I think part of the problem with web design at the moment is the overuse of themes and frameworks. Where people really add no creativity to the design.
I've just spent the last 3 months trying to design a site that is original, follows conventions and is responsive.
And there is a point where your just trying to be different for different sake. We are currently ironing out problems. http://whatson.ae/
I did however try to avoid looking formulaic, but certain things just work. The layouts we have are simple and have flexibility. We are letting the content and visuals have the creativity.
I suppose that sums up my oppionion on the matter. The website design itself shouldn't be the message. Its the message your trying to pass on or the content.
I'm personally glad we are moving away from gimmicky elements. I hated having to create big shiny buttons with flashy animations because my boss thought they where exciting.
In fact - some times changing a design is detrimental to a website in massive ways. I left my old job because my previous employer wanted to change the website. After they did, the conversion rates for the site plummeted and eventually they lost a lot of traffic.
Even though the new designs where perceived as more appealing and exciting.
Certains things just work really well, thats why there more abundant.
In my experience. I've seen a lot of people calling themselves web developers who are in fact just average web designers with some basic scripting expertise. Regardless of nationality, it's hard to find people who can actually code something without copy and pasting from stackexchange.
Its really not, designers in publishing companies do not have final say. The publishers do.
These are established companies with existing management structures. The owners / management controlling the brands will have briefed in a designer to implement all of these elements.
There priority will be leverage the audience of esquire, to allow them maximise the sales they can do via media buyers.
Audience development for sites like these, is often only minimally effected by design. Especially considering these are established brands. They already get the numbers, they dont need to earn them.
Web designers are just the people paid to put the designs together options together for management to choose from.
This is purely the result of mixed objectives and committee design. There will be fighting between a publisher, editorial, marketing, sales, designers and tech team.
Each dept. will have a trump card to have there say. Trapped in a false numbers game of milking the most pageviews out of whatever they can. While giving media buyers whatever they need to sell the space to there clients.
The designer will usually have a little or no say in what goes where. fact.
It's different in the way it handles payments and has a very unique way of scoring girls. Leading to its own economy and community. Its quite different to the other sites that offer 'free' chat in terms that the girls become mini celebrities.
There innovation is very subtle, i don't think there's much room to really innovate on this space. I was trying to make the point that there isn't much room for anything original.
I've had what would call an a depressive trait since i was a teenager until now at 28. When i was 20 i was diagnosed with severe clinical depression and received treatment, including counseling and medication.
My own anecdotal evidence - when i was at my worst the talk did nothing to help me. Citalopram really help leveled and my mood, dull my anxiety and helped me balance myself out. There probably was some sort of placebo effect, re-enforced by the physical side effects. It helped either way...
Over the years i realized that brain does lie to me.
Sometimes my brain convinced me I'm depressed when I'm just ill, grumpy, tired, frustrated. etc.
I've know now not to trust my brain, my feelings or medication.
Talking helps keep your perception in check, i recommend it.
Relative to the amount of money it could make, it would only take a relatively small team of developers and R&D teams (in a perfect world). How many teams of managers etc does it really take? Think of the amount of money that would make. Think of the money businesses would save not having IT support teams etc.
But the fact is, Microsoft aren't the bad guys.
These guys employee countless numbers of people.
Around the world, Think of all the products that every business needs that Microsoft ressellers profit out of.
How many IT support staff are fed by microsofts hand.
Personally i think Microsoft are doing a good job of sharing the wealth.
There have been a few ex-googlers who are upset about Google being an advertising company. Maybe they where sold into a dream that never materilised.
Lets say you own a company employing thousands and you discover the perfect way to improve your clients user experiance, the only problem is it disrupts the market so much your company is no longer profitable, so all your share holder and employees go without ? would you still do it?
Siri is a value add to a company that makes money out of its products. You have to own a 600$ piece of metal to have the privelege of using it.
And i much prefer googling - "Pet shop in dubai" for free.
Weirdly - companies that do avertise have it much more together. If there paying for a dollar for my click, there definitly going to be open and have the products i want.
A/B testing is massively useful, but often misused in business. Commercially its become a bit of a buzzword. Which has led it being badly implemented.
I think designers often get frustrated when A/B testing is applied to their designs post-brief.
Designing a website for A/B testing purposes is a completely different brief. You are designing a toolkit for testing purposes. So that the next version will be informed.
A/B is quite is lot more complicated than some people appreciate. Ive often seen people create two completely different designs and then sort of let them fight it out.
Yet they learn nothing from these experiments. There could of been elements that work well for certain persona's in each design!
Fundamentally, designer can be quite precious. They don't like criticism like this. After all its impossible to measure all the factors and how does one measure 'creativity'. Plus some will feel like this lowers there input. why not just throw all the elements in bucket and see which comes up trumps.
As a designer I love using this sort of testing. Design by data is a growing trend, that i think will get wider recognition. Sadly the A/B testing phase can create some slightly odd combination at first, but when you go back a re-design the page. You know its going to convert better.
Realistic movement is a more important factor than detail, you can have 8 cubes move fluidly enough to immerse in. 1,0000,0000,0000 polygons seems un-important when you have pixel shader's and normal mapping.
Maybe they should of made duke nukem forever with this engine, as it seems like its from a similar era.
The new frostbite engine 2 a million times amazing, because of the dynamic lighting and radiosity. Plus the amazing fluidity of the animations.
I've just spent the last 3 months trying to design a site that is original, follows conventions and is responsive.
And there is a point where your just trying to be different for different sake. We are currently ironing out problems. http://whatson.ae/
I did however try to avoid looking formulaic, but certain things just work. The layouts we have are simple and have flexibility. We are letting the content and visuals have the creativity.
I suppose that sums up my oppionion on the matter. The website design itself shouldn't be the message. Its the message your trying to pass on or the content.
I'm personally glad we are moving away from gimmicky elements. I hated having to create big shiny buttons with flashy animations because my boss thought they where exciting.
In fact - some times changing a design is detrimental to a website in massive ways. I left my old job because my previous employer wanted to change the website. After they did, the conversion rates for the site plummeted and eventually they lost a lot of traffic.
Even though the new designs where perceived as more appealing and exciting.
Certains things just work really well, thats why there more abundant.