In his 2004 AIGA magazine piece It’s Good to Be Bad, David Volgler observed a troubling trend in web design. Pointing to six popular but ugly websites (including the infamous hampster dance site) Volgler said he’s “haunted by a troubling question: does a website have to be well-designed to be popular?” The six sites that Volgler mentions are all, by any reasonable aesthetic judgment, ugly. Even worse, they’re annoying. But does ugly and annoying mean poorly-designed?
Robert Scoble recently raised a similar point concerning Craigslist, MySpace, and Google. He suggested that in some cases ugly sites are more appealing than pretty ones because they are more authentic, less commercial, and look like they were done for love instead of money. Here Scoble questions a major tenet of design by suggesting that ugly is not only not bad design, but good design.
Discussions like these raise the hackles of many web designers. Andy Rutledge, in Hungry, Want another Bullshit Sandwich? responds with an argument that echoes the feelings of many designers: sites like these succeed for one reason: they executed before anyone else. He suggests that Google’s simplicity trumps their poor design, which is “unremarkable and poorly laid out”.
Jason Santa Maria, in Pretty Ugly, focuses on design as communication, something we can all agree with. However, he also suggests that good visuals aren’t everything, saying, “The plain fact is that some people are content with something that just works.”
The MySpace Problem
Santa Maria’s observation is the crux of what I call the MySpace Problem. The MySpace Problem is when hugely successful web sites succeed while looking ugly. They work, but they don’t look very good. They look as if they were created by an engineer, not a trained visual designer. The mere existence of sites like MySpace goes against some of our more refined visual sensibilities.
The most difficult part of the MySpace problem is that, despite what designers might think about it, and how they might have made it look, MySpace is actually a well-designed website. Who could argue with this? MySpace has grown faster than any site in the history of the Web, and in two short years garners nearly as much traffic as Yahoo! If that growth and popularity isn’t a metric of good design, then what is?
Still, one could look at MySpace and claim that its visual design is lacking. They could claim that if it were improved visually, the site would be even more successful than it is now. However, this is a difficult claim to make, given that MySpace went from nothing to one of the most successful sites in the world faster than anybody else. It’s hard to improve on that. In addition, the change from what it is now to something different might negatively affect how people feel about it, especially modifying someone’s personal profile page!
Learning from MySpace
Instead of wondering what MySpace could be, let’s learn from what it is. Let’s assume (forgetting visuals for a moment) that MySpace is well-designed instead of condemning it as a visual failure. Let’s ask the obvious questions: why is it so popular? What makes it so successful? The answers to these questions might make us rethink our basic assumptions, but will make our future designs stronger as a result.
Separating the looks of MySpace from how well it works is a difficult challenge. Even when we know better it is hard to do. We look at MySpace and our initial reaction is that it is poorly-designed, whether we mean to or not. In a 2003 NYTimes article Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer, talked about this difficulty in reference to the iPod:
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like… People think it’s this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
If design is how something works, as Jobs says, then good design is something that works well. This idea helps us understand how MySpace works. To the people who use it, the visual design of MySpace communicates one message loud and clear: MySpace is your social life. Every feature, every design element, serves to reinforce this. It may not be pretty, but as long as people can easily hang out virtually with their friends, it doesn’t have to be. So in terms of communicating value to its users, MySpace actually does a very good job.
Granted, the visual design of MySpace is simplistic, brutely exposing its content. But is that a knock against it, or a compliment to it? Sometimes as designers we feel the need to repurpose and restyle content out of its raw form. MySpace, however, shows that simple exposure might be all that’s needed. Danah Boyd, who researches MySpace, writes about designing to allow for personal style: “Don’t design for perfection - design for reinterpretation. No matter how perfect you see your design, it will be modified, altered or manipulated in use.”
Challenge is Good
The MySpace Problem challenges visual designers everywhere to question the relationship between looking good and working well. It turns some of our previously-held notions on their heads. This is a good thing!
We should embrace tough issues such as the MySpace Problem. We should continually ask: what makes good design? How do people use design in their lives? These questions are important to ask, not only to push ourselves as designers, but to help communicate that value to others.
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I think the Jobs quote is being misinterpreted. When he says, “Design is how it works.” and you say “good design is something that works well.” you seem to overlook that most of Myspace’s features don’t work well. They’re cumbersome, finicky… the list could go on and on.
You’re right that good design is something that works well. The iPod works well because the UI simple enough to use with one hand.
I would argue that Myspace has purposely created a cumbersome system so that it can take people through ten steps — so that it can show more ads and generate more revenue. Smart, I grant you, but not good design, in my opinion.
I agree with your final statements. Kudos!
I think it is often lost on some that design does not necessarily have to “look” pretty.
Yes, I believe that a site that is visually appealing would probably have brought a different, more refined user to myspace, but honestly, is that really what MySpace users care about?
I think the average myspace user would rather have it be “their design” with “their videos” and “their content,” even if it makes those of us refined folk feel dirty.
MySpace didn’t succeed because of it’s design. MySpace succeeded because of it’s flexibility. It allows simple users the ability to create their own customized space. The design is there as a placeholder - fine for those who don’t care, but easily replaced with a customized template.
It’s not that it’s ugly, it’s that it lets the users define their own little place of ugliness.
[…] Attention all web designers! Vitamin has released a new web article that I believe will be an inspiration and benefit to you. Its called, “The MySpace Problem and it deals, in a very balanced way, while ugly sites are becoming popular. Steve Jobs sums the answer to ugly design’s popularity and how we can attribute to making better sites; he said this about the iPod, “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” […]
MySpace is actually a well-designed website. Who could argue with this?
Anyone who tried to upload some songs, edit a profile etc. …
Looking at someone elses profile ‘works’, but once you’re editing your own stuff, it really is the worst monster I have ever seen. It feels like it’s coded in one big Perl file, and the first revision was checked into RCS on november 1994.
But it seems that can’t stop a web application to become popular, if you’re the first to execute.
A pitty though, If I were a codemonkey at Myspace, I would have nightmares with self-induced projectile vomiting sessions every night ;-)
I agree with the “first to execute” theory. For instance, take a look at Digg. Digg is very clean and very very well designed. The v3.0 design is even better.
Sometimes I wonder if what I think is good design is considered worthless by 99% of the internet. What if 99% of internet users simply don’t care?
[…] This article tries to explain why some websites with really ugly designs do so well regarding usage. I think it dances around the reality of the situation. These sites are ugly because they weren’t professionally designed. They were implemented to be functional and to get into the marketplace (budget/time/resource limitations). The reason they are successful is because they were either: innovative, viral (word of mouth), or just plain useful. […]
Let’s not kid ourselves here… you’re making an arguement that MySpace is designed well and it works well, but when was the last time you went a whole day and a MySpace page didn’t take 15 seconds to load or got a login failure or server too busy error? It’s true that people like something that just works, but in my opinion, MySpace rarely just works.
Look at the users, i’d say a great portion of the people that use myspace are the ones that FWD all those “if you don’t send this to 100 of your friends you’re going to have bad luck forever!!!” kind of emails, and thus could care less how myspace looks. These are also the ones helping microsoft win their battle with malware… lol
Bad design / Good design - design is what works best for the intended audience and I don’t feel there is one set design structure for all.
A crappy blue bar and some white text looks good to all myspace users becuase they don’t care - they just want to be able to talk about the party last night or post pictures of them and their friends and be able to talk about stuff they can’t in front of their mom and dad or teachers. It works for them - hence good design in that respect.
I, too, think 99% of the internet users really don’t care how a site looks. They are too overwhelmed by ads, links and information in general too care if the menu is clean or the drop shadow of your <hr /> is pretty.
99% of the internet users don’t know that changing something dynamically on a website without reloading is done by AJAX and cool because there are many different techniques involved.
99% of the internet users don’t have a clue why 1% awaits the day the Internet Explorer supports alpha transparency in PNGs.
And that’s OK. They don’t have to know.
Though I still think that MySpace pages are as ugly as all the frames using my dog, my cat, my family websites from many years ago…
Jesse James Garrett has a much better explanation of why MySpace is ugly:
“If the default presentation and the common areas of MySpace had cleaner, more professional designs, users might hesitate to customize their spaces, feeling intimidated by having their amateur design work side-by-side with the professional-looking defaults. Instead, the unpolished style invites users to try things out, telling them they don’t have to be professional designers to participate.”
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2005/
id20051230_570094.htm
Myspace offered me the incentive (as a social networking site) and the ease to begin very simple programming which I had never done before. Sure it’s not the fanciest code in the world, but it offers a way to present a few cultural tidbits that I have collected from the world as I’ve seen it. Another thing I like about myspace is the number of groups popping up with strong political messages. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see a myspace president elected in the next cycle (for better or probably worse)!
The one thing I don’t like is the pornbots which constantly send friend requests (and then redirect you to a porn site) or the hangups on pages which come and go. I also don’t know how much longer Rupert Murdoch and Co. will allow political dissent to be dissemenated through their servers. Otherwise… I’d say the success of myspace speaks for itself — when before have so many people coded their own pages?
Mike R.: Let’s assume for a second that MySpace did succeed because its flexibility. The question then becomes…is flexibility part of design? Is making an interface flexible enough for people to create their own customized template part of design?
That’s the question…if design is how it works, then I would argue that yes, flexibility *is* part of the design.
[…] read more | digg story Posted by Weston Deboer Filed in Links […]
[…] The MySpace Problem and the question of what makes good design - the veneer or the functionality? My question is when MySpace stops being cool (pls don’t say it will always be cool) then how many users will remain? […]
I’m not sure I buy this whole “first to execute” explanation for MySpace’s success. Most successful websites are actually not the first out the gate. Digg was preceded by Slashdot and Kuro5hin, MySpace was preceded by Friendster and many others etc etc.
I don’t think ‘good design’ or ‘first to execute’ are anything more than minor factors in the success of any product. Engineers and designers don’t want to hear this, but the number one factor is marketing. Sometimes a great product can succeed on its own due to word-of-mouth, but those are the extreme cases. If you have the best product since sliced bread then you don’t need much marketing. Likewise, if your product is just worthless, it won’t matter how many billions you throw into marketing, it won’t succeed.
For the vast majority of products/websites/whatever the rise to popularity is pretty simple. First a user has to hear about it. After that they may use it and decide that the effort to use it is worth the trouble/cost. The perceived value of the product tends to vary more than the perceived trouble. In other words, if someone wants to use a website, they’ll make an effort to use it despite any usability shortcomings. Likewise, an easy to use site is not going to make people want to use it.
Where design and usability really make a difference are in the areas of general feelings and first impressions about a product/website/company, and discovering new information and features within a website. Depending on what you’re doing those things may matter more or less to you, but they need to be put in proper perspective.
You get guys like Andy Rutledge railing on and on about how horrible Google’s design is, and how they would benefit so much from a ‘good’ design, but it just comes off as sour grapes from a designer who’s bitter that people don’t ‘get’ design. Well, Tyson above is right, 99% of people don’t give two shits about design. Google’s usability is fine. You go to the site, you type in a search, you hit return. The argument could be made that they’d get better exposure to their other services if they did some design work, but honestly it ain’t broke. They’d better do some pretty heavy-duty research before they decide to change something that’s familiar to people, because familiarity is another asset that’s minimized far too often by designers.
Now MySpace is a different story. Their design and usability is truly horrendous. Their main asset is their userbase. How did they get so popular? Bands. Because bands could set up a page with music and other custom content, they got their fans to sign up too. Local music fans are one of the most social and trendy groups you can tap into to hit the vital 18-35 demographic. The fact that the site is barely usable is meaningless. People will jump through a lot of hoops if they see value in it (ie. all their friends and favorite bands are on MySpace). Now they’ve got familiarity, which I guess is the main advantage for a ‘first to execute’, but I don’t think it would be too hard for MySpace to have their position usurped. After all, their core userbase is a fickle bunch. It would just take a critical mass of users to make the switch and MySpace would die pretty quick like Friendster.
Ultimately I think that visual impression is just less important for the majority of websites. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow for graphically oriented web designers, but think about some different media. Television commercials for instance, have 30 seconds to grab you and make an impression. The sensory impact is everything. Or take printed posters or billboards; they need to grab your attention and communicate something within a few seconds. A website on the other hand is a place people go voluntarily looking for a bit of information, or to perform a certain function. It’s not that design and usability aren’t important, it’s that they’re trumped by functionality and content.
I realize the Joshua isn’t making this simple of an argument, but if you accept the premise that rapid expansion/largest market share=best design, then Windows is the best OS out there. It’s essentially a tautology; consumers want the best product, the best products should be the most popular, therefore the most popular products are the best. There’s a lot left out of that equation.
That being said, I am not a designer, but I would say to all the designers out there that the lesson of MySpace is that function will always trump form, particulaly if the function fills a need that isn’t being filled. People forget that when iPods first came out, there were really no large capacity mp3 players on the market. People freaked because “They have a HARD DRIVE IN THEM!” The design is great, but really the function is what made them huge. All you have to look at to prove this is compare the increases in Apple’s iPod sales and their increase in computer sales, the latter being a need that is already pretty well served. Then, if you fill this unfilled need, you can use that base to springboard into the realm of trend-based-hyper-inflation (which is the case with both MySpace and iPods).
>> They work, but they don’t look very good. They look as if they were created by an engineer, not a trained visual designer.
Ugh, please. There is beauty in engineering and MySpace isn’t a result of any kind of engineering.
More accurately MySpace looks “as if it were created by a high school student who’s tried 5 times to pass the high school equivalency exam.”
It’s remarkable how designers seem to keep missing the most important point: Users are goal driven. You’re dead on by pointing out it works in a way users need it to; Jakob Nielsen would wholeheartedly agree.
eBay tried for years to redesign the site to make it “more visually appealing” and the users hated it. eBay users don’t want the site to be pretty; they want it to work.
Note that this kind of “working” is different from “reliability”; Friendster was way ahead of MySpace, but the old software engineering rule “Poor performance is preferable to poor reliability” is what sunk Friendster.
David, agreed, there is beauty in engineering. But, engineers aren’t visual designers, and they are often set at odds against each other (perhaps they shouldn’t be). Substitute any non-designer group you like…
I think the problem is that the writter of this blog entry doesn’t really understand design.. or for that matter web design and development.. The questions asked are sort of besides the point.. He or she is reacting against popular missconceptions..
Visual design is important, it’s presentation.. Presentation is the difference between Macy’s and Walmart… Presentation is what made Mr. Shindler so successful with that there list of his.. There are a number of studies that are showing that users don’t trust butt ugly amateurish looking websites.. because of the lack of quality of the presentation… It would seem to communicate something about the value of the content being presented.. that it is so bad. I think myspace and craigslist.. they’re not pretty… But they’re also not so incompetently bad.. One might wonder what would happen if MySpace was “designed better,” you know.. ajax based profile browsing.. which is a bit more then a purely visual design issue. What if myspace was more web 2.0…. How about a decent color scheme? You know.. the little things..
There’s some truth to users being attracted to content that looks “more real,” which clearly has a lot to do with the social networking aesthetic.. and the rise of the DIY movement.. But that isn’t quite the same thing as meaning that good visual design isn’t important. This really gets to what I’d argue is the real reason for the sucess of myspace.. which is a rather web 2.0-esk thing.. in that the value of the site comes from it’s users.. the users provide the value and content. When you look at things like microformats and what a truly open architecture for social networking might do to a site like myspace.. If you where running myspace you’d better be looking at these sorts of questions… or your days at the top might be numbered. And of course this has nothing to do with visual design…
I suppose the basic thing is just to understand the difference between Interface usability, information architecture, graphic design.. etc… And let us not forget the business plan and how all these various things work together….
Separating structure, (how it works,how its built, both of which will play a part in how it looks), from content, is the key to understanding how sites like myspace and google become so popular. It is surely possible for the utility or usefulness of a product or service to outstrip its design aestetic to the point of becoming hugely popular. Additionally, both of those sites have no real competition in areas such as free exposure and market saturation. Just try launching a visually distasteful product or ‘ugly’ packaging in a competitive and saturated market (anyone remember the Edsel) and the value of a professional design aestetic becomes apparent.
I agree again with the “first to execute” theory. Furthermore, it seems to me it’s popularity is self propagating thanks to it’s nature as a social gathering website. Think about it — all your friends are at Myspace, but you’ve found a new social gathering site that is leaps and bounds better designed and implimented in every imaginable way. You say “HEY GUYS, LET’S ALL GO THERE INSTEAD!”. Will they move? Probably not. Why? Because you’re just one person at this new site. The rest of their friends are still at Myspace. Yes, you might motivate a few to move over but then they’re stuck in the same empty boat you are. It’s so much easier to stay where you are than move someplace better. A social gathering website like myspace BECOMES popular because it’s first to execute — it STAYS popular because you’re hooked in. Moving to the competition is pointless if your friends don’t move too.. and their friends… and their friends’ friends…..
i love myspace, but i would like to see some new colors. also, i wish you could scroll through the bulletins on the main screen. it seems ineffective to show only 5 at a time.
I believe the success of Myspace and, in the same area, LiveJournal, can be attributed to two main elements: functionality and customization.
Places like Google, Craigslist, etc have the advantage of being first, yes, and that’s a big thing, but they also have the advantage of being the first that worked well. LiveJournal and Myspace have the added advantage that much of it’s functionality is social; when it works well, it works well to build on itself by connecting people.
The second point, which deals more on social and personal sites, is the ability to customize it. I’ve seen this in video games, where people can spend literally hours fiddling with how a character will look or how their space ship is decked out… hours, before ever playing the actual game. The ability to make something your own, to make it unique to yourself is a big draw to many people.
Being the first isn’t what makes a product work, exposure is what makes it work. Windows got exposure, Google got it, MSN messenger beat down ICQ because of it, Internet Explorer is still reigning because of it, MySpace seems no different.
Even though design and/or quality may get you exposure sometimes it’s just timing, knowing the right people or investing enough money on marketing.
In the end the largest mass of users will not know you, will not understand you and will not have a clue what is good or what isn’t. They’ll simply pick you just becase ‘everybody else’ does.
I really don’t have to say anything at this point about the “MySpace Problem” because much of the comments made already have made my point for me. I believe that MySpace had the right idea, at the right time, with the right marketing. But, if the “Design” of the website meant how well it works, well it really doesn’t work that well at all.
For Example: Try clicking on the “Blogs” link at the top of the page while you’re logged in. It’s been giving me an error page since the first time I noticed it. Still does. The website is in perpetual beta, quite sad.
I have notified MySpace about many problems over the past year, and none of them have been fixed. And, I am sure I was not the first or last person to mention it, either.
Since then, I have started developing a much better social network website. Still maintaining a very customizable profile, but with alot more ease and many more features. The design and flow of this website will make you weep. It’s like a breathe of fresh air.
Lifealicious, Coming soon.
[…] How it’s possible that poorly-designed, ugly, websites like MySpace can get huge popularity? Joshua Porter tries to answer on Vitamin, citing a remarkable statement from Steve Jobs: “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like… People think it’s this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” […]
design is not equal to beautifull. i think google’s success is due to it’s design.
i can open google page 50 times in a day and i never get tired, in fact, it’s my browser web page. i would never do the same thing with this page, even though i think it is well designed.
google design as a concept: less is more.
MySpace is ugly because people who use it are ugly. Please send me all counterexamples.
My Space is popular because the designers followed a proven plan. Stupid is popular, just look at prime time TV or the 2004 election.
If we are from the internet related industry, then the design is important, but myspace is for the rest who’s not related to this industry, they don’t care, for them, myspace design is great, and they can add on their even greater design. You can just do this test, get someone who’s newbies, ask him to design his site using a simple front page, I can assure you 100% of them will turn out to be similar to their own myspace/profile site..that represent a huge chunk of users, we are talking about over 100 millions people who still know nuts about design, but like colorful and and things that flash here and there..
my space is not intended to be for designers nor for quality amateurs. I think the succesful idea is the:put everything representing YOU in this space, even if it is a messy crap and eyes hurting, but it’s YOUR space, and they make you think YOu did it on your own!!!!! (with templates and such) it’s quantity of stuff more than quality
[…] Artiklen The MySpace Problem omhandler MySpace meget specifikt, og MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works følger op på det. […]
[…] More… Posted in Web Design | […]
Wil mentioned it, but among the 20-something crowd, self-customization is vastly important. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who equate my web design and drawing skills to magic, who wish they could be designers because then they could make awesome Flash animations and webcomics and websites about themselves. My demographic is always looking for ways to express “themselves” or “the world in their eyes”, and if you can let them do that not only by means of posting their own messages, links, stories, but creating their own web designs with no holds barred? That’s Internet gold right there.
LiveJournal rewards its paid customers with scores of user icons, so that even if you don’t have the skills to make your own custom template, you can add a little 100px by 100px statement of individuality to every one of your posts. Indeed, when trying to decide if they want to pay or not, the only thing that comes into my friends’ minds is their icon count.
Gaia Online literally pays off people to socialize and build a sense of community on their forums by letting you dress up your doll-like avatar in cool, pop-culture-reflective clothes. At least it’s somewhat pretty, if a little effeminate.
Deviant Art opened up a new world of possibilites for visual artists to showcase their work to their friends. Easy to post your work, encourages feedback, display your favorite art from other people on your personal profile page, and even blog a little.
And of course, later came MySpace, which… and this might be the difference of all differences… lets you put songs or videos on your page as well as pictures. That’s what made it the twenty-something musician’s social network of choice. Up until then, all the un-websavvy blogger could do was post their favorite song’s lyrics (and god, do they post lyrics). Of course, it’s always a struggle to get your social network to move someplace else, but I’d be curious to see how a well-designed site that lets you easily blog and host music/movies for all your friends to see would compete with MySpace.
Though if self-customization is what endears them to the system, it’s always going to be the social network that makes them stay. I could teach all these people the simple snippits of HTML they’d need, and then they could post all the stuff they could possibly want to the Internet, but they’d never do it. Because it doesn’t have a forum, it doesn’t have a friends page or list, and no one they know would ever remember the URL to see when it had been updated.
I agree with a minority here who note that MySpace is well designed for a particular group of people - those who can’t and don’t want to learn to compose web sites in html and who still want to have a customized space. The forerunner site that MySpace succeeds is probably “GeoCities” rather than Frienster in that respect.
Bottom line - anybody can make a page that looks different from anyone else’s on MySpace. Not so true with other blogging and social networking services.
As for “beauty” - these are the online equivalent of a “room of one’s own” for millions of teens…ever seen a teenager’s bedroom?
I’m not sayin that it is a good designed site, but the site is defintely functional. Besides the problems always being fixed the site is easy to use. The site was not intended to look good from the beginning. The site gets as copmlex as you want or as simple you want completely depending on the user. Myspace from the first login is almost like a template like a document in microsoft works or something to the same extent. Though does not look the best it is becuase it is left to be customised by the user. You also have to remember that they are hosting alot more people than even this site. I think it would be interesting to see a newly designed site but i agree with some of the previous responses that they will look very similar to myspace after completion. With over 88 million different profiles all functioning and readily changeable you really cannot complain.
I think MySpace is less important in this debate.
The real core of the issue is: How important is design on the internet?
I say it’s not that important, and maybe that’s great for us. When I started in this field, I used to measure elements in my mockups so stuff was equal pixels apart. What I quickly realized is that PEOPLE DON’T CARE. Even worse, people don’t care in production, either.
They want what they want, and they don’t care about the execution until they need to (for some economic reason, generally branding).
By nature, we are perfectionists who enjoy creating beautiful things, but by nature, the internet is an ugly place ruled by amateurs who don’t care about grids, using font tags or tables, drop shadows, web standards, color palettes, or CSS.
Additionally, because of the nature of the web, content and applications are constantly tweaked and optimized.
I think the time has come for a separation of web versus print. We need an evolutionary approach. After all, we don’t have anything resembling a final product.
Run and fire. Quick and dirty. It’s a moving target. Launch the most simple, elementary presentation of your content or app, gauge your response, and react. Don’t waste your time, and don’t get attached. Try going from wireframe to HTML.
Maybe the innovation is in the evolution, not your Photoshop or Illustrator.
Perhaps our true value as professionals is that we can raise the bar on initial presentations based on our experience in this run and fire process.
The MySpace Problem…
Joshua asks:The most difficult part of the MySpace problem is that, despite what designers might think about it, and how they might have made it look, MySpace is actually a well-designed website. Who could argue with this? MySpace has grown…
myspace gives 13-18 year-olds a cheap and easy vehicle which increases socialisation. compound that with the increasing popularity of blogging and you’ve got yourself a site that’ll get pounded.
design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. the social factor has so heavily outweighed the design and function of myspace that any discussion circling around why the design is or isn’t successful is wholly misguided.
[…] Joshua Porter l’explique brillemment en prenant le cas d’un site qui a cartonné en très peu de temps et dont le design pourrait être qualifié de carrément laid. A lire absolument The Myspace problem. […]
Thanks for writing the same opus we’ve read twelve times. Myspace is ugly, but it does what it’s supposed to. Just like all those other ugly sites that are still the most popular: Yahoo, EBay, Craigslist, IMDB, LiveJournal, Photobucket, Slashdot, YouTube. None of these sites look pretty and are designed with a “user-centric philosophy” like 37signals or anything Jakob or you UIE guys are promoting. Every one of the sites I mentioned could obviously look better and could be designed better, but that hasn’t stopped their growth or dominance. Delivering valuable content to users without pissing them off is more important than rounded corners and gradients.
The Myspace problem doesn’t challenge designers at all. It challenges founders to critically assess their ideas and quantify a demand and a need for their proposals.
For a more interesting analysis, why not look at why everyone on Friendster left for MySpace on launch.
I think we can all agree that MySpace has a bad design, but it is hugely successful. But the thing that really annoys me is that it isn’t designed will even in the fact of ‘things working’. It doesn’t work. How many times do you get an error come up when you’re trying to do something.
Also when it comes to modifying a MySpace page, that’s a mission in itself. It’s got the point where I am now turning down paid work when people ask me to redesign their ‘myspace page’. I just plain refuse to do it.
Is that good design?
I agree with Benn.
As someone who has tried to help people customize MySpace profiles (and has given up), I can tell you that they are HORRIBLY CODED. They use non-semantic, table-based markup, and they have no significant CSS-targetable ids.
MySpace sucks. However, like eBay, they were the first to offer what they offer, and the popularity of it has zero to do with its design.
My space a problem? No, I wouldn’t call it a problem but a phenomenon. As a recent graphic design graduate, I might lack experience to try to define Design. However, I know that Design is an instrument of communication.
As designers we need to be more aware of the functiionality of what we design for consumers. Then be concern with visual asthetics to enforce the message and appeal to individuals.
The consumer industry is entering a the stage of experience. The Coffe Bean is in the industy of selling coffee, yet similar, Starbucks is in the industry of selling an experience and anyone carrying a Starbucks over a Coffe Bean cup is immediately consider more trendy,
MYSPACE offers a unique and personal experience to its users. News Corp. understands this and claims to let the users grow and design myspace as they wish, because myspace gives them what they want how they want it
I agree with Steve “…Design is how it works”, funtionality should always be priority for a designer. Modifying a quote by Morris Hite
“If an” Design “is built around a weak idea - or as is so often the case, no idea at all - I don’t” care “how good the execution is, it’s going to fail”
Paul, you said:
Why aren’t these sites well-designed if they’re so successful? Perhaps good design and success are related?…
All to often consideration of design goes no further than the way something looks. Here on the internet that are a million “expert” designers all flogging the same old crap - “it doesn’t look very good it’s a bad design.”
Often designers are guilty of thinking that the typical internet user is looking through their eyes and want what they want. They don’t!
The truth is they don’t care how ugly, how invalid the code or how much you hate the design as long as it does what they want it to do.
Designing an experience that the user likes in a package that pleases them is still design even if you do find it ugly.
Why does no one talk about Facebook in realtion to MySpace. It is an example of a social network with good VISUAL design that people love as well. It does not have msuic, video, customization, and you must be a student to use it and it still does well.
The MySpace Problem is when hugely successful web sites succeed while looking ugly
Exactly why is this a problem? It sounds to me like it’s only a problem for arrogant designers who thinking “I can do a much better design than that”. Who cares? They’re successfull at what they’re doing, their users are happy, live and let live.
Enough with these silly articles.
[…] The MySpace Problem - Vitamin […]
[…] Joshua Porter: The MySpace problem. Joshua gives some thought to what aspect of “design” MySpace really excels at. Hint: it’s not the graphical type. Instead of wondering what MySpace could be, let’s learn from what it is. Let’s assume (forgetting visuals for a moment) that MySpace is well-designed instead of condemning it as a visual failure. Let’s ask the obvious questions: why is it so popular? What makes it so successful? The answers to these questions might make us rethink our basic assumptions, but will make our future designs stronger as a result. […]
[…] The key to success - make your site as ugly as possible…Vitamin Features » The MySpace problem: When it comes to some of the web’s most popular sites - is their success because of or in spite of ‘ugly’ design?In his 2004 AIGA magazine piece It’s Good to Be Bad, David Volgler observed a troubling trend in web design. Pointing to six popular but ugly websites (including the infamous hampster dance site) Volgler said he’s “haunted by a troubling question: does a website have to be well-designed to be popular?” The six sites that Volgler mentions are all, by any reasonable aesthetic judgment, ugly. Even worse, they’re annoying. But does ugly and annoying mean poorly-designed? […]
[…] - Débat chez les Web Designers à propos du spartiate MySpace: le beau fait-il vraiment vendre ? Un débat à franciser d’urgence ;-) […]
[…] The article, The MySpace Problem, takes a good look at the question of why so many designers perceive MySpace pages to be “ugly” and, yet, the site is so successful. This has created quite a stir in the design community, putting the value of design into question. […]
Perhaps we are misinterpreting terms of design, art and taste. If MySpace is spectacularly succssful maybe it’s because of a backlash against the traditional or even classic ideas embodied in what we generally mean to be ‘good’ design.
Think about the way some teenagers dress with their jeans slid way down exposing their underwear. Is that good design? Bad taste? If you’re a teenager who feels at ease, comfortable among peers with a sense of belonging that anyone desires, then it’s perfectly acceptable. What the dress sense lacks in taste is what MySpace lacks in visual design. To me.
My Space is poor design, so says Firefox’s Tidy html validator. It’s not the fault of the 89 million plus users, it’s the fault of the creators of Myspace.
We ALL were freely given the W.W.W. platform, no cost. Some of us show respect, others, the My Space creators, flip their noses at the W.W.W. They are neither responsible nor respectful.
Craigslist is good design, so says Tidy. It shows us all respect and responsibility. Kudos to Craig.
Considering, if Mr. Berners-Lee charges ALL unTidy websites to use the W.W.W., which is over 99% of all 10 billion plus indexed web pages, he’d make Mr. Gates look like a pauper. MySpace would either pass on the cost or shut down. Google would disappear. Craigslist would remain open.
The W.W.W. simply reflects humanity. Over 99% of it ain’t pretty.
Are you, is yours pretty?
Kind Regards and think good design,
Al Toman
After closing down my own site I fell into the void and opened a MySpace account so my readers could keep track of me. As a web programmer I have never been so appalled at the way the site was structured. I mean, kudos to having it ColdFusion based and lately having few errors, but has anyone ever tried to customize a profile in there? The CSS is the most DISGUSTING thing I’ve ever dealt with as a designer in my life. It’s rubbish! I’d hate to see what the parent template looks like that justifies all this but it really does look like it was thrown together by monkeys chewing on keyboards. Anybody who starts out their stylesheet by listing “table” five times in a row with no true definition of what the selector is needs some serious reschooling. So if it’s a matter of design perhaps we should start them with the basics because they obviously need it.
[…] The MySpace problem”, di Joshua Porter. […]
You people are forgetting something.
MySpace was one of the first sites in social networking. Did you guys ever attend an “Intro to Business” class in college? Fish in the pond. First one there almost always holds the greatest market share for a while.
Just give it time. People will be presented with alternatives that are actually better. And they will go there.
MySpace is fueled by the underlying idea, not necessarily from the design (or lack of it).
Jared, MySpace was *not* one of the first social networking sites. It was created in 2003, well after sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, and even Classmates.
Ideas are rarely new. MySpace is certainly not a new idea.
I have to admit that i’m a myspace whore.
Its helped my band out immensely, and for a free service, even though its poorly designed, its very useful.
I’ve never actually visited myspace, ever.
I assume myspace falls into the same category as blackplanet. If so, I assume that after about 20 minutes of browsing it will crash my browser just as black planet often did.
If ugly design = success, blackplanet and myspace should be neck and neck, fighting tooth and nail for the #1 spot. Are they? I doubt it?
9.7 out of every 10 black planet user pages I’ve ever seen all tie for the ugliest pieces of poo I’ve ever seen.
[…] The title of Mr. Graham’s essay is “Copy What You Like“. The problem is, as noted in the essay, we have difficulty really understanding what it is that we truly like. I propose that the delineator is passion. Not emotional fervor, but passion about the subject matter. An art collector will be passionate about the artists he collects no matter if the canvas hangs in a museum or is rolled up and hidden in a basement. Presentation does not matter to him, because the collectors’ passion overrides those circumstantial elements. The MySpace problem, noted by Joshua Porter on Vitamin, is representational of this as well: passion drives MySpace, not presentation. People use it because it works for them (for now). […]
Mike Davidson has developed a collection of code to make MySpace easier to customize well. MySpace users who have tried it are raving and congratulating Mike on his brilliance. Mikes description of his work, links to the code, and comments in excess of 300+ and counting can be found here:
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/hacking-myspace-layouts
-Steve
The web 2.0 divide…
Web 2.0 - chances are you’ve heard this buzzword before, if not from me, then perhaps from O’Reilly Media. In a general sense, it refers to the “new” direction the web is taking, being more user-content-centered, more social-or…
[…] 3 - Vitamin Features » The MySpace problem (tags: article webdesign usability) […]
[…] Features The MySpace problem Vitamin Features The MySpace problemAs someone who has tried to help people customize MySpace profiles (and has given up), I can tellyou that they are HORRIBLY CODED. They use non-semantic, table-based markup, and they have no […]
Internet users really don’t care about the looks…
The average internet user wants information or entertainment. As long as he get what he wants it’s OK. If Google didn’t find what he was looking for he doesn’t are about your website at all.
I think 99% of the internet users don’t c…..
The MySpace Problem…
I think my biggest concern with such popular sites is the way they create lock-in and silos. A large proportion of people no doubt join MySpace, MSN Messenger, etc. because their friends are there. What happens when you want to use something else?…
I think that the basis of a web site design depends on the user base that will use it. MySpace promotes indivduality, and encourages its users to express themselves, and therefore enables them to design their profiles to look exactly the way they like. So having a fancy-looking design for MySpace might not be the best way to go, however, MySpace is also hard to use. I’ve been using MySpace since it started out. I can tell you from personal experience that trying to log in gives me at least one error each time, trying to load any page takes a long time, and adding songs are a pain. Granted, I understand that millions of users are accessing the same content at the same time, but that should only account for the load time, not for the errors. There are always messages posted on my account homepage from Tom saying something along the lines of “Sorry for the . We are working on it. Please be patient, it should be fixed by tomorrow.”
I just want it to work.
To say that design is how stuff work is somehow diffuse. Design is how the independent functions interact with the user, and how the user can use the design to interact with the environment. Furthermore, design is everywhere. Web design is everywhere on the net - it’s how the browsers interact with the web pages, it’s how users understand the concepts, the functions, and the content. Finally, most designers would agree: Design is tricky!
[…] The MySpace Problem […]
It’s not a “myspace problem” — they simply facilitated a need.
The success of sites like my space can be boiled down to one simple fact… by creating myspace, they enabled users to create an online persona that could then connect them to there offline friends and new online friends in this new virtual community.
As its been mentioned, design and usability were secondary to the success of my space and obviously were not one of their top priorities.
Steve Jobs/Apple nailed both beautiful design and enabled habitual usage in one product. Very rare.
The trick is to do both at once.
Well, I thought this blog entry created some EXCELLENT feedback for web designers and users alike. I’ll say this though. Google’s simplicity is extremely refreshing. And I think Yahoo is a web company that really understands great looks AND fucntionality. Although MySpace has achieved impressive numbers, competition will eventually level the playing field if their usability is not up to snuff.
Carry on!
Is MySpace ugly?
As a web designer, what really make me spit bile and kill stray parakeets in rage are people who have backgrounds that are black, have anything moving on them, or even worse, have black and pink flashing stars as their background. These evolutionary exceptions who would make Darwin roll in his grave should be dragged into the street and be trampled to death by the foot traffic of soccer moms hitting up a Sears white sale.
Does it serve a need?
http://lushforlife.com/more.php?id=221
I think myspace is great and I will love it forever!
So what’s the PROBLEM exactly? I found this article quite pointless.
And why the jolly dickens are you comparing the iPod to MySpace? One is a really really simple product that allows users to access folders of music while the other is a hugely complex Web based application that allows users to do a multitude of tasks, including setting up their OWN goddam Web site.
I agree with the post, i’ve seen ebook sites and other randomly ugly looking sites get so popular, it makes a self respecting designer frustrated!
I really think myspace is sucessful is because they were both lucky and smart enough to get people who were really good at creating hype and word of mouth. So despite the ugly site from the beginning- they had good content (hot chics and good promoters).
tidbit story:
My buddy is actually head of promotions for myspace. And one day I went with him to the corporate office to pick up some things. Not knowing, the myspace ‘designer’ were in the cubicles next, I said, “damn, not only your company’s site is so damn ugly, even your business cards uses cheap paper and looks booty as well!” and then five minutes later I get introduced to the guy. That was a bit awkward.
Bill, you’re right. It’s not a problem for MySpace users. The problem I’m referring to is the one that us designers have when we look at MySpace.
Our visceral reaction to its ugliness simply overpowers our evaluation of it, and our ability to think about why it might be successful. I think this is important. Too often MySpace is dismissed as a poorly-designed site, when in fact it does solve a huge problem for its users…that of modeling their social lives online.
Carlos, Dickens wasn’t so jolly…but to your point the similarity between MySpace and the iPod is that they are both designed by humans for other humans.
Design, as a practice, is about someone creating something for another to use…helping that person solve a problem. Apple helped us listen to music everywhere. MySpace helps folks model their social lives online.
While the outcomes might be drastically different, the process is relatively similar. Just different media, that’s all.
[…] Why do successful websites often look like they were designed by someone who wouldn’t be able to design their way out of a pencil case?read more | digg story […]
Mytuneslive.com is a much better looking website. Not only that, but you can upload any mp3 file you want! But i just don’t understand why sometimes sucky buggy websites do better than smaller better ones! I wonder how much myspace spent on advertising when they first strated out!
[…] it’s no secret, the most popular site on the internet is composed of some of the ugliest code, and even uglier page layouts. Some claim this is by design. Others spend all day whining about it (and anything else they can think of). […]
[…] Jason Santa Maria, Greg Storey, Joshua Porter, and Andy Rutledge take a usability, features, and content focus, arguing that when ugly sites succeed, they do so despite their bad design — that while they may arguably employ “bad” visual design, they indisputably have valuable content or efficient interaction design. […]
As a graphic designer who migrated from print to web, I have to say that “ugly” web design might mean “good” web design from the perspective of functionality and accessibility standards. You can have a nicely designed flash website that will take it’s time to load and that will only be seen by those computers fast enough to load it w/o any issues… or you can have a website that will load fast, be functional in transmitting the main message(s) and that can be accessed by anybody, even a child with an old computer in Zambia.
MySpace succeeds, in part, because it epitomizes the next (and perhaps final?) stage in “engaging” Web interactivity. One can think of four levels of “engagement” (remember back to 1993.)
The user can be an
Observer - static, online brochure site
Participant - site responds in some way based on user input (e.g., a form)
Contributor - user can create content for the site (e.g., Amazon reviews, forums)
Owner - the site belongs to the user
MySpace (the name itself confers ownership to the user) succeeds because of this and because the subject matter is the most important of all (to most people)… one’s self.
The perceived ability to create an online, sharable representation of self (and a whole new reality in which can become “popular”) round out the reasons for MySpace’s success.
About 1-2 weeks ago depression hit me for a few days. As usual, it wasn’t just one thing; it was a combination of several things. MySpace and their seemingly undeserved popularity was one of those contributors. I kept asking myself, “Why!? Why is it that the worst things are the most popular?” Then, a few days ago while I was getting in the shower, I had a thought: MySpace is successful because it gives people freedom. MySpace and probably 99.9% of its profiles range from drab to tasteless to hideous to infuriating. However, it beats most other sites out there because people’s profiles are individualized and tailored to their authors’ personalities, and individuality is _very_ important, especially when it comes to social networking sites where standing out is key. That’s my take on it. From a design and programming perspective, MySpace is lost in the mid-nineties. Each time I use it I’m confronted with the now-expected “An unexpected error has occurred” message. I guess MySpace never saw good design as a priority since the founders knew that the profile pages were going to be twisted around anyway in order to suit users’ individual personas.
[…] 1) Ugly works. People seem to trust ugly apps. Ugly can mean an emphasis on functionality rather than upon the veneer. Look at Craigslist, MySpace and Google. The do OK, don’t they? The Vitamin blog quotes Apple’s Steve Jobs talking about the idea of design in 2003: […]
Finally somebody who analyse the Myspace success instead of bashing it, the reading was a joy.
The MySpace Problem.
I agree with the article, MySpace is ugly and infuriatingly unusable and unfriendly. However, it has become addictive and a genuine place where you can make some very interesting people (Me included) to many people and not just those people whose sole life is lived in computers, but ordinary every day people who want to just chat to other ordinary people from around the world.
www.myspace.com/severeheadcase
Can someone help me?? I have created a “myspace” page 4 or 5 times and it is never visible to the public?? I have been to account settings….changed to “public” have tried to change “user name” you name it and ive tried it! The “myspace” people will NOT reply??? Can anyone give me some suggestions here?? I can get to it by putting in “my e-mail” but that’s it?? It defeats the purpose if the “public cannot find me?? HELP!! MAYDAY!!