Why web designers are over-rated

Editor’s note (2026): this was written in 2009 when Wired ran a competition to redesign Craigslist. Seventeen years later, Craigslist still looks essentially the same — which is itself the argument.

Wired did a competition inviting designers to improve craigslist.

As you can see, most designs actually decrease the functionality of Craigslist under the pretense of “making it beautiful” or “making it a webapp”.

It is possible to do three clicks in the current craigslist design in the time it will take for the home page of these so-called new designs will load. (so much for saving clicks)

Just another data point on why most Web 2.0 products end up making it no money (too much focus on cool design. too little on value for users).