It would be interesting and useful to know who the top 5, 10 or even 20 designers are and what they've done that's so impressive, innovative, useful or loved.
With all due respect to the aforementioned people, but personall I think the real rockstars are the leading designers behind sites like Yahoo, Amazon, CNN, BBC and digg's Daniel Burka. Designing for such a large audience while still keeping an eye on a company's goals and vision is what really is impressive. Making something look good is the easy part -- making it work flawlessly in an pre-existing environment with an incrediblyt large audience is the challenge.
CNN are great at cross-linking and surfacing content, and the latest update is furthering that goal. Amazon...? Not so sure. They succeed despite their fugly, confusing UI rather than because of it.
Amazon's design has undergone countless testing for each new UI aspect that gets added and there are case studies written on it. Some may find it confusing but it's more often than not there because it's increasing sales.
Fugly is up for debate (one probably not worth having).
Confusing I'd like to hear your defense for. I don't personally find it confusing.
Regardless, what is a better measure for the success of a product's interface than its ability to support a company's objectives? Amazon's site is doing just that.
Exactly. Too many people think UI design is about making something look pretty, but it's not. Making something look pretty is a nicely added bonus, but before all you must help the user in doing what they want in a way that's efficient and effective, while still supporting the company's commercial goals. More than often it's an incredibly challenge to balance this properly, but succeeding in this is what, in my opinion, makes a great designer.
Amazon is fantastic, basically everyone in the industry that I know has been going there for inspiration first forever. Recently, Facebook has taken that place, and Google to some degree (although Google's case is a very specific one).
Wow, thats amazing. Its the last place I'd look for inspiration these days. Perhaps 8 years ago. It just doesnt make sense to regurgitate things that could be done better.
I find the whole UX clunky, especially the checkout process. Its trying to be too many things to too many people and have solved some hard issues - just not very well.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Sure, average people think design is purely decorative, but that does not mean that decoration is not a part of design.
What about their site do you find to be poorly designed?
Look at all of the unnecessary lines framing everything on the page. Instead of adding complexity that potentially confuses the user, they should have used whitespace to group elements.
They also use too many colors. Their use of color is distracting -- it does not add value.
I agree. My eyes hit the page and have no idea where I'm supposed to be looking. The white-on-black text that's interspersed with the images is also painful to read.
There are a lot of good and interesting ideas there. The problem, I think is that there are too many, and that leaves the page cluttered and distracting.
I like some of Metalab's work, but it seems like most of their designs are just copies of existing ones. http://go.urbanairship.com/ is almost identical to Metalab's marketing site except a few colors have been changed
I visit Urban Airship and my first instinct is to hate how little padding there is between your iPhone image and the image right below it, which strikes me as overlarge.
The Metalab people were involved in a dispute with one of the Tumblr designers on IRC the one time I entered the Tumblr IRC, so I've got a bias that comes from that designer ranting at them for an underhanded design, but I find that I really dislike the Metalab style. It's too undiscriminatingly open, and it wastes a lot of space doing/saying simple things. I prefer people who're capable of packing a lot of information into a small space and keep it looking good.
You're asking about UI designers and most people have provided links to Designers - two different beasts in my view.
I think stackoverflow if one of the best examples of brilliant UI I've seen recently - certainly one of the best I've seen on the web - but it probably wouldn't make my top list for beautiful design.
You're asking about UI designers and most people have provided links to Designers
This is the crucial point in this whole discussion. If the user has a task to accomplish, the user may indeed want the task to be accomplished in a beautiful environment, but most of all the user wants the task to get done. User interface design is first of all tested by seeing whether or not any typical user anticipated for the site or for the application can accomplish the task successfully.
I don't think it comes down solely to the designer, instead think of the company and team of professionals who make a great UI possible. A great UI design trapped inside of a photoshop file is useless. It takes the effort of multiple people to make it happen - I think a better question to ask is what companies are creating the best UI's that are actually being used today.
I have found the vast majority of my favourites through twitter. And they're amazing for showing off WIPs and sharing freebies with you. One of the below (I can't remember who) disliked the Wave interface so much they re-mocked it themselves just for fun.
One designer not mentioned on this list is Jason Fried of 37 Signals. Basecamp is very useful. Web App designers don't get the attention of flashy visual designers but after repeated usage of an application, you really get a sense of how well thought out it is.
My personal opinion is that he's very good, but not great. His designs work very well, but he never strikes me as ambitious or risk-taking in his work, which I feel is a must for great.
Let me cast my vote for Shaun Inman, whose two web apps are brilliantly designed and brilliantly functional. His homepage is pretty dandy, too: http://shauninman.com
As much as I really don't like the guy, I think Mark Boulton would be up there. His UX work for Drupal (some of which is at http://d7ux.org) is really top knotch.
i think the names of the top 5, 10, or 20 designers aren't public because they are busy working on uis instead of promoting themselves on the web. it's all a matter of opinion. a lot of the people mentioned below have 1-2 things under their belt, excepting some of the more seasoned folks like bowman, vinh, and miner. the reality is no one person is responsible for a great ui. it's a confluence of talent. the only reason you know about any of these products is because the talent of multiple individuals produced it.
Its impossible to accurately classify something subjective into a top X list. The lists will always be skewed into the tastes of the judges or list compiler.
Take music charts for example. The top 20 could be renamed, the '20 records that teenagers like at the moment'.
That said I would like to say that UI designers that work for one company who have one product, do not deserve the same amount of kudos as really skilled agency UI designers who work on upwards of 10 UI's a year. They solve 10 times more problems than those who work on one product.
Disagreed. I find that the agencies don't tend to "solve" problems, because they're not there when their solutions are measured/exposed to the real world. Agencies tend to take a stab at solutions. In house designers need to solve things.
Perhaps that is the case when the relationship is not right. In a lot of cases we run the sites for our clients and dont have to ask them to make UI changes. We spend a lot of time fine tuning and getting this part right. We do this on a permanent basis.
But I accept your point if this kind of relationship doesnt exist and the site is 'handed over'
surely off-topic and probably silly, but I was wondering where do all the designers get the pictures they use? is there a market going on for such thing?
(I assume they won't shoot the photos themselves -- division of labor and all :D)
could this stand as a sub-topic for top photo shops, branching the 'top UI designers' main theme? (yes, I'm trying realy hard to subvert this topic :p)
