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Stop Being an Idiot
- raganwald 17y agoAnd this goes double for language designers!
- hga 17y agoI suppose so (hey, Lisp is The One True Way), but also don't expect your users to be super-human (i.e. garbage collection is best for many of not most problem domains).
- rauljara 17y agoI agree with the author's point, but I really wish there were some examples. It's one thing to say that you're against stupid, boring interface design. I think we could all agree on that. But I bet we'd have a slightly harder time agreeing on just which interface designs are stupid/boring and which are simple/elegant.
- marilyn 17y agoI'll throw out an example: The Drupal admin interface is an example of stupid/boring, while the Wordpress admin interface is an example of simple and elegant. Anyone agree?
- justinph 17y agoI'd agree. WordPress has gotten where it is by doing two things: making it easy to use, and keeps adding useful features that work, more or less, pretty well. The quality of the code behind WP is very different discussion, but I'd say you're right.
- tokenadult 17y agoI can't agree at all about the WordPress admin interface, which I use to run the website of my nonprofit (because that is what was set up by someone else). It's a very annoying interface and one I hope to replace as soon as possible--although I acknowledge I am still shopping for what to replace it with.
- aresant 17y agoThe simplest way that you can measure & tweak usability to your site is to do some basic field testing. Nielsen has an excellent outline for actually testing and applying basic user interface design here http://www.useit.com/alertbox/anybody-usability.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/anybody-usability.html If you have a budget, do it up right. If you don't, rely on family and friends that fit your demographic.
- edw519 17y agoNobody likes the unfamiliar. Then why is your blog dim white letters on a black background? The first thing my reptilian brain thought was that this was some kind of left-brained new-age artistic fluff. But it's not. You have important points to make. So do your readers (and back button pushers) a favor and practice what you preach. Combine your artistic tendencies with a more familiar, more functional white background and reach more of us. You can do both.
- orderedlist 17y agoI'm teaching you that different interactions are ok. Unfamiliarity isn't wrong, it's just different. People get used to it, and often times prefer it. Consider my site your education on different contrast ratios. You did, after all, read the post.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Daniel_Newby 17y agoI didn't read more than a few lines. White on black gives me a full-blown migraine. Many other people also seem to find it literally painful to read, not merely unfamiliar or jarring. Consider me your education on different contrast ratios. ;-)
- orderedlist 17y agoDark text on a light background (on screen) gives some people migraines too. This scheme is my preference, has always been, therefore it's what I make for my own site. Feel free to use your preference for your own.
- webwright 17y agoHe's teaching you that reading white text on a dark background is actually harder to do and strains the eye more. Consider his comment your education on the usability/readability of different contrast ratios (a pretty well-reasoned post on the topic here: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/ http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_d... ). And consider my comment your education on how your tone can be annoyingly preachy and smug.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- MrSartorial 17y agoI think the author makes a great point. I pursue this concept in what I call "elegant design". What this means to me is taking as much functionality as possible and putting it into a simple to understand package. There is a huge difference between "intuitive" and "Dumbed down". Want some exapmles? Think Apple products or, online, facebook. Both have a lot of features available, but you aren't overburdened by them. You take what you need and you leave the rest. On top of that, both offer an intuitive GUI that is easy to comprehend. A lot of times this comes down to interconnecting all of the aspects of your system to be accessible where your users need them to be. I feel this is an area Microsoft has struggled with in the past and they are finally catching up with their more recent Office program. A good case study here? Compare Microsoft Outlook to Gmail. Gmail is an elegant solution, Outlook is incomprehensible to the point that there are companies whose business is making it easy to understand (ie. Xobni). There are many other examples, but I'm interested in what everyone else thinks too...
- teye 17y agoTufte rehashed
- teye 17y agoWhy would this be flagged/downvoted? Tufte says it better, says more about it, and gives awesome examples.
- Vindexus 17y agoProbably because your comment lacks information. "Tufte rehashed" tells me nothing. Who is Tufte? Is that a company? A person? A blog? What's their link? Is it just an inside joke I don't get? Just adding context and links to your comments would make them more useful.
- pvg 17y agoTufte writes meticulously and in detail about specific topics. This post is a bunch of vague generalities on a indeterminate topic. Saying it's a rehash of Tufte is like saying 'I'm feeling ambitious and stabby' is a rehash of Macbeth.
- warfangle 17y agoStop reinvinting the wheel. Don't be an asshole and replace the browser's scrollbar with one of your own. Especially when the scrollbar you invent doesn't work in Chrome.
- orderedlist 17y agoStop Being an Idiot.
- warfangle 17y agoAll using the same blog template is definitely not in the same ballpark as overriding default browser behavior with something that doesn't work. It's not even the same sport.. Edit to respond to your revised comment that replaced its content with the title of your article (wow, way to be accepting of criticism, dude! When you do usability testing and a user finds a bug or complains about something, do you tell them they're an idiot, too?): Even if it's a bug in Chrome's rendering engine, you have an IE7 specific stylesheet, assumedly to support the bugs in its CSS rendering engine. And considering IE7 usage is 11.7% while Chrome's is 10.8% [1], you've just alienated a fairly large portion of your potential readers. [1] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp (orderedlist's statistics may be different; being a usability-oriented blog, it probably has a higher portion of Chrome users than the general public)
- pvg 17y agoSo you suggested he not be an asshole and it offends you he proposes you cease being an idiot. It's the sort of discourse that promises further Great Insights.
- warfangle 17y agoAsshole behavior is markedly different than idiot behavior ;) I fully acquiesce that my comment was, itself, asshole behavior - I wrote it in an emotional state, as a usability/UI design blog that breaks a basic tenant of web usability (don't override basic browser behavior; if you have to, make sure it works everywhere because people expect it to be there - they get upset when things happen that they consider breakage) was a fairly intense mind-breaking experience. Calling someone an asshole is asshole behavior. Knowingly forcing your users into a broken usability situation is asshole behavior. I wouldn't think that calling someone out on it would be considered idiot behavior.
- jbyers 17y agoI agree with Tracy's comment on this post. What specifically are we talking about, other than generalities?
- projectileboy 17y agoEdward Tufte's advice is to visualize your audience (i.e., "users") as "smart but busy".
- jsz0 17y agoFYI your site doesn't work too good in Safari or Chrome. Very slow scrolling. Something about the background image I suspect. Works fine in Firefox though.
- tsally 17y agoI always yell at people who blame themselves for not being able to figure out a technology, whether it be the UI of a program or the physical interface of a device. People tend to assume stupidity on their own part; instead, I tell them to blame the designers. After all, most people would blame the manufacturer if confronted with a car that was hard to use. Interesting how simple interfaces (a wheel and two peddles) are expected in some areas and not in others.
- Psyonic 17y agoIsn't "Dumbing it down" exactly what apple is doing with the iPad, which will almost certainly be a runaway success?
- ewjordan 17y agoThere's a fine line, and I suspect the iPad is on the right side of it. What you probably want to shoot for is offering features that will leave 90% of your customers 99% satisfied. If you only offer the stuff that the bottom 50% needs, too many people will feel crippled (and that's what a dumbed down product will look like), whereas if you try to please that top 10%, you're going to have to make the UI far too complex. If you please 90% of the target audience, you'll likely end up with a clean interface without pissing off too many people. I'm all but certain the iPad will fully satisfy 90% of the people that buy it, especially since it's not being positioned as a desktop replacement.
- Psyonic 17y agoInteresting. Thanks for your thoughts