4 ms·

"""While minimalism is one aspect of one view of good design, it’s often overused, underconsidered, and misunderstood, resulting in products with surface-level

by obblekk 10y ago

"""While minimalism is one aspect of one view of good design, it’s often overused, underconsidered, and misunderstood, resulting in products with surface-level appeal that don’t actually work very well because they were optimized for visual design and minimalism rather than overall real-world usefulness.""" -=-= this is a crisp characterization of the problem of silicon valley product design today. almost every redesign of major products brings a simpler, more beautiful design which ends up being less useful. i'm strongly in the boat that the purpose of design is to solve people's problems in ways that are hard to think of but easy to appreciate. in the way that a good symphony is hard to write but easy to recognize. -=-= in the 90s the design of mass products like AOL got too complex and it created an opportunity for people to enter the market with simpler designs which were more usable. but now we've gone too far. the designs are simpler than ever, but no longer in the service of greater usability. it's time to make tech product design less minimal, less simple, but more useful. -=-= the culture of designers is a core part of the cause of over pivot. it's elegant to list out a series of design principles (interface guidelines) and then reject every problem that can't be solved within those principles. it's elegant, but does not necessarily produce better product designs.

tensor 10y ago
Design is all about solving user problems, not producing beautiful interfaces. If fact, if you tried to tell a UX designer that their job was to produce beautiful designs that didn't solve user problems they'd quit on the spot. The Mac Pro is not a simple nor minimal design. It's actually quite a complex design that is optimized for space over flexibility, arguably not good UX. The old Mac Pro, on the other hand, was a great design. It could be criticized as being too expensive, but it was configurable, and very easy to configure to boot. It perfectly met it's target audience. In summary, I don't think you understand the goals modern UX design and are wrongly assigning blame.
- tmd83 10y ago
  I think what he is saying a lot of modern designer really believes that or even if they say they do they don't practice it. Its not about what UX design was suppose to be but what UX designers often do today. There are definitely modern design that are simple and useful but there are also a lot that are more simple and beautiful at the cost of being useful.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  In that case a lot of designers don't understand modern UX design either, and it's perfectly reasonable to blame them for that. Small example - the Google Maps app on iOS used to have a "Show route" button. You could tap it while driving to zoom out and see the entire route. Now that space has a menu, and you have to tap the menu and then select the zoom view. Two taps. This is literally a potential disaster while driving because you have to think about what you're doing, look at the screen for longer, and keep your hand coordinated long enough to tap correctly. This is not solving the user's problem - unless the user's problem is a secret desire to rear end the car in front. This used to be called style over substance, or form over content - and it's everywhere, from flat/material design that doesn't distinguish between buttons and labels, to mystery meat burger menus, to invisible options that are so well hidden users never discover them, to useful ports and hardware features that disappear and have to be replaced by a pack of ugly dongles. Minimalism is great when it solves the user's problems. When it creates new problems for the user, it's not so great. Far too many designers - including some famous names at Apple - don't seem to understand this.
  - paulryanrogers 10y ago
    "You could tap it while driving..." This probably violates the Google Maps EULA if not the law in some places.
- btschaegg 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more with you on this. Since this principle applies many other areas of design (beyond application UI design), I'd like to add a specific example: watch faces. I've been thinking about buying a new wrist watch and was looking for watch faces that aren't totally overloaded with unnecessary (and frankly, usually rather ugly) markings. One simple way to do this is by typing "minimalist watch face" into your favorite search engine. Seeing those results, I am still amazed at how many "novel, stylish" watch face designs there are that might look cool (not really according to my taste, but perhaps someone else would like it), but are obviously terrible at doing the one thing a watch is supposed to do: telling you the time. Compare the Nevo watches (ignoring their smart watch part)[1] against the Nava Ora design[2] for example. To me, it's really clear which of the two designs is a better watch. [1]: http://www.nevocollection.com/ http://www.nevocollection.com/ [2]: https://www.watches.com/nava-ora-lattea-white-42mm https://www.watches.com/nava-ora-lattea-white-42mm
  - todd8 10y ago
    Somewhere, in a drawer, I've got an expensive watch that has 4 divisions on the face for 12, 3, 6, and 9. So far so good. Each quarter of the watch face is then divided in half by a mark. WTF? Who wants a watch with exactly 8 marks around the perimeter for 12 hours? Unfortunately it was a gift from a significant other so I just put up with it for a few months and then stopped wearing it.
- Stranger43 10y ago
  The problem is more that UX designers like simply stories and stereotypical users that don't change nature 4 times a day like most real people. And in a lot of ways thats the "magic" of apples minimalism by focusing on the 1st 10 hours of use by an unsophisticated user you get to develop highly acclaimed UX that fail the sophisticated users to the point that most developers resort to zsh and vim in order to stay productive.
beloch 10y ago
Apple reminds me a bit of B&O audio. B&O makes beautiful products for fans of a certain aesthetic, but not necessarily products that perform well. Their flag-ship products look amazing but are aimed more at interior designers than audiophiles. Apple may have, at times, served the pro market well, but not lately. They used to view high-end consumers as a means to the end of getting more market share. Get the people who give advice that's listened to into your ecosystem and others will follow. The same thinking is why they used to aggressively market to schools and universities. Apple doesn't really need to do that anymore. Now they just need something that looks really cool sitting in their stores and people will lust after it, talk endlessly about it, and that will bring in more customers. Apple might go back to a boring, rectangular box that's upgradeable and uses non-proprietary parts, but this would be a remarkable reversal of their trend towards more and more disposable products with proprietary everything, right down to connectors, interfaces, and screws. It's more likely the next pros will be gorgeous but designed to be as unfriendly to DIY upgrades as possible. Proprietary SSD connectors. Soldered on memory. You name it. In short, while you may love Apple phones and laptops, maybe you don't really want a dev machine built by today's Apple.
- chaostheory 10y ago
  > In short, while you may love Apple phones and laptops, maybe you don't really want a dev machine built by today's Apple. When this happens to the next Mac Pro, they're not going to have as much content for their app stores when pros inevitably move to another platform. Windows still isn't ideal to a lot of people but it's starting to get good enough: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about

by obblekk 10y ago

tensor 10y ago

Design is all about solving user problems, not producing beautiful interfaces. If fact, if you tried to tell a UX designer that their job was to produce beautiful designs that didn't solve user problems they'd quit on the spot. The Mac Pro is not a simple nor minimal design. It's actually quite a complex design that is optimized for space over flexibility, arguably not good UX. The old Mac Pro, on the other hand, was a great design. It could be criticized as being too expensive, but it was configurable, and very easy to configure to boot. It perfectly met it's target audience. In summary, I don't think you understand the goals modern UX design and are wrongly assigning blame.

tmd83 10y ago
I think what he is saying a lot of modern designer really believes that or even if they say they do they don't practice it. Its not about what UX design was suppose to be but what UX designers often do today. There are definitely modern design that are simple and useful but there are also a lot that are more simple and beautiful at the cost of being useful.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
In that case a lot of designers don't understand modern UX design either, and it's perfectly reasonable to blame them for that. Small example - the Google Maps app on iOS used to have a "Show route" button. You could tap it while driving to zoom out and see the entire route. Now that space has a menu, and you have to tap the menu and then select the zoom view. Two taps. This is literally a potential disaster while driving because you have to think about what you're doing, look at the screen for longer, and keep your hand coordinated long enough to tap correctly. This is not solving the user's problem - unless the user's problem is a secret desire to rear end the car in front. This used to be called style over substance, or form over content - and it's everywhere, from flat/material design that doesn't distinguish between buttons and labels, to mystery meat burger menus, to invisible options that are so well hidden users never discover them, to useful ports and hardware features that disappear and have to be replaced by a pack of ugly dongles. Minimalism is great when it solves the user's problems. When it creates new problems for the user, it's not so great. Far too many designers - including some famous names at Apple - don't seem to understand this.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  "You could tap it while driving..." This probably violates the Google Maps EULA if not the law in some places.
btschaegg 10y ago
I couldn't agree more with you on this. Since this principle applies many other areas of design (beyond application UI design), I'd like to add a specific example: watch faces. I've been thinking about buying a new wrist watch and was looking for watch faces that aren't totally overloaded with unnecessary (and frankly, usually rather ugly) markings. One simple way to do this is by typing "minimalist watch face" into your favorite search engine. Seeing those results, I am still amazed at how many "novel, stylish" watch face designs there are that might look cool (not really according to my taste, but perhaps someone else would like it), but are obviously terrible at doing the one thing a watch is supposed to do: telling you the time. Compare the Nevo watches (ignoring their smart watch part)[1] against the Nava Ora design[2] for example. To me, it's really clear which of the two designs is a better watch. [1]: http://www.nevocollection.com/ http://www.nevocollection.com/ [2]: https://www.watches.com/nava-ora-lattea-white-42mm https://www.watches.com/nava-ora-lattea-white-42mm
- todd8 10y ago
  Somewhere, in a drawer, I've got an expensive watch that has 4 divisions on the face for 12, 3, 6, and 9. So far so good. Each quarter of the watch face is then divided in half by a mark. WTF? Who wants a watch with exactly 8 marks around the perimeter for 12 hours? Unfortunately it was a gift from a significant other so I just put up with it for a few months and then stopped wearing it.
Stranger43 10y ago
The problem is more that UX designers like simply stories and stereotypical users that don't change nature 4 times a day like most real people. And in a lot of ways thats the "magic" of apples minimalism by focusing on the 1st 10 hours of use by an unsophisticated user you get to develop highly acclaimed UX that fail the sophisticated users to the point that most developers resort to zsh and vim in order to stay productive.

beloch 10y ago

Apple reminds me a bit of B&O audio. B&O makes beautiful products for fans of a certain aesthetic, but not necessarily products that perform well. Their flag-ship products look amazing but are aimed more at interior designers than audiophiles. Apple may have, at times, served the pro market well, but not lately. They used to view high-end consumers as a means to the end of getting more market share. Get the people who give advice that's listened to into your ecosystem and others will follow. The same thinking is why they used to aggressively market to schools and universities. Apple doesn't really need to do that anymore. Now they just need something that looks really cool sitting in their stores and people will lust after it, talk endlessly about it, and that will bring in more customers. Apple might go back to a boring, rectangular box that's upgradeable and uses non-proprietary parts, but this would be a remarkable reversal of their trend towards more and more disposable products with proprietary everything, right down to connectors, interfaces, and screws. It's more likely the next pros will be gorgeous but designed to be as unfriendly to DIY upgrades as possible. Proprietary SSD connectors. Soldered on memory. You name it. In short, while you may love Apple phones and laptops, maybe you don't really want a dev machine built by today's Apple.

chaostheory 10y ago
> In short, while you may love Apple phones and laptops, maybe you don't really want a dev machine built by today's Apple. When this happens to the next Mac Pro, they're not going to have as much content for their app stores when pros inevitably move to another platform. Windows still isn't ideal to a lot of people but it's starting to get good enough: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about