The case for a quiet interface

We removed the unread badges, the view counters, the follower totals, and most of the colour. The version we were afraid of shipping is the version we shipped, and the things we were afraid would happen did not happen.

The fear was specific and reasonable. Counters are how people know something is worth their attention, and a product that hides them is asking readers to work harder. We expected engagement to fall and we were prepared to put them back.

What we found instead is that the counters had been answering a question nobody was asking on this kind of page. A reader deciding whether to spend nine hours with an audiobook is not helped by knowing that four hundred other people opened its page this month. They are helped by the first paragraph, the author's name, and how long it is.

The colour was a harder argument, and we did not win it completely. Colour carries status well and we kept exactly one: the warm accent that marks an unread signal and a rating. Everything else is ink, paper and a hairline. When a single element is allowed to be coloured, it does not have to compete to be noticed.

The part we underestimated is what quiet costs to maintain. Every new feature arrives wanting a badge, and each one is individually defensible. The interface stays quiet only because we keep saying no to reasonable requests, which is a different discipline from designing it quiet in the first place.