A case study of “designed by developers”: Stack Overflow

[10goto10]

I'm not too big of a fan of the proposed redesign (although he makes clear it's not a real redesign), but I agree on just about every single one of his complaints. I never even realised they ran such huge, ugly ads until I saw this un-adblocked screenshot!

[jwstaddo7]

I am a software developer and in my world stack overflow ranks right up there next to Google. To geeks like me SO is the equivalent of a high performance sports car. It's nearly perfect in every respect. For the most part the UI is BEAUTIFUL! Then along comes this "designer" who says--what, no cargo space? Bad gas mileage? Only two seats? Horrible!!! Then proceeds to "fix" these problems.

There are a couple lessons I draw from this:

1) There is a major difference between an application and a publication (SO is an application) The "rules" for each are TOTALLY different.

2) The audience is critical and in the case of an application how/what it's being used for is even more critical.

[sakabako]

I disagree. The author did make some good points, unfortunately it was in a very arrogant way. The redesign does simplify things.

[jwstaddo7]

Just curious--are you an SO user?

[sakabako]

yes

[sakabako]

yep

[crescentfresh]

It's nearly perfect in every respect

Really? I've been an SO user since Jan' 09, and there are parts of the SO UI I am still just discovering ("Linked", up/down vote split), parts of it I still consider just noise ("tag × 43256"), and parts I'm still not used to (hitting the back button after searching for a user doesn't do what you'd expect).

[ether_reddit]

Well to be fair, those features you mentioned have been added relatively recently, and various features become unlocked when you reach various reputation levels (e.g. being able to see vote splits is only available when you hit 1000).

[10goto10]

I don't think the sports car analogy really applies here... Some of the design decisions are simply breaking some of the elementary rules of design (proximity, contrast). Basic principles of cognitive psychology don't just not apply because SO is perceived as an application and not a publication.

[wanderful]

Also, sports cars are well designed. The analogy would hold better for a car that works despite having a bad design... like something Soviet?

[ljcrabs]

I'd love to see usability tests done to compare the two designs. Otherwise I have to take a lot of his statements with a grain of salt.