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Everything you say might be right, but there is something extra to jonstokes' comment: ametures and nerds often produce more functional sites than real designer

Everything you say might be right, but there is something extra to jonstokes' comment: ametures and nerds often produce more functional sites than real designers. The mechanism here is that whatever esthetic and psychological principles are in play, an interface must also present the needed info and functionality. Craigslist and HN do that in a more-or-less bullshit free way. UX designers can get caught up in other concerns. In fact there is a systematic bias: since we know that users don't like too much information, UX pros will want to hide info and functionality. But since no one likes boring designs, they also want to add cooling-looking (i.e. distracting) stuff.

flukus 10y ago
I find that once you're trying to hide info or functionality it's because you don't know the users workflow. Understanding workflow is the key to usability, at least with LOB apps, trying to cram everyone's needs into a single table or building UI's that are essentially skins over database tables make for some awful UI's.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  > cram everyone's needs into a single table or building UI's that are essentially skins over database tables make for some awful UI's ... which, after you learn how to use them, often work much faster than the alternatives. There are anecdotes a-plenty here like our local (tiny) bank who held out replacing their terminal based with their Windows version because in tests the keyboard based, archaic, every-on-one-screen application was far more productive than the new one and this particular application is only to be used by seniors in this bank who, because of the size, are not replaced / added very often. The Windows version, although not even that well designed, has been created to be faster to learn for new employees and the screens have been designed to be aesthetically pleasing and therefor sparsely layed out over many more pages. The old staff hates it, the new staff (not very many) is just used to this kind of easy to learn, nothing to master kind of thing. They don't have to be exclusive though; what happened to the 'expert mode' in apps/applications? That button you ram if you are an expert and suddenly 100 screens are packed into one, keyboard navigation is switched on and I can do my work much faster than clicking HUGE easy to learn, text heavy buttons? In a throw-away society, all this interaction design makes sense; no-one is at a job long enough to really get into software and you don't get through the trial period if you don't learn using it fast enough. In that regard you need big empty pages with videos explaining what everything does and a boned out interaction process that has been carefully thought out. I think we need that if the budget is there, but I think we need the expert mode as well and that, as far as I have seen in my life time, (interaction) designers are not very good at packing dense nor is it needed; if you are an 'expert', you'll cope (or don't care in some cases) about the (interaction) design.
  - flukus 10y ago
    The expert modes of seen (no many) have kind of been examples of what I'm talking about. User is adding a widget and it needs a category but category is not. So user has to go to category page, or in expert mode hit a key combo to bring up that screen. The easiest way for beginners and experts is to allow the user to add a category in the same workflow as adding a widget.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Those expert modes went away because invariably newbies would trigger it, freak, and bother tech support. And frankly the mouse, and more recently touch screens, seems to have made interface designers ignore the value of haptic feedback.
  - Can_Not 10y ago
    Reminds when nvidia removed their control panel and replaced it with... I'm not sure what it was. There was 2 mostly blank white highly padded pages, a spinning 3d logo, and maybe a grand total of 4 input fields to edit? It was utterly useless. Around 8 years ago you could use a RegEdit to get the original back. I hope it's still possible. The original control panel was full of features and they simply removed them all.
anotheryou 10y ago
Another thing are Photoshop designs that where never tested interactively.
digitalengineer 10y ago
What is called a UX person is often a UI person. Even Adobe's tool "Experience Design" is really UI Design. http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html If only there was room for a UX person as well. Let them do the 'Sprint 0' before someone even touches a computer.

flukus 10y ago

I find that once you're trying to hide info or functionality it's because you don't know the users workflow. Understanding workflow is the key to usability, at least with LOB apps, trying to cram everyone's needs into a single table or building UI's that are essentially skins over database tables make for some awful UI's.

tluyben2 10y ago
> cram everyone's needs into a single table or building UI's that are essentially skins over database tables make for some awful UI's ... which, after you learn how to use them, often work much faster than the alternatives. There are anecdotes a-plenty here like our local (tiny) bank who held out replacing their terminal based with their Windows version because in tests the keyboard based, archaic, every-on-one-screen application was far more productive than the new one and this particular application is only to be used by seniors in this bank who, because of the size, are not replaced / added very often. The Windows version, although not even that well designed, has been created to be faster to learn for new employees and the screens have been designed to be aesthetically pleasing and therefor sparsely layed out over many more pages. The old staff hates it, the new staff (not very many) is just used to this kind of easy to learn, nothing to master kind of thing. They don't have to be exclusive though; what happened to the 'expert mode' in apps/applications? That button you ram if you are an expert and suddenly 100 screens are packed into one, keyboard navigation is switched on and I can do my work much faster than clicking HUGE easy to learn, text heavy buttons? In a throw-away society, all this interaction design makes sense; no-one is at a job long enough to really get into software and you don't get through the trial period if you don't learn using it fast enough. In that regard you need big empty pages with videos explaining what everything does and a boned out interaction process that has been carefully thought out. I think we need that if the budget is there, but I think we need the expert mode as well and that, as far as I have seen in my life time, (interaction) designers are not very good at packing dense nor is it needed; if you are an 'expert', you'll cope (or don't care in some cases) about the (interaction) design.
- flukus 10y ago
  The expert modes of seen (no many) have kind of been examples of what I'm talking about. User is adding a widget and it needs a category but category is not. So user has to go to category page, or in expert mode hit a key combo to bring up that screen. The easiest way for beginners and experts is to allow the user to add a category in the same workflow as adding a widget.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Those expert modes went away because invariably newbies would trigger it, freak, and bother tech support. And frankly the mouse, and more recently touch screens, seems to have made interface designers ignore the value of haptic feedback.
- Can_Not 10y ago
  Reminds when nvidia removed their control panel and replaced it with... I'm not sure what it was. There was 2 mostly blank white highly padded pages, a spinning 3d logo, and maybe a grand total of 4 input fields to edit? It was utterly useless. Around 8 years ago you could use a RegEdit to get the original back. I hope it's still possible. The original control panel was full of features and they simply removed them all.

anotheryou 10y ago

Another thing are Photoshop designs that where never tested interactively.

digitalengineer 10y ago

What is called a UX person is often a UI person. Even Adobe's tool "Experience Design" is really UI Design. http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html If only there was room for a UX person as well. Let them do the 'Sprint 0' before someone even touches a computer.