He makes a point of all of these companies having been ugly at the outset. I don't disagree, they were, however the landscape has changed. In the past, when the world was really still figuring out what the web is, it was okay to be ugly -- because so much of the web actually was ugly. Now, however, there is a lot of beautiful design on the web and people are having higher and higher expectations.
Its a lot about signaling, I think. People want to know that they aren't wasting their time. If a website is ugly and poorly designed, then its easy to think "Whoever made this didn't put a lot of effort into it, and may continue to not put effort into it." In the old days of the web, just being on the web was signal enough that you put a fair amount of effort into your project. Now, we have more sophisticated methods of signaling that our websites are better than others. However, its a bit like clothing and jewelry in that it can be superficial -- just because something is dressed up and pretty on the outside doesn't always mean theres something worthwhile underneath.
Humorously, the Github repo title of my product contains the very words "Humble Beginnings". We're launching this week, right Justin? ;)
I think you're overestimating how much the average person really pays to design. Having worked in online advertising for a long time, I have seen some seriously hideous sites convert far better than well manicured ones. For an example of one of the ugliest, highly successful sites on the internet, one need look no further than GoDaddy. That site looks like it was made in the dark. People don't really care.
"a website is ugly and poorly designed, then its easy to think "Whoever made this didn't put a lot of effort into it, and may continue to not put effort into it."
Useful will still trump pretty, 9 times out of 10. Especially for a down-and-dirty, early-stage site or service. Think about CraigsList: the site looks like it could conceivably have existed on text-based interfaces in the early 1980s. And that simplicity is part of its ease of use.
I'm not suggesting good design doesn't matter. But pretty, for pretty's sake, is overrated. The primary goal of design is to entice people to use something, and to make using it as easy and rewarding as possible. Often, this means making something as minimalist as possible. Depending on your targeted early adopters, they may be willing to overlook an ugly site if they derive a lot of value from using it.
In a weird way, I almost have the opposite gut reaction to yours when I encounter an early-stage service. If it's too slick and professional looking, I start wondering where the dollars are being spent, and where the priorities are. Especially if the startup is pre-funded or bootstrapped. Champagne tastes on beer budgets are often harbingers of doom.
As a corollary, I will say that people seem a lot more forgiving of ugliness if the service is very novel. The more new-to-the-world your product or service is, the more people will put up with its warts and irregularities (at least in the beginning). Conversely, if your product is attemting to outcompete an established competitor, design becomes a fairly big priority: not graphic design, per se, so much as UX design (think: the simplicity of Google vs. the complexity of Yahoo).
The landscape in total may have changed, but in my opinion, it seems the theme of success stories hasn't changed that much... Groupon had humble beginnings, chatroullette was completely lacking in design, and reddit is seeing it's heyday as we speak. Their perceived lack of design didn't seem to preclude them from incredible/almost unparalleled growth (and all were in the last two years).
On the contrary i see websites that try hard to be "beautiful" looking more and more like each other (thank you bootstrap), as if one company that loves rounded rectangles now controls the design of everything (thank you apple). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the designer's.
keep in mind the state of internet speed at the time back then too. Its easy to look nice when you dont have to worry about it taking 30 minutes to render a page on a 2400 baud modem.
Also the tools are so much easier. I remember setting up wordpress about 6 years ago and compared to today it is so much easier to set up and also so much easier and cheaper to make it look nice too!
Another frontpage hn article today was asking for donations to the internet archive, which helps make sure those humble beginnings are forever remembered:
Sobering. It makes me realize that one of the internet movements which I appreciate the most, and also take the most for granted, is just how much more good design is stressed. Now if I find something which is ugly or non-intuitive, I really do take a step back and think about why things were shown to public like that.
Sometimes people do point and say that most web 2.0 websites look similar and uninspired, but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing.
I think the point is just as much that you don't need the best design in the world to be successful. Just get started, even if it's not the most attractive.
That's hard to speculate on. It might not have. But at the same time, I'd like to think that if a service is revolutionary/unique enough, it will gradually get some traction.
Now if I find something which is ugly or non-intuitive, I really do take a step back and think about why things were shown to public like that.
Indeed, the bar is raised. When confronted with multiple choices, I'll pick the nicely designed and engineered (that's a bit hard to assess from the beginning)
The bar now is getting too high that start-ups are becoming expensive again.
A reminder of how small the tech world is: notice the first name in the "Timeline" pane in the Twttr screenshot: "Kevin Systrom". This would have been about four years before Instagram (was Systrom still an undergrad at Stanford then, even?).
But it seems to me that the hardest thing is getting users to use your product or service (especially repeatedly). In a sense, it's more of a behavioral/psychological problem.
Ideas are bad because they don't get users. The best design won't turn a bad idea into a good one.
The thing I find most interesting about these examples is that all of them (I believe) had a dedicated user base -- as well as fast growing one -- in the beginning.
Totally on point about getting users to actually use it. That's kinda where I'm at right now with what I'm working on, and it's by far the hardest step. Twitter actually had very few users for the first 6 months I believe, but things like Facebook and Instagram were big hits pretty quickly.
Agree with you on Instagram, but Facebook had the benefit of one-at-time rollout to universities, which upped its exclusivity and draw. (Granted it was also good product.)
Clearly, the YouTube home page screenshot there has mangled HTML and was not what the page originally looked like on period browsers. And the "dating fields" were probably just an ad that was misplaced by the same sort of rendering errors.
Its a lot about signaling, I think. People want to know that they aren't wasting their time. If a website is ugly and poorly designed, then its easy to think "Whoever made this didn't put a lot of effort into it, and may continue to not put effort into it." In the old days of the web, just being on the web was signal enough that you put a fair amount of effort into your project. Now, we have more sophisticated methods of signaling that our websites are better than others. However, its a bit like clothing and jewelry in that it can be superficial -- just because something is dressed up and pretty on the outside doesn't always mean theres something worthwhile underneath.
Humorously, the Github repo title of my product contains the very words "Humble Beginnings". We're launching this week, right Justin? ;)