This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

Strokin’ the ego a bit much, no?

I don’t get it.

Qué ?

Makes me think of the so called “best critics” => best negative / best positive about a movie / product…

But yeah an explanation would be much welcome there !

I don’t get it either. Could you do a blog post explaining this?

Whoa, deja vu- that looks exactly like a design we just refined for the same reason. (selecting a member type)

How do you not get it? There was some element of funneling a user through a process, and the option here was eliminated because it just added more complexity.

At least, that is what this seems like. I may be completely wrong.

I get it: Given two roughly equal options, I can’t decide which one I fuckin’ want. Since neither option rises above the level of the other, fuck ‘em both. Rejected.

This tells me maybe 37S discovered that A/B testing can’t be done just by lookin’ at ‘em.

Rejected this blog post idea. Required someone to think too far ahead. Made something simple appear complex.

I think it’s a great idea! It’s so clear. Either choose the thing or the thing. It’s all there in black & white (and red). I, myself, will be acting on choice A or B immediately because it seems to be the best fit for my needs. Job well done. Communication achieved!

No wait…. I have no idea what this is about. Nevermind….

?

I guess it would depend on the ‘copy’ which is part of the design as well isn’t it?

I’m going through this EXACT same scenario right now to be honest.

Try using Dribbble for some inspiration, but really, having a User choose between 2 options (using a 960px grid wide) space seems somewhat difficult for me.

Then again, I’m not a designer. I just pretend to be.

Curious to see your final design/copy.

I think he meant that he rejected a design idea (maybe the one illustrated above) because the designer thought too far ahead and made a simple idea looked overly complex.

For example, you could have a simple form to reply to an email with a Save and Cancel buttons. But thinking ahead, you could add all kind of bells and whistle to format the text, to have grammar validation, to do all kind of stuff which could prevent the UI to be clean and simple …

At least, that’s my interpretation.

it looks like a teary-eyed alien.

Lots of noise in this post. Little signal.

I prefer this image to illustrate the need to think ahead Think Ahead