January 27, 2006
When bad design “works”
Today I read an article claiming that MySpace’s design works. The article extensively makes excuses for the simplicity, ugliness and inconsistency of MySpace’s design, justifying it by claiming that it’s effective for the target audience. While I would agree that a design need not be complex or filled with eye candy like so many sites’ designs are, the article’s other points are fairly ridiculous.
Consitency in design could be attained with less complex code if MySpace would make correct use of CSS. Why waste time to look crappy and inconsistent? Because of the way it’s coded, what consistency MySpace does have is extremely time-consuming to maintain (for example, stylistic HTML attributes are everywhere). Even if the target audience doesn’t care, the exhibited cluelessness of MySpace’s web interface coders is costing them time and money (especially in bandwidth costs, considering this is the 7th most popular English site on the web).
Another point made by the article is equally ridiculous:
MySpace permits users to do almost anything to the look of their profile pages, and the prevailing aesthetic is decidedly “more is more”: more color, more animation, more typefaces, more sound, more of everything makes a better profile page.
Of course, properly styling a MySpace profile is impossible (not that it matters anyway, considering the inherent validity of a MySpace page’s markup). Additionally, since MySpace is stuck back in 1995, using HTML attributes to change the presentation of almost everything, it’s impossible to customize the look of specific elements of a profile. As a result, anything you can do to customize a MySpace profile will look even more hideous than the design of MySpace itself.
Comment by Eriko — Posted January 30, 2006 at 00:06
MySpace is obviously a ridiculous site, and it starts from the mere prospect that these little American teeny-boppers have opinions that others care about. Then, they litter their pages with unnecessary images and pictures, animated GIFs, and other incoherent waste.
Although there is no hope for MySpace, I propose a solution: set up the website to operate much like Invision Power Board or phpBB. Set up custom stylings and a limited array of commands that would make changes to the pages. Obviously, now these cretins who are used to the seemingly unlimited range of customizations would likely protest if MySpace’s creators Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe cracked down and stopped the nonsense. For a site that moves so much content in such short amounts of time, it’s only sensible to create a semblance of structure so as to conserve bandwidth costs. Until someone steps in and limits the options that the brainless population of MySpace users has, I don’t see any solution in sight.
Comment by Monica — Posted February 3, 2006 at 10:03
Yeah I have to agree. :/ I only joined MySpace because that’s where my camp friends started a group, but after a few weeks, I couldn’t stand it anymore! I tried out their blog but you can’t even make any type of paragraph to seperate anything, it just looked soooooooooooo tacky, and the profile pages look hideous.
Comment by Stungun — Posted March 30, 2006 at 13:18
Eh. I just use Myspace to vent and put up opinions in the *rare* case that someone wants to read what I wrote. Also because some of my friends have Myspace profiles.
I only log on like what, once a month?
I don’t care to make it all prettyful or whatnot, I only wish I could switch some of the blocks around sides like on an MKportal.
Trackback by Sephiroth's Domain — Posted July 10, 2006 at 20:22
Meh. MySpace Profiles are tacky.
Well, Guess what? I happened to go register at MySpace and, well, customizing the page just began to make me want to pull my hair out. If you have noticed, I would have put a border around the main table, but then I’d place a border around ever…
Comment by naisioxerloro — Posted November 28, 2007 at 11:31
Hi.
Good design, who make it?