HN Explorer

Ask HN: examples of 'bare bones' designs/interfaces

7 points by evancaine ↗ HN
http://news.ycombinator.com/

http://www.quora.com/

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.delicious.com/

http://www.yelp.com/

http://*.google.com/

All these sites have interfaces that are largely composed of text, borders and shaded backgrounds on a white canvas. There's a distinct lack of gradients, rounded corners, drop shadows, background images, fancy buttons and oversized text fields. They don't necassarily look pretty but they're not ugly either (I'd put reddit, ebay, craiglist under the later category). They also work rather well from a usability perspective.

Having virtually no design ability, interfaces like these appeal to me. What other sites have a plain front end and good UX?

8 comments

[ 9.3 ms ] story [ 30.7 ms ] thread
gsivil
I posted something along similar lines sometime ago and this pattern. Pretty successful sites with 'bare bones' interface/design but rather well planned from a usability perspective as you point out.

I was even thinking of accomplished or even legendary CS people that have minimalistic personal websites.

Knuth : http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/

Norvig: http://norvig.com/

Stallman: http://stallman.org/

Of course pg from the familiar people:

Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/

I am really curious about this and I would be happy if more HNers could share their thoughts on that. Hopefully I did not deviate much from the spirit of your post

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
robeastham
I'm quite interested in this too. I have been trying to resist going too heavy on design on my new startup/app. Mainly been thinking about minimal designs as a positive thing after I switched from delicious to http://pinboard.in. Pinboard's interface is a joy to use and is super quick because it's so light.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to resist using TypeKit, larger text fields and rounded corners on my new project. Perhaps I should reconsider, but it'll certainly be more barebones than your average app. I guess barebone designs do make you focus on UX more and they'd also make transition from my Mockingbird mockups more straightforward.

Lighter and simpler designs would be a really positive trend if they were adopted more widely. I vote that barebones should be strongly encouraged.

tdd
Even though they are bare bones, they still require some design knowledge to be very successful. The usage of typographic hierarchy and grids can be seen in all of them - some more successful than others.

Being simple is just as hard as creating more 'fancy' objects, I would suggest having a look into swiss design/ new international style where your sure to be inspired and help see just how people use layouts and typography to create simple designs which work.

rudasn
I really admire the design of reddit. Many new users/visitors are immediately turned off by the design but that is until they "get" what reddit is. Reddit has achieved to be so many things to so many different people (through the subreddits, the comments, and the posts) because of its neutral design.

I am too following a similar approach in my side project. It's goal is to view videos and sort them into lists. The design only has a sidebar and a thumbs list. You don't even have to register to start using it, your session data is stored and you can register later if you like to keep it.