3 ms·

Aside from simple web app UI's, something that is highly overlooked in UI, is customizeability (ability to customize, yeah that word sounds better than it looks

by proc0 11y ago

Aside from simple web app UI's, something that is highly overlooked in UI, is customizeability (ability to customize, yeah that word sounds better than it looks). Only a handful of apps get this right. I've been doing UI for a while now so I notice as I used different apps. Adobe apps are pretty good, with consistent icons yet distinguishable, and highly customizeable UI that you can move around and reposition. On the other side, you have Microsoft Office UI that is just shit. I want to headbutt my monitor when I spend more time looking for a command in WORD than in Eclipse, when it's supposed to be a fucking word processor! It has no consistency in how its categorized in what seems to be random grouping, very little customization, and they take the liberty of changing drastically from one version to the next with no option to go back. I imagine the UX designers at MS like the Comcast guy from South Park massaging his nipples. Just give the user the ability to customize a lot, and don't pay teams of UX to design specific UI that will change again and again.

oliv__ 11y ago
On the other hand: I don't think there would be a need to customize anything if the UI was actually well thought-out and executed. Customizing, unless it is simply about making things feel more personal (like changing the background for example), feels like fixing the UI to what it should have been, basically fixing the designer's botched job. In other words, it shouldn't be needed. >Just give the user the ability to customize a lot, and don't pay teams of UX to design specific UI that will change again and again. No. That's just offloading the complexity onto the user. Not everyone wants to have to redesign their software.
- proc0 11y ago
  It's not so much offloading the complexity to the user, but offering a way to create your own experience in an intuitive way. You can set defaults in a sensible way in which many non-power users could just get used to, and at the same time offer intuitive ways to hide and rearrange so that power users can easily make something that is highly personalized. There's already some of this going on, like checkboxes that allow you to hide future messages, or configuring hotkeys.
- leppr 11y ago
  The thing this reasoning overlooks is that apps are complex tools that people use in very different ways, and it doesn't make sense to force people to reinvent the wheel everytime they want a feature that your use case studies didn't predict. How I think it should always work is: (1) back-end layer > (2) very customizable GUI layer > (3) highly tuned sensible defaults and presets. The great thing about this approach is that if you include analytics, the users to the UI testing for you: if you introduce an optional UI feature and see that a large portion of users do activate it, then you know you should make it the default or include it in some preset.
  - oliv__ 11y ago
    Well see in my opinion, they don't need to be complex tools at all. And I would argue that 80% of users probably use the tools in more or less the same ways anyways: hence the design in the first place.

by proc0 11y ago

oliv__ 11y ago

On the other hand: I don't think there would be a need to customize anything if the UI was actually well thought-out and executed. Customizing, unless it is simply about making things feel more personal (like changing the background for example), feels like fixing the UI to what it should have been, basically fixing the designer's botched job. In other words, it shouldn't be needed. >Just give the user the ability to customize a lot, and don't pay teams of UX to design specific UI that will change again and again. No. That's just offloading the complexity onto the user. Not everyone wants to have to redesign their software.

proc0 11y ago
It's not so much offloading the complexity to the user, but offering a way to create your own experience in an intuitive way. You can set defaults in a sensible way in which many non-power users could just get used to, and at the same time offer intuitive ways to hide and rearrange so that power users can easily make something that is highly personalized. There's already some of this going on, like checkboxes that allow you to hide future messages, or configuring hotkeys.
leppr 11y ago
The thing this reasoning overlooks is that apps are complex tools that people use in very different ways, and it doesn't make sense to force people to reinvent the wheel everytime they want a feature that your use case studies didn't predict. How I think it should always work is: (1) back-end layer > (2) very customizable GUI layer > (3) highly tuned sensible defaults and presets. The great thing about this approach is that if you include analytics, the users to the UI testing for you: if you introduce an optional UI feature and see that a large portion of users do activate it, then you know you should make it the default or include it in some preset.
- oliv__ 11y ago
  Well see in my opinion, they don't need to be complex tools at all. And I would argue that 80% of users probably use the tools in more or less the same ways anyways: hence the design in the first place.