People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design
andrewcoyle.com

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104 points

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coyleandrew

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12 days ago

44 comments

krm01 ・ 12 days ago

Designer–engineer here. After 15 years building products [1] ,from scrappy side projects to multibillion-dollar platforms, I’ve found the most productive way to think about design is as a growth accelerant. The OP reaches a similar insight but keeps it in the realm of product development. That framing is precisely where the friction between engineering and design tends to arise. Design isn’t about making the code look nicer... it’s the bridge between engineering execution and business growth.

Take Dropbox’s much-debated rebrand. Many on HN dismissed it as superficial. What they missed is that Dropbox’s growth had plateaued. The new visual language wasn’t meant to "improve the product" for existing power users. it was engineered to make the product feel approachable to an audience the company had never reached. It worked.

When designers focus on the measurable business impact of their work—and engineers stop treating design as a decorative afterthought—cross-functional frictions fade and growth compounds.

[1] https://fairpixels.pro

  • baobun ・ 12 days ago

    > When designers focus on the measurable business impact of their work—and engineers stop treating design as a decorative afterthought—cross-functional frictions fade and growth compounds.

    Measurable business impact -> The dashboard becomes a battlefield and every team wants a modal for their feature release. Dark patterns come hand-in-hand.

    I think the world would be better if individual designers focused less on business growth metrics and more on holistic User Experience.

    • nickserv ・ 11 days ago

      > The dashboard becomes a battlefield and every team wants a modal for their feature release. Dark patterns come hand-in-hand.

      To me, this is exactly what the OP is going on against.

      If it's not cohesive, it's bad design.

  • 4b11b4 ・ 11 days ago

    A well designed comment

mrob ・ 12 days ago

I trust software more if it's ugly. Desktop software interfaces were pretty much solved by the late 90s. The majority of changes since then have been aimed at either dumbing down the software to better appeal to people who are easily manipulated and exploited, or just change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. And I choose to avoid mobile devices because every one of them is slow and frustrating compared to using a keyboard and mouse.

I believe modern UI designers provide me negative value on average. Ugly software is a good sign because tells me no designer was there to ruin it.

  • nickserv ・ 11 days ago

    These are business decisions, not design choices.

    > dumbing down the software

    "The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

    > change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs.

    "We've decided to rebrand to focus on XYZ market."

    > mobile devices because every one of them is slow

    "If we can run the website on the user's device we'll save on developer time."

    > Ugly software is a good sign because tells me no designer was there to ruin it.

    It just means they don't have the money to hire a good designer. Meaning no marketing department. For whatever reason designers don't do open source. Looking at you GIMP. Blender finally bit the bullet.

    • brudgers ・ 11 days ago

      "The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

      Non-experts is always a larger group than experts.

      A design prioritizing non-experts does not benefit experts.

      Moreover, experts know they are trying to solve hard problems and benefit from tools that recognize the nature of solving hard problems entails doing hard things.

      Or to put it another way, though there is a large market of people who don't play the violin, a ukulele is not a violin.

      • nickserv ・ 11 days ago

        Exactly. There is pressure to sell to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. This leads to "simplifying" the UI.

        Generally this means power users now have to click 3 times instead of 1.

        Of course there are alternatives, like having an advanced mode or keyboard shortcuts. But that takes time and effort for a typically smaller set of users.

  • ikr678 ・ 10 days ago

    Me too, but there is a hint of survivorship bias here. I trust most of the ugly software I am still using because it was designed well enough in the ugly era to survive til today.

    I have largelyforgotten all the bad ugly software.

  • ahartmetz ・ 12 days ago

    You seem to be using the most negative expressions possible. Maybe I'm also less upset because most of the software that I use (Linux, FOSS, KDE) is less affected. I'd call it making the software look less intimidating / more approachable and more fashionable. They can both make some sense, though in many cases I also don't like it. Some fashions are objectively worse than others, like hiding scrollbars in non-touch interfaces and making interactive elements look like regular text.

    IME, the ugliest software has not received much UX nor design work, and so the UX often sucks, too. Gitk comes to mind, it's very ugly and the weird diff scrolling behavior regularly gets me to where I don't want to go.

  • mcdeltat ・ 11 days ago

    > I trust software more if it's ugly

    Interesting point and I was thinking if I believe the same, but I can't completely agree. Reason is there's a decent chunk of software outside of the "mainstream" app space where the UI is ugly and also broken, likely because the author isn't a great developer. I'm thinking engineering and research type apps. They have the kind of bugs where clicks do nothing, user feedback is faulty, wrong sequence of clicks causes a crash, and it makes me instantly distrust the entire product.

  • jeroenhd ・ 11 days ago

    Following 90s design is how you get the atrocious GIMP 2 floating window mess. Furthermore, the standards in the late 90s and early 00s were so low because of the lack of available software packages that programs crashing your kernel was just part of the normal work week. Memory corruption wasn't treated as a problem unless it corrupted data on disk, because it was considered normal that a program couldn't run more than a few hours before committing memory corruption suicide.

    UI controls were standardized and programs stuck to them because they didn't have the CPU cycles to waste on styles, but that didn't prevent programs from using text areas as listboxes, abusing picture elements to stylize checkboxes, and picking whatever cursor the dev decided fit most (despite its name and intended use) when hovering over controls. The control schemes for anything 2D or 3D graphics were also designed by dice roll. Programs also regularly didn't fit on your screen unless you adjusted your resolution, because people often ran on lower resolutions to be able to use more colours. "This website works best in 1024x768" didn't just apply to websites.

    The 90s software that stuck around until today is good because it survived decades of competition and reinvention or because people who don't want to learn new software just refused to try something else. The thousands upon thousands of expensive software packages that looked just like it found their deserved deaths years ago.

  • SZJX ・ 9 days ago

    That doesn't seem to be talking about exactly the same point as the article is focusing on though.

shermantanktop ・ 12 days ago

This is the type of twaddle that I have come to expect from “designer” types. Constant boosterism and exhortations to respect their craft. And when left to practice said craft, the majority of the actual work product is visionary PPTs for execs and a pile of figma screens that barely cover the happiest of happy cases.

Sad thing is that I very much agree with the importance of design. But practitioners seem often insecure, inward looking and unconcerned about whether their dreams are actually workable. But they will talk your ear off about the “texture” of a font.

  • foldr ・ 12 days ago

    My pet peeve with the Figma drivers is that they tend to think of design as a 'phase' that happens before engineering. So as an engineer you are asked to implement a bunch of painstakingly laid out user interfaces that have never actually been used to do any work. IMO it's essentially impossible to design a good interface without feedback obtained from using it. Designers would be way more useful if they'd partner with engineers throughout the development process. But there seems to be huge cultural resistance to this mode of working. In fairness, a lot of business processes make more sense if you assume that having to talk to an engineer is one of the worst possible outcomes.

    • collingreen ・ 11 days ago

      Nice, sequential flow charts are easy to understand and pitch and they also make it nice for the folks at the front to say they did their part and any issues are now someone else's fault.

      When people try to diagram the actual process (closer to what you're talking about) it's just a giant circle (or "double diamond" for folks charging money for powerpoints) which isn't a tool that makes management feel easier or "on track".

      • shermantanktop ・ 11 days ago

        Worrying about how managers are feeling, what vibe they are into now, how they might misinterpret something they heard-it’s exhausting.

  • tikhonj ・ 12 days ago

    A problem I've seen in programming too: understanding and articulating the value of quality is necessary but nowhere near sufficient for actually doing good work! So you end up with folks who've gotten past the initial hurdle—developing taste and confidence—but, either individually or in an organizational context, are only able to do okay quality work. Not awful but not especially elegant or insightful either.

    And so we get people making totally reasonable arguments about the value of design and then producing polished but tasteless and shallow corporate products. Or we get people who start understanding the value of maintainable, understandable code, but get stuck on design patterns, "clean code" rules and "best practices" rather than conceptually clear, coherent and effective code design.

    I have some sympathy. Getting past that initial hurdle rests on skills and tacit knowledge that take time, practice and mentorship to build after you've developed an appreciation for good taste. And, especially in a corporate setting, you have to get most of that practice and mentorship in public.

Animats ・ 12 days ago

Oh, inevitably for a blog, this is about web site design.

Confidence in manufactured physical objects is more interesting. Discuss.

Raymond Loewy on a good day - The Honeywell Round.[1] The standard little round thermostat. It's still manufactured.[1]

Raymond Loewy on a bad day - the first attempt to make a steam locomotive look streamlined by adding a sheet metal body.[3] This bad idea caught on in the UK, for some reason, resulting in a whole series of difficult to maintain locomotives. Eventually he designed the look of an electric locomotive, the GG-1, which was very successful, looked very good, and had good access to the important working parts.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/meet-product-desig...

[2] https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-...

[3] https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...

  • CamperBob2 ・ 11 days ago

    Needs a "Danger: Rabbit Hole" warning. (Although the article says someone else designed the Honeywell thermostat, if I'm reading correctly.)

    • Animats ・ 11 days ago

      For a good sense of how to think about industrial design, here's Lowey's autobiography, "Never Leave Well Enough Alone".[1] Look for the before and after pictures of common objects he redesigned. In most cases, sales went up.

      As a bad example, see "Design for Dreaming", a 1956 General Motors promotion around the time the auto industry was reaching peak chrome and peak tailfin. This also introduced the first self-driving car, the Firebird 2.[2] (The self-driving didn't actually work in the Firebird 2. It did work in the Firebird 3, on a test track equipped with a guide wire.)

      [1] https://archive.org/details/neverleavewellen0000raym/page/38...

      [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG_KxSM6bTI

      [3] https://youtu.be/tG_KxSM6bTI?t=427

    • Animats ・ 11 days ago

      Oh, you're right. The Honeywell Round was by Henry Dreyfuss.

      A small number of designers who created the iconic objects of midcentury modern. Who do we have today? Johnathan Ive?

neepi ・ 12 days ago

And then that assertion may be shattered when they get to use it…

There’s a lot of nice looking crap out there.

  • mrtksn ・ 12 days ago

    As long as it performs the core function people keep trusting it. That's why people bother to deal with all the BS about passwords, captchas, user agreements, crashes, updates, reboots that systems designed by the "best of the best" put people through. Even Apple products no longer "just work".

    Don't for get that everything out there is a slop in some way. Apple's core promise since ever was to make computers easy to use and approachable and they improved a lot, enough to charge significant premium over the alternatives.

    Computers, software in particular is very low quality across the board. Not just in UX but overall technical implementation is also comically low quality, to the point that contains huge security issues that wouldn't ever pass as acceptable in any pre-computer utilities like microwave ovens or blenders.

    Software products most of the time offer no guarantees and it gets very expensive when quality and guarantees are involved through SLA.

  • badgersnake ・ 12 days ago

    Particularly in the age of AI generated slop. It’s almost zero effort to generate a nice looking page.

karmakaze ・ 11 days ago

> “If they couldn’t be bothered to align the text, what else did they overlook?” But a clean, coherent layout creates harmony. It shows someone cared. And that care is contagious. It makes the user care too.

It may only show that they cared enough to fool you into thinking the product is good. Good design can be hijacked to be a fake proxy for a good product. It's basically fruits and vegetables that look good to sell and taste bland.

  • SZJX ・ 9 days ago

    That's a similar thing to clothing though. You may argue how it can be manipulated all you want, but people do think in this way and it's a socially agreed upon contract to show you care enough about the occasion and have enough respect for the other people present. No head of state shows up to a meeting in shorts and slippers for a reason.

1970-01-01 ・ 11 days ago

If you can ignore the polarized politics and eye the Cybertruck objectively: sales are awful due to it being ugly. Everything about it is solid in terms of design, yet it looks awful and is destined to be a partial failure for Tesla.

SZJX ・ 9 days ago

It's mindblowing how the majority of the comments here seem to be rather cynical and distrustful. I'd be really discouraged if I were the author. I (as an engineer) found the article rather well-written and convincing! Well, at least it did get 100+ upvotes.

joduplessis ・ 12 days ago

The sweet spot is of course having function actually follow form. Very often this is where the whole thing breaks - good design, poor implementation.

  • ChrisMarshallNY ・ 12 days ago

    My current Git GUI is Atlassian SourceTree[0]. I’ve used it since before it was an Atlassian product (Yeah, yeah, I know that I’ve forfeited my geek cred, for using a GUI for Git, but it makes me a heck of a lot more productive).

    It’s not the prettiest app, but works well.

    Over the years, I have explored other Git GUI clients (I’m deliberately not calling them out by name), that have sometimes been drastically more attractive, but they have consistently fallen down, when it comes to functionality.

    The same goes for my text editor. I’ve been using BBEdit[1] for over 30 years. Again, its interface seems “dated,” compared to many slick apps that have competed with it, but I have always returned to it. I’m pretty sure that it can be customized to present a very modern UI, but I’ve never bothered. The classic presentation has always been fine for me.

    [0] https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree

    [1] https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

cranium ・ 12 days ago

That's a problem for products that have been vibe coded to the bone. They may look slick, but behind the scene they can be ugly and fragile.

  • anonzzzies ・ 12 days ago

    That is not unique to vibe: I know some platforms from huge companies that have so many bugs that you are lucky if can even use it. Like logging in is a kafkesque loop until it works, sometimes. Support blames the user (browser, cookies, but of course that's never it). These are not vibe coded, have plenty of €€€ and don't care at all. It is always serviced you need, have no or limited competition etc and they get paid no matter anyway. Many many many of those around. Easy to find too: banks, insurers (after the initial sale), airlines (after the initial sale) etc.

fifticon ・ 12 days ago

well, I have a parking timer installed in the windshield of my car, and it has a 'universally hailed' beautiful design.

It is an obnoxious hassle to replace the batteries on it, and equally so set the clock on it.

So, should I trust thus beautiful design to not be a hassle in daily use..? I long for an ugly parking timer that is easy to use, but those have been driven out of the market by this beauty.

  • JumpCrisscross ・ 12 days ago

    I mean, you bought it…

    • fifticon ・ 12 days ago

      I did, but the crux is, that this was governed by them driving competitors off the market, so I didnt have options to choose from. You could argue it's the same mechanism, but to me it is important at what point the cut-off hapoens. If I have multiple options, I would pick the more gadgetry one.

jongjong ・ 12 days ago

I have to agree with the article. IMO, the importance of design/aesthetics is beyond absurd and people have become laughably rigid. Design used to be about creativity, but now it's basically a boring data-driven science; there isn't much room for error. Rounded corners on your components could make the difference between a failed business and a multi-million dollar business. Or maybe a few fade-in animations...

I wish I was joking but I've had so many experiences where I built something with a ton of features with a perfect, bug-free UI and simple/clean design but people are like "The UI is basic" but then after spending just a few hours restyling, people will say "This is cool." It's the exact same UI, just a few more rounded corners and animations is all it takes sometimes.

As a developer, sometimes you spend days wiring complex logic together and the user gives you an apathetic shrug... Then you spend 5 minutes adding rounded corners and a subtle drop shadow and then it's like 'WOW, such a good feature', you code fast!

I've witnessed people dump perfectly functioning, great looking websites for more boring but trendy designs with less flexible functionality, more lock-in and higher costs. Design is important to an absurd extent.

Frankly, I don't like modern design trends, it's very information-scarce with huge fonts... Requires so much scrolling, makes my fingers and eyeballs tired from moving back and fourth! Also, I lose my train of thought before I finished reading the first paragraph.

I tried using Microsoft Windows OS after a few years of Linux and was surprised to find that the UI elements were just so massive, it was like trying to read a book through a keyhole! I was wondering WTF happened. It was like a scene out of planet of the apes!

The sad thing about it is that people have very little tolerance for creative designs nowadays; it's very boring/standard. I've seen more than a few memes going around about how logos of major companies have all become the same: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Finsightcre...

It's kind of disturbing. This feels like a systemic issue. I guess people have major trust issues. They have zero tolerance for anything slightly outside of the norm. You have to wonder what about our system makes people so universally distrusting... Well I think I may know the answer to that.

ctrlp ・ 12 days ago

Ironically, I instantly didn't trust this essay as I scanned it. The design and photo at the end confirmed my mistrust.

ac50hz ・ 12 days ago

The absurdity of the use of beauty in the descriptions of designs, code and equations is as absurd as telling me, who is certainly not a beauty, that there are clear personal defects and deficits because of that property, or lack of that property.

This can join the absurdity of the websites that proclaim _Made with love_.

Marketing nonsense that has nothing to do with functionality, utility, usability may certainly be useful for marketing, promotion, and leveraging nostalgic pangs, but let’s remember that these are usually vacant, sometimes deceptive and often inaccurate.

The deception of beauty and its insidious insertion into many different fields does little to advance those fields and detracts from accuracy, improvement and inevitability reality.

kome ・ 12 days ago

if beauty is objective, why his website looks so bad?

meelford ・ 10 days ago

It’s the same with articles: I tend to prefer those from scientific magazines, where decoration is minimal and the authors focus on conveying meaning, rather than those that are perfectly designed on Medium or LinkedIn but, in reality, are very shallow and often outdated. Most deliberately decorated products also look over-processed.

  • SZJX ・ 9 days ago

    That's the whole point of the article: It's not about "decoration", but about making the underlying UX flow make coherent sense.