Re:Show HN: Hacker News Redesign
by owenmarshall on Tuesday July 08, 2014 @12:01PM
(#8005173)
> The square "y-meter" idea is neat, but it's difficult to parse at a quick glance. A circle might be a better alternative, where the size and intensity of the circle indicate the strength of the story.
Yes, yes, yes. It's funny because the "y-meter" is at the same time the thing that interests me the most & the thing that I find the most inscrutable.
* The scaling feels off. Half the box means 51 points and the whole box means 401? In eighths, the transitions go {1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8} which just makes my head ache.
* When you have crummy eyes some of the transitions are hard: [51,100] looks too close to [101,200] and [201, 400] and [400, +inf) is just impossible without squinting.
Overall it feels like there is more noise than information, which is a bummer. Maybe if it scaled a little more smoothly or changed lightness as an added visual indication it'd work better for me.
Of course if there's one thing everyone loves to do, it's bikeshed!
Given that it's eighths, I would have expected an appeal to the 'hacker' part, and use powers of 2 for the scaling.
- This should be coded and turned into a working prototype! I imagine an HN reader with some spare time on their hands might attempt this.
- The square "y-meter" idea is neat, but it's difficult to parse at a quick glance. A circle might be a better alternative, where the size and intensity of the circle indicate the strength of the story.
- The order of each story element in your comp goes like this: Title, username, URL, and finally comments. I think the URL is a lot more important than the user who submitted it.
- The orange •'s in the string are distracting. A significant space, something like three or four 's might be a better way to separate those components.
- Having an arrow in addition to the y-meter is kinda noisy. Those could be combined. Sorta like Svbtle's hold-your-mouse-here-to-vote ... if the y-meter was replaced with a circle, it could expand or :hover into an arrow to vote. Not suggesting hovering will cause a vote, but rather a hover will indicate that you can vote.
- Having the comments encapsulated in the little comment bubble is fun, but at first glance the type looks way too tiny and having it orange is tough on the eyes. It's doing more harm than good.
- The stories could use a bit more vertical padding between them.
Finally, don't take these comments the wrong way. I think 90% of the time something feels great inside of Photoshop, especially after mucking around with it for hours or days, but the only way to prove that the UI is great is to actually build it and play around with it.
I hate to say it, but people keep "redesigning" HN without actually solving any significant problems. The only problem this site has right now is that it's unfriendly on mobile devices. Every other attempt has just been putting lipstick on a pig. That being said, it's a fun exercise and thanks for sharing your version. You put a lot of great thought into this and it's fun to read these.