform usaage, but no. That’s not how it works at all. It’s like the people who say “your app doesn’t work” to a developer (with no details on a solution should be), and imagine that somehow this will lead to a much better app with no bugs that everyone will use.
At the end of the day, adoption matters far more. Facebook is cluttered and ugly compared to many other clean beautiful apps, but people are super used to it. Discord is totally bewildering, with tiny gifs for flair and many controls are extremely hard to discover and operate, but people are used to where things are. Craigslist is ugly but at least it’s straightforward. Many more beautiful sites fell by the wayside as they tried to take it on (remember kajiji? others?)
As for Yang 2020… your criticisms are fine but you should realize the design wasn’t ours. It was, in fact, following the design guide here since each community designs their own portal:
https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1665227124477248/Yang%20Gang%2...
You see, when you are designing a tool can be reused in many different environments with hundreds of variations that could go either way, and still has to work, then you realize that the design decisions aren’t so simple and that these may be the least bad after having gone through exactly the process you described.
Look, if Payload’s GIANT SCROLLING TEXT and white text in black over white text on black was the unavoidable result of hundreds of iterations, then I’d accept it. I personally think there are good reasons for what we have done, having tried tons of other variations. But I don’t think the GIANT SCROLLING TEXT, or making all links look exactly like the text, is necessary or the inevitable result of iterating. We HAVE been listening to criticism and THIS is the result.