A lot of designers post mockups of “their redesign” of popular websites like Facebook or Netflix. They’re usually more beautiful than the original.
You’d think Facebook and Netflix would be blown away and hire them to re-design their website right?
Wrong!
These redesigns are aesthetically better, but worse in every other way. They’re not practical or user friendly. And if Facebook or Netflix were to use them, they’d lose billions in revenue.
Most young designers think their job is to make things look pretty. I was no different.
I thought designing apps or websites were the same thing. I just need to make it look good.
As I gained more experience and saw what works and doesn’t work in the real world, I started to notice a big difference between the two.
It’s kinda like the difference between designing a product vs designing the advertisement that sells the product.
Each discipline requires experience and expertise in different areas of behavioral science:
To design apps, you need knowledge around the psychology of decision-making as well as effort vs reward. Most users are lazy. You have to trigger user decisions subconsciously using visual cues.
To design websites, you need strong understanding of human desires and cognitive biases. You have to know how to create the right emotions to influence purchasing behaviors.
Yes technically a designer can do both, but not very well. I wanted to be the best in one rather than being mediocre in both.
I decided to stop designing apps and just focus on websites.