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>a well-intentioned UX Designer at a large high-tech company who was given a new project: Redesign an internal control panel that was ugly [...] It lasted one m

by jasode 8y ago

>a well-intentioned UX Designer at a large high-tech company who was given a new project: Redesign an internal control panel that was ugly [...] It lasted one month before the company was forced to retire it. Users absolutely hated the new system. Sure, the old system was ugly, but it had everything they needed, right at their fingertips! Their jobs were incredibly fast paced—they worked in a tech support call center and were rated on productivity metrics. They didn’t have time to click or scroll to find information while the clock was literally ticking. This same exact story of a UI disaster happened at a Fortune 100 company I was at in 2005. They had a legacy app (think DOS character mode talking to a mainframe) for entering accounting documents. To replace it, a high-priced consulting firm installed a "web portal" technology. (Unifying a company's various enterprise applications behind a single web portal was a hot endeavor back then.) When it was rolled out, the accounting department fell behind on their work. Nobody noticed that the constant UI banner at the top of the of the web portal browser window was forcing users to always use the mouse to scroll up and down to look at information. In the old DOS system, they could just enter info from invoices quickly without even looking at the screen. But the new system broke the users' fluid familiarity. The UI disaster was so bad that the consulting company had to have their consultants come in on Saturday to help the client's workers catch up on all their data entry. Imagine an army of $150k consultants doing the work of $10/hour clerks because the web portal's UI was never really field-tested with a real-world workload! If just one UI web developer actually shadowed one of their users for a day, they would have noticed the usability problem.

fermienrico 8y ago
I can't believe how many times I've heard your story but in different companies. I feel like there is an opportunity to make a graphical user interface framework that mimics old terminals. Full screen apps that leverage use of the keyboard shortcuts or hell even a custom keyboard specifically made for industrial use. Basically a IBM 400 system but running on modern software stack. Airlines have stuck with their UI and for good reasons.
- tomaskafka 8y ago
  No. Just mimic the speed, information density, and task-centricity.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    Even a web app could do that in a pretty straightforward way with proper handling of keyboard events and tab order and a compact layout. "Press 1/2/3/4 to select a tab" is entirely doable in a web view.
- dqv 8y ago
  There are custom keyboards, they're just hard to find. The Devlin KMX-144 or the Logic Controls LK1800 come to mind. I'm sure there are others. You can use (n?)curses to make a terminal user interface. I still prefer the web - just with the keyboard as a first class citizen.
  - mruts 8y ago
    I don’t think webapps can ever make the keyboard a first class citizen. The browser already has a bunch of keybindings. Personally, I’ve never used a web app that I actually liked or trusted. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always worried the page will time out or refresh or something. Like imagine emacs or vim in a browser window, it would be horrible!
    - jaaames 8y ago
      Try vimium, I've been using it for years - as long as the HTML is semantically correct a surprisingly amount of the web is navigable.
    - dqv 8y ago
      I wasn't going to mention qutebrowser[0] since I didn't think it was relevant, but it works well. Most of the keys in the browser can actually be rebound. With keyboards like I mentioned, the additional keys can be mapped to special key combos like `Alt+Shift+D` to avoid collisions. It's also possible to map most or all of Chrome's (not sure about other browsers - but we're talking within the enterprise) keys can be rebound. Check out keycode.info - every key even ones like `Alt+D` and F1 and even `Ctrl+R` can be rebound and prevented from doing their normal function in place of something else! [0]:https://www.qutebrowser.org/ https://www.qutebrowser.org/

by jasode 8y ago

fermienrico 8y ago

I can't believe how many times I've heard your story but in different companies. I feel like there is an opportunity to make a graphical user interface framework that mimics old terminals. Full screen apps that leverage use of the keyboard shortcuts or hell even a custom keyboard specifically made for industrial use. Basically a IBM 400 system but running on modern software stack. Airlines have stuck with their UI and for good reasons.

tomaskafka 8y ago
No. Just mimic the speed, information density, and task-centricity.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Even a web app could do that in a pretty straightforward way with proper handling of keyboard events and tab order and a compact layout. "Press 1/2/3/4 to select a tab" is entirely doable in a web view.
dqv 8y ago
There are custom keyboards, they're just hard to find. The Devlin KMX-144 or the Logic Controls LK1800 come to mind. I'm sure there are others. You can use (n?)curses to make a terminal user interface. I still prefer the web - just with the keyboard as a first class citizen.
- mruts 8y ago
  I don’t think webapps can ever make the keyboard a first class citizen. The browser already has a bunch of keybindings. Personally, I’ve never used a web app that I actually liked or trusted. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always worried the page will time out or refresh or something. Like imagine emacs or vim in a browser window, it would be horrible!
  - jaaames 8y ago
    Try vimium, I've been using it for years - as long as the HTML is semantically correct a surprisingly amount of the web is navigable.
  - dqv 8y ago
    I wasn't going to mention qutebrowser[0] since I didn't think it was relevant, but it works well. Most of the keys in the browser can actually be rebound. With keyboards like I mentioned, the additional keys can be mapped to special key combos like `Alt+Shift+D` to avoid collisions. It's also possible to map most or all of Chrome's (not sure about other browsers - but we're talking within the enterprise) keys can be rebound. Check out keycode.info - every key even ones like `Alt+D` and F1 and even `Ctrl+R` can be rebound and prevented from doing their normal function in place of something else! [0]:https://www.qutebrowser.org/ https://www.qutebrowser.org/