HN Explorer

Ask HN: Your favorite web application design/UI?

47 points by abinoda ↗ HN
I'm redesigning my web application — it's a SAAS app for project management — right now it looks too similar to Basecamp but I'm having trouble breaking out of the tabs-content-sidebar look.

I'm thinking of going with a totally different style.. inspired by http://www.alfredapp.com/

Big type, top-to-bottom, full screen.

What are some of your favorite web application user-interfaces + designs?

45 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] thread
threepointone
While it created a lot of dissatisfied customers, I truly loved the redesign for http://www.thesixtyone.com/ beautiful stuff.
cosgroveb
Absolutely. The redesign was the first time I had heard of it and I instantly loved it!
bherms
Whoa! I hadn't been on the site in ages. The design is nuts! I think it's beautiful, yes, but much less functional.
CPops
When I first saw the redesign of TheSixtyOne, I also thought it was nuts; a classic case of web-design by graphic-designer.

But then I realized that it's an amazing solution to the problem they're trying to solve; discovering new music.

You're shown just one song (you've likely never heard of before) at a time.

You either like it and listen to it, or move on to the next.

You can't physically listen to more than one song at once, so you move everything to individual pages.

TheSixtyOne's design can be improved a bit, sure, but the overall concept is brilliant.

hkuo
Perhaps not appropriate for your app, but who knows, maybe? But this is my favorite UI that I've seen in a very long time. Just click on any of the content boxes.

http://spacecollective.org/projects/The-Total-Library

wccrawford
That site has one of my pet peeves. At the top, there is a Flash element. Wanting to see the full site design, I allowed Flash to run on the page. What did I see?

Text.

Just text.

At worst, it would have taken a PNG to produce the same thing, but they decided to create an entire Flash app devoted to displaying some text.

BerislavLopac
Actually I think this is one of those Flash-based font substitution tricks. Although I wonder why anyone would still use that now cufon is available...
joshuacc
Many (most?) commercial font licenses prohibit embedding fonts via Cufon or other non-Flash solutions.

Typekit, Fontdeck, etc. are helping to fix this problem, but it takes time.

amadiver
I think they're using it for a cross-browser solution for rendering custom fonts. There's nothing wrong with that, though we'd be better served if they used a progressive enhancement strategy -- they're replacing a single space character with their Flash banner, when instead they should be replacing a text representation of it:

e.g., Instead of: <td id="flash_banner">&nbsp;</td>

they should do this: <td id="flash_banner">project: The Total Library</td> (They use JavaScript to replace that <td> element with the Flash banner)

joelburget
Jason Santa Maria is the only designer whose rss feed I'm subscribed to. Check his porfolio for some projects you'll probably recognize.

http://jasonsantamaria.com/

wccrawford
I love that site design. It's very clean and readable for me.
raheemm
I went to check his portfolio and noticed one of his works is dictionary.com - he lists it under website design. Not sure what happened but dictionary.com is an awful site!
muhfuhkuh
I just went there. Seems pretty okay to me. If you mean those click-popups that drive everyone crazy, that's not the designer's fault.
fjabre
Love the Alfred app design. I bookmarked it when it first came out. It inspired me to do a very logo centric design for my web app:

<plug> http://www.HobsonFiles.com </plug>

So did http://mailchimp.com. I've always been impressed by how much personality their web app has while actually doing something very useful.

masterj
Re: HobsonFiles.com

Isn't that a bit wide of a design? I would think that the average person would have to scroll left and right to see it all. I did, at least, and it took me by surprise.

Edit: In reference to the landing page.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
krelian
mailchimp is absolutely stunning!
lenary
ah, the usability gem that is target="_blank". I do know how to use the back button you know
MrAlmostWrong
I know this isn't what you asked for, but it sounds like you are trying to find a design that you will wedge your content into. Let the content dictate the design.
ashitvora
Basecamp, Wufoo, Reddit (If you are not looking at Visual Design but Good Design)
robwgibbons
I love Reddit, but I've never thought it was a good design.
ashitvora
It is not visually appealing but it has good user experience. You will hardly make any mistakes while using it. They concentrated more on making it clean.
budu3
I like Quora and github. Nice clean designs.
SHOwnsYou
http://icontact.com has a smart design

The first thing that hits you is a sliding list of benefits + social proof on each slide + prominent buttons for a free trial and a video tour.

jjcm
Redmine does a great job for a web application in being easy to use out of the box, while handling loads of data as well. With the amount of stuff it does, it could very easily be convoluted and spiteful to its users. Instead it's quite easy to use and logical in it's layout. It's not pretty, mind you, but it's functional.
korch
Craigslist.

Take the 10+ billion web pages out there, zoom in on the top 100 by traffic, which one is effectively used by the maximum number of people for non-trivial tasks?

Craigslist is at or among the very top of the list. I don't count Google, which is meta—they are a "portal" of the web. I discount Facebook for the same reason, as well as being 99.999% used for trivial tasks(teenagers sharing stupid photos, etc).

Think of web users as a strictly economical force, and ask which web site has the most real-world impact? Craigslist is 99% about real-world money changing hands. Buyer, meet Seller. Google, Facebook, the Silicon Valley Bubble Chamber, and almost all the biggest web properties/brands on the web are derivative products. Their value is based on the value of something else, or the value of a collection of something else.

I often wish Craiglist would add a simple counter to their site displaying a total value of good exchanged, similar to what many new sites show. Even if only a fraction of commercial exchanges could be tracked through some half-hacked manner, I bet that dollar amount would be a very large and surprising number.

Craigslist loses all design awards. This is true. It is an eternal relic enshrining HTML web design circa 1999, it has a hideous, redundant UI, it mercilessly makes users do too much work to sift and sort through what's out there, and provides no tools to lessen at least some of the work. And there's no way to extend or scale it it beyond doing individual, in-person transactions. Yet Craigslist blithely meanders on its merry way in 2010 without needing to partner or integrate with any other major web properties, any "Tech Coast" corps, any telecoms, nor are they beholden to Wall St in any way.

Name one other site that defeats this same set of constraints?

As for how this relates to design proper, the best designs are those you don't even see, and which optimize some set of material constraints that you don't even know about.

dinkumthinkum
Wouldn't ebay be closer to "99% about real-world money changing hands?" Craigslist is fine but isn't it more about sex and Nigerian scams? Not to dig too much at Craigslist but I don't think this gets to what the OP is asking about.
bradhe
I'm not a Rubyist, but 37signals' (clickable: http://37signals.com/) new design is really great to me. It's clean and extremely functional.
cmelbye
I'm confused, why would one need to be a Rubyist to appreciate 37signals' new home page design?
bradhe
Isn't 37signals like Rubyist central?
bradhe
Wow, downvotes? Reddit must have found Hacker News...
dinkumthinkum
Not sure. But I think I am tired of the "Web 2.0 aesthetic" or whatever people are calling it these days. It's bland, boring, and done. Sometimes that is a good thing but it is almost just too cliche for me at this point. I don't hate it and don't think it's the worst decision to go that route, I'm just tired of it.