Jason Fried, founder of 37Signals, weighed in today on “why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web.” It’s an interesting read, considering how successful the 37Signals mantra has proven to be and how generally insightful their design principles have been over the years. But on this point, I believe, Fried is dreadfully mistaken.
It’s really not worth dismantling his article piecemeal because it would not only be a remarkably simple exercise (he makes the hilarious assertion that Drudge has never “cried wolf” like the rest of the mainstream media), but it would produce an outcome that was driven by clearly partisan motives (much like his post appears to be). Better to focus on his one glaring omission, instead.
His assessment is purely utilitarian and not even remotely aesthetic, as one might expect a discussion of “design” to be: his line of argumentation addresses the Drudge Report’s straightforwardness, uniqueness, staying power, its ease of maintenance and navigation, its speed, its use case, and—pardon me, his words not mine—its “balls.” These are all critical components of good design, but far from the sum total.
Part and parcel with Fried’s dismissal of the aesthetic is his apparent blindness to another component of good design, and that’s the idea that design can be a force for positive social change. It is on this account that the Drudge Report fails, and fails miserably.
Anyone who has been in possession of a functioning cerebral cortex over the last decade can attest to the fact that Matt Drudge has time and again had a truly devastating impact on the news media in this country and, by extension, on the whole of American civic life.
And yet Fried applauds Drudge for “breaking stories without writing stories,” a practice which has on far too many occasions been the germ of long and protracted media investigations of meaningless claims that first penetrated the public consciousness on the front page of the Drudge Report. The American taxpayer is still paying the bill for the Whitewater investigation, and Matt Drudge played an integral role in making that “newsworthy.”
And he applauds Drudge for producing the effect of “a chaotic newsroom with the cutting floor exposed,” for a design that “encourages wandering and random discovery.” Yet it’s for precisely this reason that I find Drudge so at fault from a design perspective. Visually, Drudge does not differentiate between those stories sourced from legitimate news outlets (which actually follow standards of journalistic integrity) and those stories sourced from Rush Limbaugh. Visually, everything is equal on the Drudge Report. While we prefer equality in our democracy, we can’t afford it in the information that generates public opinion.
Good design means much, much more than “user experience.” Good design is about generating innovative, meaningful, and thoughtful ways of seeing the world, and good design means having the moral rectitude to both politicize the aesthetic and to do so in ways which foster—not hinder—public discourse.
well I don’t find Fried to be particularly thoughtful or responsible. perhaps ideologically aligned with the subject matter ? one wonders…
