Make something as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit.
In this specific example the whole purpose of the request system is to vote and secondarily get other people to vote with you. The new design eliminated almost everything that made the old one useful. It isn't simpler, it's simplistic.
People are copying the pointless "elegant simplicity" signalling of the new Apple Macbook. I think this is probably one of the best filters you can find, if you are perceptive enough to be able to use it: See whether or not someone prioritizes signalling over actual functionality/semantic content/logic. Observe how often this happens. Compare the effort that goes into signalling versus more substantive observation and analysis.
If someone isn't self aware of their signalling, and hasn't differentiated that concept from actual value/competence, quietly disengage.
My reaction was Nope, roll back to the previous version.
The new interface feels very unconventional, in fact. It may become convenient once you've learned what everything means, but until then you'd feel puzzled.
~~ Of course, I could not try to work with the old site, but the old screenshots looked more informative than the new ones. Not surprised at all by the results.
It's hard to imagine something simpler. HN even maintains a good information density.
What am I trying to communicate? Can someone easily get that information from my site? If there is interaction - is it easy for the user to figure out what to do?
The questions that actually get asked when designing a website:
Does it feel modern? Am I using the latest technologies? Would I feel comfortable telling my buddies how I created the site?
I have nothing against modernizing a site, other than the fact that it's not that important, and it's really easy to screw it up.
http://www.yale.edu/fin-bus/resources/docs/SurvHandbookChap3...
"To be honest, the graphic below is pretty much useless. I just think it’s pretty, so it’s staying in."
"I was FORCED to conduct usability studies"
One obvious example being Amazon.
As a consumer I will generally go with whoever gives me the most information about whatever I'm doing/learning/buying with the least clicking around. Indulging in the modern "design" trend of giving me 5 million white pixels is not how you sell stuff to me. I'm not looking to buy white pixels, I'm all stocked up on those.
That surprises me, since when I visit Amazon's UK homepage my fan kicks-in and there's a noticable delay before I can start typing-in the product for which I want to search; all so that they can load an enormous Prime promotion carousel and rows upon rows of 'product suggestions' in which I have never shown any interest. Today it includes pearl ear-rings.
OT: I really miss Yegge's writing. I wish he publish more.
Yes, and they were wrong for any meaningful sample of websites. You can point to ugly yet hugely successful websites but that ignores the millions of ugly, failed websites that have long since stopped serving visitors. And equally, there are examples of beautiful sites that work and beautiful sites that didn't.
How good a website looks has a short term impact on how it's perceived, but great content (where "content" has a lot of different meanings) is always more important. That's true regardless of how much effort you spend on design.
"aesthetics is orthogonal to usability". not "all ugly websites are usable".
Reddit got popular when Digg was redesigned.
That medium gray text is harder on the eyes.
There are actually a few etymologies for the term in architecture. It does often imply a deliberate crudeness and a harshness, supposedly an honest response to the character of the materials. To the untrained eye this is close enough to "ugly" that most people don't distinguish. There's also a very strong argument that brutalism represents a turn away from the values of western humanism (typically expressed, historically, in classical architecture) toward a vulgar, bleak conception of modernity. Another aspect is that it tends to be "sublime" rather than "beautiful", which, again, translates to negative vibes for many people.
It's not a term that I'm happy to see being applied now to some essentially cosmetic aspects of web design.
I share a similar peeve as you with the use of "women" as an adjective. All through grade school and high school, the use of "women" as a noun was pummeled into my head. Now, I routinely see presumably college-educated journalists use it as an adjective ("women scientists", "women engineers", etc.)
Indeed, this is by far the usual case. People collectively can, and do, reject almost all proposed novel usages, which are quickly forgotten. We just remember the few cases where things change due to survivorship bias.
"People" aren't really a useful measure here because there is slang that achieves popularity out of the subculture that produces it, subcultures composed of people, just the same as it may not propagate, in which case it naturally remains useful to the in-group. To reject slang as valid language until it achieves mainstream acceptance is a) not measurable as there is no line that is crossed, and b) antisocial.
Anyway, I came up with a better definition: accepting a word/usage is believing that it's a good way to express whatever it was.
I myself will never use "literally" to mean "very," which differentially lowers the chance of this new meaning becoming standardized. Over time, either most people will do the same and the proposed novel usage of "literally" to mean "very" will die out, or else most people will collectively adopt the new meaning.
Empirically, almost all novel usages die out very quickly and are forgotten. Read some slang from the 1920s -- it's already almost incomprehensible to a modern reader.
If you would now go ahead and use it to describe a concept of a different scope where it does not apply at all, say web designs, you could do that, but you would expose that you just tried to name something in a sciency way to sound sophisticated without having any idea what the term actually means.
As for the term itself, there's always a risk of imprecision when laypeople discuss the concepts used in certified professions.
There's a 2004 paper along the lines you mention by Simon Yuill: http://www.lipparosa.org/essays/code_brut.pdf
Edit: Somebody should write a manifesto about it.
Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. Not that fancy or flat design is bad. But the sheer simplicity of ugly websites forces people to focus on the content, context and functionality. The ugly websites pointed out were MySpace and Craigslist mainly, but you could probably add a few others like Drudge Report and Plenty of Fish. Even Hacker News is pretty "ugly" but it obviously works great.