We've seen mass exodus from Digg and Reddit. The inflection point is always design, 2008 when they messed up the Digg UX with promoted posts, the whole website went down in a dumpster fire. Reddit has been the same but inflection point was carried out through a couple of years as they went to a new design. Still, old.reddit.com is popular. Reddit has too much influx of new users, high churn rate to keep it from burning down.
Design is the reason for IBM. It is why Apple exists, Nike, Stripe, etc. Sure, a company can be successful without good design, but the ones that are built with design as a cornerstone of its foundation, are easy to spot - HN is one of those IMO.
I don't think so, even considering the paranthesis cases. People are addicted to its consistency. It stays the same, the way it worked, and stick to the principles of "don't fix if it aint broke". A forum is primary a forum, where people share ideas.
Trying to force in the industrial design principles of "best design" in to a forum is mixing up the true intention of "best design" thinking.
No such thing as "best design", there's just "different" design. Better design is the excuse producer give consumer to sell something similar yet different, implementing planned obsolecense through deisgn by making the consumer reaching for the "new" design. works for Apple, Nike, Stripe you name it because they constantly want to sell new products, that competes with their old product. To make a profit, the design becomes design for the sake of design. That principle goes against what a forum is supposed to be.
Digg collapsed sure, but where does the Reddit exodus come from? Even IF they had people leave because of the design (which I doubt would be significant numbers) it would not be remotely comparable to Digg.
There isn't really somewhere "quite like reddit" enough for reddit users to march off to en-mass in the same way, though I, people I know, and I suspect a large number of others, visit reddit a lot less than we once did and hang around less once we are there. So rather than an exodus there is more an epidemic of "meh".
I certainly don't contribute to "communities" there these days - and I think many others with a similar attitude is why some significant subs have fallen to rabid fighting where at least some insightful discussion once prevailed: the more reasonable voices have shuffled away so the more rabid ones increasingly stand out (and boy do they love it), pushing more "more reasonable" voices into shuffling away leaving the polarised trolls on all sides to fight amongst themselves, and so the spiral descends.
Though I'm not an ad-clicker, gold buyer, or anything else such, so I very much doubt the powers that be over at reddit care that I am not engaged.
What this website looks like, how fast it loads, and how simple it is are not reasons to post here.
People post to contribute their thoughts to the community. There are people here who we want to discuss things with. There are topics we're interested in that we have opinions about. We each want to be seen to be curious or knowledgeable about tech things.
The design of HN is good because it lowers the barrier to posting. It's simple and obvious how to use it[1]. Those are good things but they're not enough to keep people here. That comes from the links and the comments.
Good design isn't enough to make people here stay on a website. Bad design is enough for people to leave.
[1] Apart from all the stuff new users don't understand like the black bar, the username colors, why comments turn grey, why you can or can't vote etc. Those bits are less good design.
I agree that the main appeal of HN is undoubtedly the community. There's no other place where you can be exposed to so many no-bullshit comments and submissions from so many people so deeply embedded in the industry.
However, I disagree that the design has nothing to do with it. I think the spartan design keeps the appeal of HN low for those who don't fully appreciate the value the community itself brings. Case in point, many people who post here are also probably on Twitter and/or Facebook. But Twitter and FB knowingly pursue such directions in their UI and UX and overall service design that having anything like HN on those platforms is all but impossible.
Hmm... these things are hard to tell. I’ll give you my personal motivation to stay here and that’s unquestionably the design. I never got hooked on Slashdot because that site was an eye sore (sorry!).
Usually, good design fades in the background when it’s good. So we give the credit to other things.
What this website looks like, how fast it loads, and how simple it is are not reasons to post here.
With the emphasis on 'here', I think they are very important factors.
It's lazy that simple afforances to make it easy to use on mobile devices haven't been implemented.
There are a lot of people here that have slower bandwith than a pigeon, and they are very very happy that the HN staff tries to save every bit and byte.