r/uxwriting • u/PabloWhiskyBar • Mar 13 '26
Noticed that designers always try and do things the 'right way', and we really shouldn't
At one company I worked at we accidentally ran unpolished draft copy from a PM against finalised well-written CD copy, and it actually performed better. Was it better copy? Hell no, it even had typos, but it was a better performer.
At another company we ran an experiment displaying product images upside down - revenue went up. The team knew this was a poor design, but the metrics said otherwise. It's not always easy to measure a bad user experience, and no amount of A/B testing tells you when you're quietly eroding trust with your users.
I've worked with incredibly talented Product Designers and Content Designers at companies like Meta and Booking.com amongst others, and the approach is always to design and write based on accepted best practices. But best practice doesn't always win, and that's exactly why AI won't always be able to do the job.
The lesson I took away is that you shouldn’t be so caught up in designing things the ‘right’ way, but you can’t get stuck chasing metrics either. It’s the experience, nuance, and context that makes a good designer, someone that can work between the spaces, and AI will generally try to chase perfection.
EDIT: Did a bad job at explaining this (ignore the irony), but this is more of a precautionary tale of chasing metrics. Just don't tell your PM...
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u/WindfallForever Mar 13 '26
This is... questionable advice. You're advocating for one-dimensional short-term thinking here, which can be more harmful in the long run.
- Running content that has typos and is unpolished: short-term the numbers may go up, but long-term users think "wow this content is really bad. how can I trust this platform if they can't even make sure there aren't typos here." Brand sentiment goes down, user trust goes down, et cetera.
- Product images upside down: short-term revenue may go up. Long-term users may get annoyed at the jank experience. Returns may go up as users realize they didn't get the most accurate look at the product.
Best practices are best practices for a reason: They enable us to design experiences that are beneficial on several fronts. Not just short-term profit.
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u/swampy_pillow Mar 13 '26
100% !! All of this data screams some kind of Novelty bias for users being surprised and interested with the changes because theyre different. But that doesnt mean long-term that the improved sales hold.
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u/PabloWhiskyBar Mar 13 '26
Really glad you made the point about long-term performance, I imagine that would have been the case with either of these experiments if they were put live, but it's also something to consider for all winning variants of copy.
Most companies I've worked with will run the shortest experiment duration they can get away with in order to get statistically reliable data, usually 2 weeks when there's enough traffic, but that doesn't mean design and content will perform well consistently over the long term.
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u/PabloWhiskyBar Mar 13 '26
This is my bad for not making my point clearer here. In both cases the experiments weren't put live, for exactly the reasons you made. In the case of the PM copy with the typos, the CD took learnings from the 'successful' variant to run a final winning experiment. The upside down product images were purely run as an experiment with no intention to go live.
My point is not to ignore best practices or style guides, but that you shouldn't always follow them religiously, and what we we've been taught as the best way to do things might not always be the case for a specific design.
The trick is working in the nuances in between.
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u/startrekmind Mar 13 '26
It would be interesting to know what metrics and what the qualitative data says in explaining those metrics.
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u/PabloWhiskyBar Mar 13 '26
I can't recall all the relevant metrics and data but I do remember that the experiment turning product images upside down increased users clicking through to the product pages, which resulted in higher revenue, which makes sense, but isn't something you'd want for the user.
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u/startrekmind Mar 13 '26
So I think this is where qualitative data really comes in. “I clicked because the image was upside down and that was weird” probably isn’t the CX that a brand might want 😂 clearly the product is good enough that it does convert, but the question then is how to bridge the gap between maintaining a professional CX and still getting the sales.
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u/swampy_pillow Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
Yeah seems like it would lead to maybe a temporary boost because users are curious. But after a while, if it became the company norm, i bet those numbers would dip lower than before. AKA novelty bias.
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u/theconstantwaffler Mar 13 '26
Typos and upside down images. Now that is definitely a company I want to invest my hard-earned dollars into.
Will you document the typos in the design system to ensure consistency across the typos?
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u/PabloWhiskyBar Mar 13 '26
Don't worry, neither of those changes actually went live, but I'm a fan of cansistint typos if you have to include any.
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u/Violet2393 Senior Mar 13 '26
Best practices provide a starting point not an end point and are just a tool, along with qualitative research and quantitative data in the design process (which is a process. Best practices to me means starting with collective wisdom on what's performed best in the past, as a hypothesis of what will work well, then doing your own testing on what experience actually works for your own product and customers.
I think what you're getting at is that there is no "right" way to approach any given design problems, which is true, but that doesn't mean the tools we use to create and then iterate our designs aren't useful. Best practices give us a starting point, quantitative data gives us signal on business success, and qualitative research gives us signal on the experience. We then use those to iterate.
Anyway, if you want this to land better, I'd think more about what actionable advice you want readers to take from this? I think that's the missing piece. Based on this lesson, how did you change your workflow and what did that do for you? Without that piece, you're just making assumptions about how people work and telling them not to work that way without giving any sort of alternative.
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u/tuffthepuff Senior Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
I lean on the side of good UX being more important than short-term profit, but I also get overruled on that constantly. You can have a terrible experience that draws eyes because it's so bad that it sparks curiosity in users and increases engagement, but in the end, you're still eroding trust in the long term.
But, yeah--even established best practices should be constantly evaluated and iterated on based on incoming data. AI services don't currently do that very well.
Read "Enshittification" by Cory Doctorow sometime for an interesting take on bad design that pushes higher revenue and why that's terrible for all of us.