4 ms·

I enjoyed this article, and overall agree - sometimes you want / need a mess. Craigslist for example is not unbeatable, nor is it a messy interface I think is

I enjoyed this article, and overall agree - sometimes you want / need a mess. Craigslist for example is not unbeatable, nor is it a messy interface I think is truly good. Really, I think it's more a matter of who they are at this point, and that they have a user base that gets things as are, and they can't change now. New users will deal with the mess, because they more or less "have" to use Craiglist for something. Not that craigslist needs to be pretty, but being frustrating for even regular users is not a good sign. Photoshop is a better example, I think. Its ugly in the sense that there is a lot, but whats there IS actually designed; well mostly. Facebook is trickier. They have a network effect which drives many new users to overcome on boarding, but also people view it on mobile a lot, and so don't see that interface. And those that do, probably have blinders and only see the second column. Really, I think there is a time, place, product and audience for it. It's important to think about what information you "bubble up" in an interface, and what you require them to click-thru for. Obviously if users learn your messy UI, they're going to be upset with complete redesigns, so don't do that. Do care about the look of the interface, it always matters, but sometimes "matters" is pretty, and sometimes "matters" is functional and complete. If you can strike a balance between the two, and create an experience that your users can understand and enjoy, you're on the right track.

agumonkey 11y ago
Photoshop is a thing for 'doing'. The crowded UI disappears when you actually use it, things flow very nicely. Other graphical editors on the other hand ...
- jordache 11y ago
  GIMP? I shudder when I think about GIMP
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I feel happier editing imaging through imagemagick rather than with GIMP.
  - dTal 11y ago
    As someone who's never used Photoshop, I don't understand the GIMP hate. I use it all the time for a variety of imaging tasks, and it rarely surprises me - everything's discoverable, you don't need to memorise weird shortcuts, and the single-window mode in 2.8 removes the biggest pain point people were complaining about. The interface is also extensively configurable, with pretty much anything dockable into anything else (not that I use this feature much). Blender on the other hand...
    - blt 11y ago
      Doubtlessly many GIMP haters, myself included, are frustrated because GIMP made many UI decisions that are incompatible with Photoshop without offering any compelling improvement. For example, zoom in PS is ctrl-minus and ctrl-equals, whereas in GIMP it is minus (no ctrl) and plus (aka shift-equals). This change is very annoying because zooming is one of the most common actions in photo editing and becomes part of your muscle memory. This design choice, and many others in keyboard shortcuts, menu layouts, etc. contribute to a feeling that GIMP tried to break compatibility with Photoshop on purpose for no reason. It feels like GIMP is actively hostile to Photoshop users. It also feels like the GIMP developers were very arrogant to think that following their design whims was more worthwhile than being compatible with a well-loved industry standard program. For serious photo editing, GIMP is completely useless because it lacks the Adjustment Layers feature that is critical for non-destructive editing, and it did not even support 16-bit color until a few months ago. GIMP is one of the huge failures in open-source software IMO. They should have just made a Photoshop clone.
      - anotheryou 11y ago
        my favorite is mirroring: mirror horizontally/vertically does tho opposite in PS and gimp. (mirroring over the said axis and mirroring said axis).
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Nothing makes sense for me in GIMP. Don't call me grumpy too fast, I used almost every computer graphics related programs and none gave me this level of frustration. Be it 80s dos painting programs, x11 image viewers, windows node based compositing, 3d animation packages, even illustrator (which has some odd ui abstractions sometimes). I thought blender changed dramatically in term of UI / ergonomy. I used to say that blender is the GIMP of 3D. But I came with a strong Maya/Houdini superiority complex.
jandrese 11y ago
IMHO, too many designers confuse having lots of controls with "messy interface". If the controls are poorly laid out then it certainly can be messy, but if they are organized and arranged properly it is not messy. You don't say a library is messy because they have a lot of books, those books are neatly organized and indexed. People have gone way overboard in hiding functionality in modern design. Discoverability seems like a dirty word these days. The ironic thing is that by removing the obvious controls for so many of the features in the name of simplifying the interface for new users, you actually make the interface more complex and require more training on the user's part to operate it. The days of browsing through menus looking for an option that vaguely sounds like what you want seem to be gone. Now you have to just know the magical screen gesture to make it do what you want. The only way to discover it is to know that such a feature already exists and Google for it. Hey iPhone users, did you know you can swipe up on the lockscreen to bring up a menu full of useful controls? I'd say roughly 1 in 2 iPhone users I've talked to know about that feature. Do you know how you were supposed to discover it? Because I don't.
- meesterdude 11y ago
  > You don't say a library is messy because they have a lot of books, those books are neatly organized and indexed. Well said! I think the same thing about magazines and newspapers. Although we should not be so quick to compare; part of google's success was their simplicity, compared to yahoo's complexity. > The days of browsing through menus looking for an option that vaguely sounds like what you want seem to be gone. Maybe. I'm doing something like this within my app, but for anywhere complicated I just have a dropdown with a bunch of examples that they can start out with and tinker with from there. I think that can go a long way in discoverability and understanding how to do something, and whats possible.
- zyxley 11y ago
  For a simple example of an actual "messy interface", take a look at Calibre.
- jimbokun 11y ago
  "Do you know how you were supposed to discover it?" By watching the WWDC keynote demo?

agumonkey 11y ago

Photoshop is a thing for 'doing'. The crowded UI disappears when you actually use it, things flow very nicely. Other graphical editors on the other hand ...

jordache 11y ago
GIMP? I shudder when I think about GIMP
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I feel happier editing imaging through imagemagick rather than with GIMP.
- dTal 11y ago
  As someone who's never used Photoshop, I don't understand the GIMP hate. I use it all the time for a variety of imaging tasks, and it rarely surprises me - everything's discoverable, you don't need to memorise weird shortcuts, and the single-window mode in 2.8 removes the biggest pain point people were complaining about. The interface is also extensively configurable, with pretty much anything dockable into anything else (not that I use this feature much). Blender on the other hand...
  - blt 11y ago
    Doubtlessly many GIMP haters, myself included, are frustrated because GIMP made many UI decisions that are incompatible with Photoshop without offering any compelling improvement. For example, zoom in PS is ctrl-minus and ctrl-equals, whereas in GIMP it is minus (no ctrl) and plus (aka shift-equals). This change is very annoying because zooming is one of the most common actions in photo editing and becomes part of your muscle memory. This design choice, and many others in keyboard shortcuts, menu layouts, etc. contribute to a feeling that GIMP tried to break compatibility with Photoshop on purpose for no reason. It feels like GIMP is actively hostile to Photoshop users. It also feels like the GIMP developers were very arrogant to think that following their design whims was more worthwhile than being compatible with a well-loved industry standard program. For serious photo editing, GIMP is completely useless because it lacks the Adjustment Layers feature that is critical for non-destructive editing, and it did not even support 16-bit color until a few months ago. GIMP is one of the huge failures in open-source software IMO. They should have just made a Photoshop clone.
    - anotheryou 11y ago
      my favorite is mirroring: mirror horizontally/vertically does tho opposite in PS and gimp. (mirroring over the said axis and mirroring said axis).
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Nothing makes sense for me in GIMP. Don't call me grumpy too fast, I used almost every computer graphics related programs and none gave me this level of frustration. Be it 80s dos painting programs, x11 image viewers, windows node based compositing, 3d animation packages, even illustrator (which has some odd ui abstractions sometimes). I thought blender changed dramatically in term of UI / ergonomy. I used to say that blender is the GIMP of 3D. But I came with a strong Maya/Houdini superiority complex.

jandrese 11y ago

IMHO, too many designers confuse having lots of controls with "messy interface". If the controls are poorly laid out then it certainly can be messy, but if they are organized and arranged properly it is not messy. You don't say a library is messy because they have a lot of books, those books are neatly organized and indexed. People have gone way overboard in hiding functionality in modern design. Discoverability seems like a dirty word these days. The ironic thing is that by removing the obvious controls for so many of the features in the name of simplifying the interface for new users, you actually make the interface more complex and require more training on the user's part to operate it. The days of browsing through menus looking for an option that vaguely sounds like what you want seem to be gone. Now you have to just know the magical screen gesture to make it do what you want. The only way to discover it is to know that such a feature already exists and Google for it. Hey iPhone users, did you know you can swipe up on the lockscreen to bring up a menu full of useful controls? I'd say roughly 1 in 2 iPhone users I've talked to know about that feature. Do you know how you were supposed to discover it? Because I don't.

meesterdude 11y ago
> You don't say a library is messy because they have a lot of books, those books are neatly organized and indexed. Well said! I think the same thing about magazines and newspapers. Although we should not be so quick to compare; part of google's success was their simplicity, compared to yahoo's complexity. > The days of browsing through menus looking for an option that vaguely sounds like what you want seem to be gone. Maybe. I'm doing something like this within my app, but for anywhere complicated I just have a dropdown with a bunch of examples that they can start out with and tinker with from there. I think that can go a long way in discoverability and understanding how to do something, and whats possible.
zyxley 11y ago
For a simple example of an actual "messy interface", take a look at Calibre.
jimbokun 11y ago
"Do you know how you were supposed to discover it?" By watching the WWDC keynote demo?