16 ms·

UX Myths (2014)

235 points by riqbal 10y ago

godmodus 10y ago
pretty straight forward and sensible, bar myth 18. Praising flash is dangerous, ignoring all of its security flaws and the fact it's a cpu hogging, battery draining security risk. the fact it's easy to get up and running means little when it can actually hurt your users. unless it's not as evil anymore? can anyone help me out here, did flash become secure while i wasn't paying attention?
- mch82 10y ago
  > Note, this post was written more than 4 years ago. The post seems out of date. Even in the post, the paragraph right before the section on "fun facts" emphasizes lack of mobile platform support. Edit: Humorously, they address this with the Myth #0 reminder :-) > ...and myth #0: If you read lists like this one, you don't need to do research
  - godmodus 10y ago
    yeah that made me think the guy who made the list is taking the list :p just that some of the points he made are in the UX book. it's very similar definition of what UX design is since it's about improving user experience, rather than streamlining user productivity. but that #0... cheeky.
    - godmodus 10y ago
      taking the piss
kristopolous 10y ago
I'll take serious issue with #12. There's undirected scatterbrained interfaces and that's bad sure. But there's the other extreme. Like in Google mobile search, you can't do custom date ranges... they've removed one menu item just on mobile. On SoundCloud mobile you can't delete your own uploads. On reddit mobile you can only do text posts. Or that new version of gas buddy or Google maps or in Google photos on mobile they removed the download option (but then put it back in). What this process has morphed into is supporting a narrowing and increasingly specific user narrative. Instead of seeking genericity, it's specificity. This is manifested as removing ports, keyboard keys, headphone jacks, save as menu options, disabling highlighting of text, or an ability to edit the spelling of a word without having to retype it, or an assumption that you want to tag a person and want a drop down menu of your friends instead of type something... This is done supposedly in simplifying the product but it would be like making a paintbrush that only strokes vertically and only in primary colors...or a microwave with the number pad removed and only 6 auto cook buttons... I mean what on earth
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  I think this comes about because of that thing, you know, too many cooks spoil the broth. Too many UX designers fuck everything up. I just use my smartphone now to sent SMS, make and receive calls, and read HN. Because the user experience of doing anything else on it makes me want to throw it in the river.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    I actually think it's the opposite. I've met many high-falutin designers who seem to care more about an abstract vision and theory then practical terms. I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain... I envision whenever I see these redesigns that there's some Im-so-smart person on staff from like mit media lab that was given dictatorial power over the interface and features, had no actual idea what they were doing, but had too much of an ego to ever admit to it. The real "most clever" thing you can do is be useful and get out of the way.
    - HillRat 10y ago
      I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain... Then those aren't designers, those are artists. Artists have the option of creating a singular vision and defending it against all comers. Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing. If your "designers" are artists (or, just as common, you rely on your programmers implicitly being designers), then, yeah, you've got a problem, because they're focused on the product and not the process. Incidentally, the sort of UX concepts you see on Dribbble are usually art, not design; most of them are created in isolation and outside of actual design methodologies, which is why they look great but are completely impractical for daily use.
      - 10y ago
superplussed 10y ago
Love the site, love the fact that it was created by two guys named Zoltan. Pocketed the first 10 articles and will be reading them later.
harryf 10y ago
Hmmm take issue with this one - http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are-distracted http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are... A key point in mobile app UX is being transactional. If you require any input from a user such as a signup form, design it in such a way that it can be done as quickly as possible e.g. in under 60 seconds. That's because that's how long you have until they are distracted by something more interesting. That would mean not asking users to provide 50 data points all at once but do it in stages over multiple sessions.
- extra88 10y ago
  If you read the page about the myth, I think the main takeaway is not "mobile users aren't distracted" it's "mobile users are no more distracted than non-mobile users." Therefore, don't require any user in any context to provide 50 data points all at once; design a signup form that can be completed in under 60 seconds regardless of device. The secondary takeaway is mobile users are more likely to be at home or work than roaming around. I'm not sure what affect that has on UX, maybe as counter to the above, giving users the option to put more time in to a task and/or do one that's more complex.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
twoshedsmcginty 10y ago
Agree with so much of this, but definitely not with #28. White space has become a design curse. I know how to manage information; I'm not bewildered if I see a lot of it in one place, and I don't need to be guided through it. And I'm truly tired of clicking ellipses to 'see more' Just load the damn page, load the damn comments and paginate. Abandoned Gawker for this reason long ago.
- jwdunne 10y ago
  This is the problem here. User experience is subjective. It's based on who your users actually are. The myth, for example, says people don't read, they scan. In the general case, maybe, but I don't because I search for content that I actually want or need to read top to bottom. The footnotes touch on this but what good will scannable, text light design do for a site with articles directed towards experienced programmers? You'd have a job. User experience is all about the users and knowing who your users are is the fundamental step - not a general list of what to do and not to do. The second point: that's incredibly annoying and to me the motive looks more like increasing eyeballs on the ads directly below the content and not really about the experience. I understand on Wikipedia, where a particularly long article may kill render times and scrolling experience. Best thing to do is understand your audience. A 60 year old researching dental implants will need a much different experience than a 21 year old learning Java or a 5 year old reading fairy tales.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  White space is super important. It can serve as a delimiter between pieces of your UI for example. It can serve as an emphasis on content or an important UI element. It has a ton of different uses you are completely disregarding... because > I know how to manage information But you really don't, though. If I replied with a 20 lines efficiently-packed wall of text with no paragraphs or linebreaks, you'd complain. If you were looking at a UI that was simply packing UI elements like the lego set for a giant cube, you'd be the first one commenting on its poor usability. This is what it's like to have no whitespace: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ -- You know, this exact attitude pisses me off. The #1 complaint in open source software is how poor the UX is in most of it. Famously, the software is "designed for its programmer", with the interface built to be as simple to code as possible. It doesn't change because the community is full of devs arrogant enough to think that their users "know how to manage information" and will make sense of it all. They "don't need to be treated like children" because, obviously, intuitive interfaces are for kids. OK, I get it, you've had bad experiences with whitespace. The G+ homepage is an abomination. Author isn't arguing a tiny column of text surrounded by two giant white columns is good design. Doesn't mean it's always bad.
memonkey 10y ago
I really want to go back and mention "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman because the book lives and breathes what any designer and developer should strive for when designing (and developing) a web, mobile, or desktop app. Seriously, go read it.
bbx 10y ago
I wish more websites, especially those actively writing about UX, would style visited links differently. When you're reading one of these myths, there is no link to go to the next one ; you need to go back to the index. But since visited links are not differentiated, it's difficult to know which item you've just read, and where to go next. Just using "a:link" instead would yield a more satisfying design: http://i.imgur.com/oz6Hznw.png http://i.imgur.com/oz6Hznw.png
- barrkel 10y ago
  I didn't know they were links until I read this comment! No hover on mobile.
  - ldjb 10y ago
    I'm not too sure what the solution is. You could make the links blue and/or underline them, but that could harm readability and aesthetics. I suppose some sort of icon (like an arrowhead) next to each link could help them to afford clicking.
    - userbinator 10y ago
      You could make the links blue and/or underline them, but that could harm readability and aesthetics. I doubt it, blue and underlined is pretty much a standard. I think it looks perfectly fine and clear. There's a reason most browsers' default stylesheet will make links look like that.
      - ldjb 10y ago
        It might be an improvement in this case, though it's common advice to limit the colour palette to a handful of colours. Blue text also doesn't always stand out against certain background colours. Underlining links (particularly where there are many of them) can harm readability, which is why many popular websites do not do it, including the major search engines, Wikipedia and even Hacker News.
    - 10y ago
DanBC 10y ago
I thought presenting a list like this was sub-optimal, because people see it and remember the written statement, not the myth. Thus, people remember "stock photos enhance user experience", and not "stock photos harm user experience".
coldcode 10y ago
Flash is evil is a UX myth? I guess I am mything out on this one, as I don't even have it installed on my mac.
- erikb 10y ago
  Open it up and the first sentence says this article is 4 years old. Then you probably realise you are not the first to mention that point. Yes, in nearly 2017 Flash is (almost) dead.
known 10y ago
This page was last archived 3 years ago http://archive.is/u2d8Y http://archive.is/u2d8Y
drewjaja 10y ago
Everyone is saying not to use hamburger menus. What is a good alternative?
msimpson 10y ago
"Myth #18: Flash used to be evil...A Flash site can meet virtually all web accessibility criteria" --UX Myths "The majority of Flash content cannot be made natively accessible to screen readers. At this time, only modern versions of the JAWS and Window-Eyes screen readers that are using the Flash 6+ player within Internet Explorer on Windows can provide even marginal access to Flash content." --WebAIM

UX Myths (2014)

235 points by riqbal 10y ago

pretty straight forward and sensible, bar myth 18. Praising flash is dangerous, ignoring all of its security flaws and the fact it's a cpu hogging, battery draining security risk. the fact it's easy to get up and running means little when it can actually hurt your users. unless it's not as evil anymore? can anyone help me out here, did flash become secure while i wasn't paying attention?

mch82 10y ago
> Note, this post was written more than 4 years ago. The post seems out of date. Even in the post, the paragraph right before the section on "fun facts" emphasizes lack of mobile platform support. Edit: Humorously, they address this with the Myth #0 reminder :-) > ...and myth #0: If you read lists like this one, you don't need to do research
- godmodus 10y ago
  yeah that made me think the guy who made the list is taking the list :p just that some of the points he made are in the UX book. it's very similar definition of what UX design is since it's about improving user experience, rather than streamlining user productivity. but that #0... cheeky.
  - godmodus 10y ago
    taking the piss

kristopolous 10y ago

I'll take serious issue with #12. There's undirected scatterbrained interfaces and that's bad sure. But there's the other extreme. Like in Google mobile search, you can't do custom date ranges... they've removed one menu item just on mobile. On SoundCloud mobile you can't delete your own uploads. On reddit mobile you can only do text posts. Or that new version of gas buddy or Google maps or in Google photos on mobile they removed the download option (but then put it back in). What this process has morphed into is supporting a narrowing and increasingly specific user narrative. Instead of seeking genericity, it's specificity. This is manifested as removing ports, keyboard keys, headphone jacks, save as menu options, disabling highlighting of text, or an ability to edit the spelling of a word without having to retype it, or an assumption that you want to tag a person and want a drop down menu of your friends instead of type something... This is done supposedly in simplifying the product but it would be like making a paintbrush that only strokes vertically and only in primary colors...or a microwave with the number pad removed and only 6 auto cook buttons... I mean what on earth

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
I think this comes about because of that thing, you know, too many cooks spoil the broth. Too many UX designers fuck everything up. I just use my smartphone now to sent SMS, make and receive calls, and read HN. Because the user experience of doing anything else on it makes me want to throw it in the river.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  I actually think it's the opposite. I've met many high-falutin designers who seem to care more about an abstract vision and theory then practical terms. I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain... I envision whenever I see these redesigns that there's some Im-so-smart person on staff from like mit media lab that was given dictatorial power over the interface and features, had no actual idea what they were doing, but had too much of an ego to ever admit to it. The real "most clever" thing you can do is be useful and get out of the way.
  - HillRat 10y ago
    I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain... Then those aren't designers, those are artists. Artists have the option of creating a singular vision and defending it against all comers. Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing. If your "designers" are artists (or, just as common, you rely on your programmers implicitly being designers), then, yeah, you've got a problem, because they're focused on the product and not the process. Incidentally, the sort of UX concepts you see on Dribbble are usually art, not design; most of them are created in isolation and outside of actual design methodologies, which is why they look great but are completely impractical for daily use.
    - 10y ago

superplussed 10y ago

Love the site, love the fact that it was created by two guys named Zoltan. Pocketed the first 10 articles and will be reading them later.

harryf 10y ago

Hmmm take issue with this one - http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are-distracted http://uxmyths.com/post/99302792550/myth-33-mobile-users-are... A key point in mobile app UX is being transactional. If you require any input from a user such as a signup form, design it in such a way that it can be done as quickly as possible e.g. in under 60 seconds. That's because that's how long you have until they are distracted by something more interesting. That would mean not asking users to provide 50 data points all at once but do it in stages over multiple sessions.

extra88 10y ago
If you read the page about the myth, I think the main takeaway is not "mobile users aren't distracted" it's "mobile users are no more distracted than non-mobile users." Therefore, don't require any user in any context to provide 50 data points all at once; design a signup form that can be completed in under 60 seconds regardless of device. The secondary takeaway is mobile users are more likely to be at home or work than roaming around. I'm not sure what affect that has on UX, maybe as counter to the above, giving users the option to put more time in to a task and/or do one that's more complex.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

twoshedsmcginty 10y ago

Agree with so much of this, but definitely not with #28. White space has become a design curse. I know how to manage information; I'm not bewildered if I see a lot of it in one place, and I don't need to be guided through it. And I'm truly tired of clicking ellipses to 'see more' Just load the damn page, load the damn comments and paginate. Abandoned Gawker for this reason long ago.

jwdunne 10y ago
This is the problem here. User experience is subjective. It's based on who your users actually are. The myth, for example, says people don't read, they scan. In the general case, maybe, but I don't because I search for content that I actually want or need to read top to bottom. The footnotes touch on this but what good will scannable, text light design do for a site with articles directed towards experienced programmers? You'd have a job. User experience is all about the users and knowing who your users are is the fundamental step - not a general list of what to do and not to do. The second point: that's incredibly annoying and to me the motive looks more like increasing eyeballs on the ads directly below the content and not really about the experience. I understand on Wikipedia, where a particularly long article may kill render times and scrolling experience. Best thing to do is understand your audience. A 60 year old researching dental implants will need a much different experience than a 21 year old learning Java or a 5 year old reading fairy tales.
scrollaway 10y ago
White space is super important. It can serve as a delimiter between pieces of your UI for example. It can serve as an emphasis on content or an important UI element. It has a ton of different uses you are completely disregarding... because > I know how to manage information But you really don't, though. If I replied with a 20 lines efficiently-packed wall of text with no paragraphs or linebreaks, you'd complain. If you were looking at a UI that was simply packing UI elements like the lego set for a giant cube, you'd be the first one commenting on its poor usability. This is what it's like to have no whitespace: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ -- You know, this exact attitude pisses me off. The #1 complaint in open source software is how poor the UX is in most of it. Famously, the software is "designed for its programmer", with the interface built to be as simple to code as possible. It doesn't change because the community is full of devs arrogant enough to think that their users "know how to manage information" and will make sense of it all. They "don't need to be treated like children" because, obviously, intuitive interfaces are for kids. OK, I get it, you've had bad experiences with whitespace. The G+ homepage is an abomination. Author isn't arguing a tiny column of text surrounded by two giant white columns is good design. Doesn't mean it's always bad.

memonkey 10y ago

I really want to go back and mention "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman because the book lives and breathes what any designer and developer should strive for when designing (and developing) a web, mobile, or desktop app. Seriously, go read it.

bbx 10y ago

I wish more websites, especially those actively writing about UX, would style visited links differently. When you're reading one of these myths, there is no link to go to the next one ; you need to go back to the index. But since visited links are not differentiated, it's difficult to know which item you've just read, and where to go next. Just using "a:link" instead would yield a more satisfying design: http://i.imgur.com/oz6Hznw.png http://i.imgur.com/oz6Hznw.png

barrkel 10y ago
I didn't know they were links until I read this comment! No hover on mobile.
- ldjb 10y ago
  I'm not too sure what the solution is. You could make the links blue and/or underline them, but that could harm readability and aesthetics. I suppose some sort of icon (like an arrowhead) next to each link could help them to afford clicking.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    You could make the links blue and/or underline them, but that could harm readability and aesthetics. I doubt it, blue and underlined is pretty much a standard. I think it looks perfectly fine and clear. There's a reason most browsers' default stylesheet will make links look like that.
    - ldjb 10y ago
      It might be an improvement in this case, though it's common advice to limit the colour palette to a handful of colours. Blue text also doesn't always stand out against certain background colours. Underlining links (particularly where there are many of them) can harm readability, which is why many popular websites do not do it, including the major search engines, Wikipedia and even Hacker News.
  - 10y ago

DanBC 10y ago

I thought presenting a list like this was sub-optimal, because people see it and remember the written statement, not the myth. Thus, people remember "stock photos enhance user experience", and not "stock photos harm user experience".

coldcode 10y ago

Flash is evil is a UX myth? I guess I am mything out on this one, as I don't even have it installed on my mac.

erikb 10y ago
Open it up and the first sentence says this article is 4 years old. Then you probably realise you are not the first to mention that point. Yes, in nearly 2017 Flash is (almost) dead.

known 10y ago

This page was last archived 3 years ago http://archive.is/u2d8Y http://archive.is/u2d8Y

drewjaja 10y ago

Everyone is saying not to use hamburger menus. What is a good alternative?

msimpson 10y ago

"Myth #18: Flash used to be evil...A Flash site can meet virtually all web accessibility criteria" --UX Myths "The majority of Flash content cannot be made natively accessible to screen readers. At this time, only modern versions of the JAWS and Window-Eyes screen readers that are using the Flash 6+ player within Internet Explorer on Windows can provide even marginal access to Flash content." --WebAIM