Ask HN: Why does HN's minimalist design work?

8 points by progrocks9 8 years ago | 10 comments

I had always thought that HN was too plain, but with almost of 2 years reading it daily I think that it's perfectly designed to come back everyday. Do they ever had UX design sessions for creating this or was unplanned?

dang 8 years ago |

HN was designed by one person (pg) who is an inveterate minimalist, has good taste, and likes text. He wanted to make a site that seemed bookish (his word) so it would attract people who wanted to read and discourage people who didn't (but in the gentlest way, by seeming boring). He also wanted to make a news site that looked like top, the terminal app.

One thing that I don't think is widely appreciated about HN's design is the balance it finds between information density (i.e. fitting a lot on the page) and minimalism. If you try to move that needle in either direction it makes things worse: more cramped or less informative. Most attempts to redesign HN add tons more whitespace, but this lets you take in fewer stories at a glance. Of course, tastes vary widely and many people disagree.

The link to Reddit is genetic, since pg gave the original idea for Reddit to Alexis and Steve, and only made HN when his feature requests were no longer at the top of their list. Presumably that is also how the idea of keeping HN small got started :) There was also an early version of Delicious that looked a bit like what HN and Reddit later became.

urahara 8 years ago | |

"Bookish" is an excellent word, the experience here is very similar to reading a good book, but an interactive one. I fell in love with this design from the 1st glance actually. Interestingly, I experience it be very different from Reddit.

urahara 8 years ago |

For me it works so well because there are 0 distractions, just the necessary functionality on top of the high-quality community and content. But the 2nd part is the key, value goes first.

mattbgates 8 years ago |

I love the minimalistic design approach. I've incorporated it into my own designs.. usually using Craigslist as my major influence. No sidebars. No ads that disrupt the reader to the point of annoyance. And I try to make everything pretty easy to navigate.

I usually always get my sister to beta test. She knows enough about computers, but when it comes using computer programs, she can get lost sometimes. So if she questions something, I change it until she has no more questions.

I'm pretty sure the one who designed HN just had a preference for a minimalistic approach and everyone thought it was great, and it has stuck since then. No point in ever changing something that just works. And you can't really do much more beyond "minimalist" -- maybe "brutalist" but it isn't something that is favored by everyone.

Jugurtha 8 years ago |

A variety of factors, I think:

- The creator (((pg)). I bet the imbalanced parentheses gave him a stroke even if he didn't read this. Voodoo stuff.

- The audience (who they are, what they come here for, all the site is not that makes them return): mostly people who are accustomed to text as a medium of communication (code, docs, books, articles, papers) and might prefer it to other media.