5 ms·

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

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.
- userbinator 10y ago
  It can serve as a delimiter between pieces of your UI for example. If you want a delimiter then use a delimiter, perhaps a line? One of my main gripes with "modern" UI are UI elements which have no defined border on them. For example, how do I know where's the border between two buttons, or whether there's any inactive space between them, when I see only text separated by whitespace (or for that matter, whether they're buttons at all or just text labels, which I argue should have no border)? It's quite disorienting.
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    Lines and whitespace have different affordances. For example, a thick or double line may scream "drag me" whereas whitespace can mean "more things may go there in the future". The thing is, you're talking about very specific examples. My point is that especially in UX design you can't use absolutes like that, such as "whitespace is always bad" or "whitespace is always good". This was also the author's point and this idea that "instead of whitespace we should use lines", "instead of whitespace we should pack things tighter" and so on is absurd. Now here's UX Myth #35: "Modern UIs have good, established UX". Desktop, web, most everything I've seen are UX disasters blindly following trends. And just because you throw UX designers at a problem doesn't mean they will do a good job at it. UX design is very much a "fake it till you make it" industry. It's based on good principles and mostly the scientific method, but it has a lot of reproducibility issues because it deals with a lot of subjectiveness. Also, some good UX principles may not apply in all situations. And think about this: Most people are actually bad at their job. The majority of devs and web designers aren't working at Google/Facebook, they're making awful wordpress sites. This is less visible in UX design but it's still true - the majority of UX devs aren't good.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  >> I know how to manage information > But you really don't, though. No, I really do, you know. Sure, if there's a logical structure in information, you'd do well to highlight it - as well as any relative relevance of pieces of info (IFF you know what task I'm solving). But I'm not 3 y.o. anymore, I can handle more than 5 lines of text on a page. Please don't hide information from me just because you think it's not relevant to the most basic use case. I'm strongly with Tufte on this one. Presenting information is about dumping it all on the person with minimum artsy bullshit, and helping the viewer make sense of it efficiently. Modern UX paradigms however go in the completely opposite direction - hide everything, remove features, decrease information density. There's a reason NASA mission control look like this: http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg and not this: https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png even though the latter is exactly what modern UX guidelines would call for. If you want to build tools to help people solve problems efficiently, make tools. If you want to make a safe-for-work mental masturbation art piece, which is what most mainstream UX guidelines boil down to, then by all means. I just don't want to have it anywhere near me when I have problems to solve. -- > intuitive interfaces are for kids There's only one intuitive interface in the world, and that's the nipple. Everything else is learned.
z3t4 10y ago
White space should be used for padding between elements. Users will however be annoyed if there is too much unused screen area, especially if the content is cramped together with little padding.

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.

userbinator 10y ago
It can serve as a delimiter between pieces of your UI for example. If you want a delimiter then use a delimiter, perhaps a line? One of my main gripes with "modern" UI are UI elements which have no defined border on them. For example, how do I know where's the border between two buttons, or whether there's any inactive space between them, when I see only text separated by whitespace (or for that matter, whether they're buttons at all or just text labels, which I argue should have no border)? It's quite disorienting.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Lines and whitespace have different affordances. For example, a thick or double line may scream "drag me" whereas whitespace can mean "more things may go there in the future". The thing is, you're talking about very specific examples. My point is that especially in UX design you can't use absolutes like that, such as "whitespace is always bad" or "whitespace is always good". This was also the author's point and this idea that "instead of whitespace we should use lines", "instead of whitespace we should pack things tighter" and so on is absurd. Now here's UX Myth #35: "Modern UIs have good, established UX". Desktop, web, most everything I've seen are UX disasters blindly following trends. And just because you throw UX designers at a problem doesn't mean they will do a good job at it. UX design is very much a "fake it till you make it" industry. It's based on good principles and mostly the scientific method, but it has a lot of reproducibility issues because it deals with a lot of subjectiveness. Also, some good UX principles may not apply in all situations. And think about this: Most people are actually bad at their job. The majority of devs and web designers aren't working at Google/Facebook, they're making awful wordpress sites. This is less visible in UX design but it's still true - the majority of UX devs aren't good.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
>> I know how to manage information > But you really don't, though. No, I really do, you know. Sure, if there's a logical structure in information, you'd do well to highlight it - as well as any relative relevance of pieces of info (IFF you know what task I'm solving). But I'm not 3 y.o. anymore, I can handle more than 5 lines of text on a page. Please don't hide information from me just because you think it's not relevant to the most basic use case. I'm strongly with Tufte on this one. Presenting information is about dumping it all on the person with minimum artsy bullshit, and helping the viewer make sense of it efficiently. Modern UX paradigms however go in the completely opposite direction - hide everything, remove features, decrease information density. There's a reason NASA mission control look like this: http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg and not this: https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png even though the latter is exactly what modern UX guidelines would call for. If you want to build tools to help people solve problems efficiently, make tools. If you want to make a safe-for-work mental masturbation art piece, which is what most mainstream UX guidelines boil down to, then by all means. I just don't want to have it anywhere near me when I have problems to solve. -- > intuitive interfaces are for kids There's only one intuitive interface in the world, and that's the nipple. Everything else is learned.

z3t4 10y ago

White space should be used for padding between elements. Users will however be annoyed if there is too much unused screen area, especially if the content is cramped together with little padding.