Why, though? Are most designers just that stubborn? Do we really hate hearing that we’re wrong so much that we want to choke the life out of anyone that shows us hard and fast data about how our design is underperforming? Kinda. But there’s more.

There’s been so much great writing in the past few weeks about why A/B testing is shitty and/or great. It’s good we’re getting all this out in the open, because both sides need to understand something: we fucking hate each other and our goals are at odds. That probably sounds ridiculous, and it is, but that last part is kind of true. Let me explain.

The big problem with A/B testing is that, when a designer consistently uses it to inform their work, they probably aren’t getting any better. They aren’t making these decisions. Not really. The users are. When clients and managers demand a myriad of small changes to see what performs best, the designer is just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.

The designer doesn’t really know why users liked the green button better than the blue button, or why the romance copy in Avenir made more conversions than the romance copy in Futura. They can guess. They can speculate. But they really don’t know. The design is better, but the designer is baffled and no better than before. They didn’t learn a damn thing about how to make a better site: they just learned what the users of this particular site wanted.

These lessons aren’t transferrable, either. Just because I found out Avenir worked best on the site for a cable provider in Orlando doesn’t mean it will do just as well for a carpet cleaning service in San Diego. It might not even work for any other site you design. It was that site, with those users, during that particular time in history, and you’ll never really know why. Following this trend, you’ll likely remain at the same level of creativity for the entirety of your career. Snooze.

Contrast this to failing miserably. You design a site that looks great, but isn’t making your client’s wallet any thicker. No one is clicking a damn thing. What do you do? Well, you revise. You think about what went wrong. You analyze where your design failed and why. Maybe through your own research, you’ll realize some key flaw relating to the users you’re designing for. You’ll talk to friends and colleagues about how they’ve solved similar problems. You’ll learn from your mistakes and grow as a designer. Following this trend, you will be amazing. Unless you suck. Because then you’ll suck. But you get the picture. Learning is good. Blindly following directions without thinking about the “why” is bad.

A/B testing just makes boring designers. There are exceptions to this rule, but not many. If A/B testing made us better designers, no one would care. We’d probably embrace it. It’d be another tool, like Photoshop or Mailchimp or Versions; just another thing we did to make our work better and our lives easier.

However, let’s take a look at it from the business owner’s point of view. If you’re employed full-time at an organization, they have a vested interest in making you a better designer. If you’re working freelance, they genuinely do not give a fuck whether or not this project makes you one iota better. They want a website. They want it to make them money. They want you to make them a website that makes them money and then to go the fuck away until they ask you to come back and do stuff to that website.

If I asked a plumber to come over and fix my leaking sink, I don’t want him to guess about how to fix it. I don’t want him to call his fucking friends up about what they like to do about leaking pipes. I want him to fix my god damn sink and get out of the way so I can go about using my sink. This plumber’s professional development is not my priority; having a functioning sink is. The same goes for freelance clients: they gain nothing by seeing you grow as a designer. They gain a lot by stomping all over your creativity and jamming it into A/B tests so they can make more money. Does this make them evil or stupid? Of course not, they just want to run their business and for it to be profitable. If anything, we sound insane when we say, “LET ME DO THINGS MY WAY I DON’T CARE IF IT MAKES YOU RICHER.”

I don’t know a great way to end this. A/B testing sucks for designers and is awesome for clients. If you hate it, think about why you hate it and try to fix that. If you REALLY hate it, avoid projects in which it will be used. Be very open about it in the opening talks of the project. Tell them you’re at a point in your career where projects which don’t allow you to solve problems creatively and grow professionally just aren’t worth your time. You might not get the project, but you also might not commit homicide. Which is great, too.

Here’s a screenshot of all the cursors:

The cursors are just in a PSD inside of the ZIP. Sorry, I don’t have a Windows machine with Photoshop and can’t make Windows ones for that reason. Same with Linux. If anyone has a better/easier way of getting cursors in screenshots, please tell me, as it can be a royal pain in the ass.

Download the Mac Cursor PSD as a ZIP

Okay, so a modal comes up telling us about all the new stuff on the site. Uhh…I don’t really care about that, Seamless. I respect your whole marketing effort (not really), but I don’t come to your site to browse what’s new. I come here because I want to order fifty dollars of pizza and cry while watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Itt feels mostly the same in the way that’s important to me. It’s definitely more stylized, for what that’s worth. Login is on the top right and the “Start Your Order” form is on the left. From an IA perspective, it’s actually fine, but from a design perspective, this page is pretty god damn busy. We’ve got two animated elements above the fold (that little orange counter on the left and that bit of white-on-blue detail text on the upper right), as well as a huge background image and lots of really bright colors. Let’s log in and see what that’s going to be like.

Hm. They’re calling the field where you enter your email address, “username”, which is sort of confusing, but whatever. This modal is still weirdly huge. That always felt like a bug on the old site. I tried to see if this is just where the error messaging comes up if you enter your information incorrectly, but it isn’t. Entering bad info takes you to a completely different page.

It’s weird that the “Start Your Order” form has switched places here. It’s been bumped over so we can see this coupon. Well, it’s not really a coupon. It’s just letting me know that coupons exist, and that I should look for them. Also, I can share something on Facebook and Twitter. What am I sharing? The concept of coupons? Seamless as a site?

The one thing that keeps coming through is just how busy this site is. I’m trying to focus on the content but I keep getting distracted by the sickly color scheme and the giant bowl of shrimp pad thai that won’t get out of my face (what type of god damn sociopath orders shrimp pad thai?). Luckily for Seamless, it doesn’t take much to convince me, so now I want to order some shrimp pad thai. Let’s give that a whirl.

Interesting! I can search for food while I set my location for this order. I guess that takes a step out of the process. So I assume that if you type in pizza here, it automatically filters the results for you and only shows you places selling pizza. I just want to order some shrimp pad thai and write the name of my ex girlfriend all over my body with a caulking gun (remember, shrimp pad thai makes you a sociopath.) So let’s search for pad thai in this little input field.

So, even though the field told me to search for “restaurants, cuisine, or food items”, it only actually searches in restaurant names? Huh. Are we just outright lying to users now? I didn’t think they liked that. If I went to Amazon and searched for “The Secret” because I hate myself, and it came back and said, “SORRY, THERE AREN’T ANY GARDENING SHEARS CALLED ‘THE SECRET’”, I’d have an aneurism. Whatever, I’m getting all worked up over nothing. Let’s just get to the food.

The color scheme and the font choice is really grating on me at this point. I was sort of hoping that it’d gracefully sort of fade away as we got deeper into the workflow of the site, but no such luck. I’m having a really hard time reading the headers here, to say the least.

When I search for things, I expect the results to be clear and readable. I am not getting that here. The type is small without much room to breathe, and there’s a lot of information being presented to me in a way that makes it hard to parse.

Okay, looks…exactly the same as ever. I understand what my tasks are here, for the most part. The rest of the page is essentially the same, but all the red on the site has been replaced with blue. This feels like a page that could have seen a LOT of love, but has gone somewhat ignored. Let’s move on to checkout.

So they moved the billing information all the way down to the bottom of the page, way beyond the “fold”. I know the fold isn’t a real finite number of pixels, but the input fields are at about 800 pixels down the page, pretty far out of view. This is a problem for anyone who often changes the credit card they’re using when ordering food, like when friends come over and offer to get dinner. The submit field is way above the billing fields, meaning I’ll probably submit the form before realizing that the fields are a) empty or b) have someone else’s credit card in the box.

All in all, it feels like the user’s goals are really at odds with the changes made in this new design. Content has been shifted around and reordered not in the name of improved usability, but for the sake of branding and over stylization. Sure, we’ll all remember Seamless as the site with the wacky colors and Museo headers, but I feel like it just became a little harder for the user to accomplish their goals. The weirdest thing: this doesn’t seem like a hard problem to solve; your users’ goals are very straightforward. People just want to order their food. You don’t really have Seamless “power users”. You just have people that are hungry and want your website to get out of the way.

This goes for most things in life, but it’s especially true when it comes to design. Sure, I could list all the caveats about listening to clients and team members, but lets assume you already know how to play well with others. As long as you’re a respectful, thoughtful designer, there are very little consequences for designing what you want, how you want to.

I know sometimes it doesn’t seem that way, and I’m sorry. People on the internet have a nasty habit of making up rules about how and why to do things. They can be pretty pushy, and even go as far as to tell you what you are and aren’t.

Whitney Hess thinks you aren’t a UX designer. (I’m actually really okay with this.)

Jeffrey Zeldman decided you’re in publishing. (I’m not, but thank you for the offer! Publishing sounds like an exciting field, and I wish you the best of luck with it.)

Andy Clark said you’re not a web designer if you’re not designing a certain way. Ouch, Andy. (You make some great points! However, I’m not sure you have any right to decide that about anyone. If you do, please schedule a meeting regarding my employment with one of the directors at Arc90 and tell them they accidentally hired “something else.” You will be doing our organization a service.)

Yaron Schoen doesn’t think you should tell other people when you redesign things for fun. He also doesn’t think art has a place in design. (Last night I redesigned Yaron’s website for fun, without doing any research, and showed it to my friends. I am still employed and have yet to explode. I will keep you posted.)

While these people are talented, none of them are talented enough to make these decisions about you and what you do. No one is, except you. You can ignore all of the pushy, weirdly controlling opinions on the web about you, design how you want, and you’ll be okay. I promise. I assume you got into design because it’s fun. I hope so, at least. I think the medium could really prosper if everyone that did it was having fun. Don’t let anything come between you and what makes designing fun for you.

Yes, listen to your team mates. They’re smart people that want to help you and respect your opinion. Yes, listen to your clients. They’re paying for your work and have insight into their industry and products. However, you don’t have to listen to anyone with no insight into your work, what you do, why you’ve done it, or how you do it. They’re just voices on the internet. You can disobey them and you’ll be fine. Get back to doing what you love. There is nothing that will help you grow more than being the designer you want to be.

And to the above people, and all others, with very certain ideas on what to be and how to be it: thank you for writing. The web appreciates your efforts. You’re talented people with a lot of experience, and I think we can all benefit from what you’ve learned. However, maybe think more about what you’re writing. Currently, you’re very focused on telling designers what they are and aren’t, but you aren’t good enough to decide that. No one is, no one ever was, and no one ever will be. Do you want to help those people become better designers and shape them towards what you think a real designer is? Tell them how. You could write tutorials, anecdotal experiences with clients and products, stories of projects that failed or succeeded and why. Don’t tell them why they aren’t a designer, or what industry they aren’t in, or what they should and shouldn’t be. Tell them how to be better. Share what made you great, not what makes you sound elitist and controlling.

And I know what you’re thinking. This is the most self-destructive advice ever given. Disobeying all the rules of design, the popular opinions and trends, the tried and true methods, and doing whatever the fuck you want is the quickest way to be a go-nowhere loser that makes dumb things that no one wants to see. Maybe it is. But you’ll be happy. Chances are, you’ll end up doing pretty well. You’ll grow in an organic way that comes from seeing your own mistakes, understanding your own choices, and having fun along the way.

David Carson turned out pretty well. Maybe you will too.

There was a night in the summer of 2008 when I stayed up until 6:30 AM at a friends house in Toms River. Four of us played video games, watched movies, and yelled about sex acts while drinking vodka and lemonade. The room smelt like ferrets (he owned three) and when we went outside, the morning air smelled so wet and fresh that it filled my lungs and head and mouth all at once and I felt like I just inhaled an entire fresh cut lawn. Streaks of light went across the sky. It was mostly dark blue, but strands of pinks and yellows crept across the morning. Everything was soaked in dew and summer. We laughed all the way to our cars. I raced home to get into bed so I’d be in bed before my dad left for work. I remember spinning my steering wheel across the culdesac, and a deer jumped out from behind the bushes in a neighbors yard and darted in front of my car. It dashed into the distance and I thought, if only for a second, that it was a sign that the good times were disappearing.

The week before I graduated from college, I remember standing on a cheap dorm room chair and tearing all the posters off my wall. I started to slowly, carefully remove thumbtacks piece by piece, poster by poster. I started to think of what I was taking down and how they got there. I looked at the names of the bands and how I found out about them. I remembered days in bedrooms, shotgun seats, and living rooms where the music was playing over a CD system. None of these things felt close to me anymore. I realized youth was starting to slip out of my grasp. Life was going to start soon. I was going to lose friends and be lonely. I’d forget people’s names and phone numbers and the things we’d do together and their favorite food and the smell of their cars and the way a girl smiled at me and why any of it ever mattered to begin with. By the time the flood of thoughts had filled my head, I was shredding the posters in half, leaving torn corners held up by tacks on the walls. I fell off the chair and burst into tears, knowing that I had just walked through a door I could never pass through again.

I remember getting drunk off free wine at a senior art show opening with a girl I had a crush on. It was the spring and the sky was always orange. I called her “Chili” for reasons I don’t remember anymore. We went to an extra credit lecture for our astronomy class, reeking of cheep red wine. We flirted the entire time, or at least I did. She took my last piece of gum as I leaned in close and learned she had a boyfriend in California while the lecturer made star wars jokes about something called blue shift. I remember the way her bangs framed her face and how quiet her stare was. I saw her years later and didn’t feel a thing except nostalgia.

At nights in the summer I would stay up until about noon. I learned Photoshop every night from websites and friends that couldn’t sleep. I wanted to get better for reasons I couldn’t understand. I was convinced I could be good at it someday. At 6 AM every morning I’d drive my truck to the beach and sit in the sand with a journal and pencils. I’d write maudlin notes about bullshit long forgotten while giant machines rolled through the fog and flattened out the sand in front of me. It seemed so strange to flatten out sand that way and attempt to make it neat and tidy. I remember almost crashing on the bridge back home and going over the side. It was the first time I almost died when I wasn’t trying to kill myself.

I remember sneaking into gardens when I was in my early teens and smashing vegetables with my friends. I would always smash the eggplants because I hated them for having the word “egg” in the title and I hated eggs. I remember being caught by a big guy with a mustache that ran the bait shop across the street from my friends house. We ran as fast as we could down the street. I still hate looking at uncooked eggplant because it reminds me of getting into trouble.

I remember adventures. I remember stealing things and doing drugs. I remember kissing girls I forget the names of, but I probably shouldn’t have been kissing because I was friends with their ex-boyfriends. I remember video games, punk music, being a roadie, running PA’s, telling stories, lying, driving too slow for a teenager, and hating my town. I remember my heroes being larger than life and telling me big, giant things that look so small and obvious now. I remember my fears and anxieties before I knew they were anxieties. I remember every little thing and it kills me. I remember when the people around me were still young. Everyone seems so old to me now. The spontaneity of life has burnt out, and I’ve been left beside people that ceaselessly plan. I remember, above all else, the days when adventure and friendship could begin as quickly as a match produces flame.

I would give everything I have to live that way again.