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> Great products do what is relevant, but better. I once got into an argument with someone (not a designer) about adding an "export" feature to a table UI. It

> Great products do what is relevant, but better. I once got into an argument with someone (not a designer) about adding an "export" feature to a table UI. It was an easy feature to add, but the argument against it was that it was yet another rarely used button, that further crowded the UI. And further, users shouldn't need to export because they should be able to do everything they needed from within the app. I was sympathetic to these arguments, especially the second. But many customers repeatedly asked for the export feature. We spoke to several and explained they could do what they needed without exporting, but even after that, they still wanted a "file" they could manipulate. I won, and we added the export feature, and many other smallish features like it. Even though I love a minimalist design and look and feel, it shouldn't come at the expense of features. And in the end, our designers made it unobtrusive and kept it elegant. Good design is not about deconstructing things just for simplicity's sake, but to expose the complexity in a way that feels natural.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> And further, users shouldn't need to export because they should be able to do everything they needed from within the app. That's just greed and extreme entitlement dressed in UX clothes. Your software will never be good enough to suffice for all use cases within a domain; most likely it isn't even particularly ergonomic for bulk of them. Often, the output of your software is needed as input to another piece of software. That's why interoperability is so important, and lack of it is a black mark.
- speedplane 7y ago
  >> And further, users shouldn't need to export because they should be able to do everything they needed from within the app. > That's just greed and extreme entitlement dressed in UX clothes. I understand the passion here, especially today, users should be able to control data the way the want. However, greed or lock-down was not a relevant factor (we already had APIs for bulk data). The resistance to the "export" button was motivated by a genuine curiosity as to why someone would want to do that, and to better understand their use case. If someone is exporting something, it's because they want to do something that we do not do. The resistance was not about letting go of control of the data, but rather losing sight of what our users wanted.
  - bogdanoff_2 7y ago
    The point is that you can't possible know what every single user will ever want to do. Thinking otherwise is entitlement.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      No, but not providing an export button increases the chance they'll tell you.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Or just keep manually copy-pasting or printing, scanning and OCRing data from your system, wasting time and resources. People can go to great lengths working around software deficiencies before someone finally decides to mail the vendor.
        anoncake 7y ago
        Why should the app support printing or copy&pasting into other applications? You aren't supposed to use anything else. Screenshots can be prevented using DRM. Linux users are hippies anyway so they don't have a job. People could still photograph the screen or transcribe the data manually. But I'm sure a legislative solution for this problem can be found. After all, you wouldn't download a CSV file. I hope this proposal won't be read by anyone insane enough not to see anything horribly wrong with it.
  - dahauns 7y ago
    In this case replace greed with hubris.
- mark-r 7y ago
  Tell that to Excel.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Excel is great because it has every feature under the sun, is extensible and interoperable. There's little problem with getting any data into or out from it. That's why it became a crucial part of so many workflows, and in so doing, quite possibly delivered more value to end-users than any other application ever. Excel is a great product, and the opposite of greedy, entitled software design. (Joe Spolsky wrote about it in the past; lack of vendor lock-in was crucial for it winning the market in the early days.)
alxlaz 7y ago
> I was sympathetic to these arguments, especially the second. But many customers repeatedly asked for the export feature. This is the gist of what I think is good design: don't second-guess your users. When you're doing the wireframe, you don't have all the information, ever. You don't know what your users are going to need, you don't know how they're going to use your application. You may have the best, most comprehensive specs ever written in the history of software development and users will still find new ways to use your application, that you've never thought about and couldn't even possibly imagine. So when an user wants something, "good design" consists of figuring out how to integrate it in your application. Not of patronizing your users and explaining them that they don't really need that, or that a clean, intuitive UI is more important than that thing they asked for. They asked for that thing precisely because that clean, intuitive UI was great but it came short of doing what they needed. And when an application with a worse UI that does what that user needs comes along, they are going to switch to it, no questions asked. Because a bad-looking program that does what you need -- i.e. that helps you do your job and earn your pay -- will always trump one that doesn't do what you need.
- davidivadavid 7y ago
  Nah, "good design" consists of figuring out exactly what the users want based on what they say. Doing what they say is a recipe for terrible design because of the XY problem (among others). The fact your user understands their requirements better than the designer doesn't mean that the user is a better designer. If only.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> And further, users shouldn't need to export because they should be able to do everything they needed from within the app. That's just greed and extreme entitlement dressed in UX clothes. Your software will never be good enough to suffice for all use cases within a domain; most likely it isn't even particularly ergonomic for bulk of them. Often, the output of your software is needed as input to another piece of software. That's why interoperability is so important, and lack of it is a black mark.

speedplane 7y ago
>> And further, users shouldn't need to export because they should be able to do everything they needed from within the app. > That's just greed and extreme entitlement dressed in UX clothes. I understand the passion here, especially today, users should be able to control data the way the want. However, greed or lock-down was not a relevant factor (we already had APIs for bulk data). The resistance to the "export" button was motivated by a genuine curiosity as to why someone would want to do that, and to better understand their use case. If someone is exporting something, it's because they want to do something that we do not do. The resistance was not about letting go of control of the data, but rather losing sight of what our users wanted.
- bogdanoff_2 7y ago
  The point is that you can't possible know what every single user will ever want to do. Thinking otherwise is entitlement.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    No, but not providing an export button increases the chance they'll tell you.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Or just keep manually copy-pasting or printing, scanning and OCRing data from your system, wasting time and resources. People can go to great lengths working around software deficiencies before someone finally decides to mail the vendor.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        Why should the app support printing or copy&pasting into other applications? You aren't supposed to use anything else. Screenshots can be prevented using DRM. Linux users are hippies anyway so they don't have a job. People could still photograph the screen or transcribe the data manually. But I'm sure a legislative solution for this problem can be found. After all, you wouldn't download a CSV file. I hope this proposal won't be read by anyone insane enough not to see anything horribly wrong with it.
- dahauns 7y ago
  In this case replace greed with hubris.
mark-r 7y ago
Tell that to Excel.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Excel is great because it has every feature under the sun, is extensible and interoperable. There's little problem with getting any data into or out from it. That's why it became a crucial part of so many workflows, and in so doing, quite possibly delivered more value to end-users than any other application ever. Excel is a great product, and the opposite of greedy, entitled software design. (Joe Spolsky wrote about it in the past; lack of vendor lock-in was crucial for it winning the market in the early days.)

alxlaz 7y ago

> I was sympathetic to these arguments, especially the second. But many customers repeatedly asked for the export feature. This is the gist of what I think is good design: don't second-guess your users. When you're doing the wireframe, you don't have all the information, ever. You don't know what your users are going to need, you don't know how they're going to use your application. You may have the best, most comprehensive specs ever written in the history of software development and users will still find new ways to use your application, that you've never thought about and couldn't even possibly imagine. So when an user wants something, "good design" consists of figuring out how to integrate it in your application. Not of patronizing your users and explaining them that they don't really need that, or that a clean, intuitive UI is more important than that thing they asked for. They asked for that thing precisely because that clean, intuitive UI was great but it came short of doing what they needed. And when an application with a worse UI that does what that user needs comes along, they are going to switch to it, no questions asked. Because a bad-looking program that does what you need -- i.e. that helps you do your job and earn your pay -- will always trump one that doesn't do what you need.

davidivadavid 7y ago
Nah, "good design" consists of figuring out exactly what the users want based on what they say. Doing what they say is a recipe for terrible design because of the XY problem (among others). The fact your user understands their requirements better than the designer doesn't mean that the user is a better designer. If only.