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37signals is at their worst when they adopt this sanctimonious attitude. Say what you want about their juvenile tone, the criticisms on RTFHIG are mostly valid.

37signals is at their worst when they adopt this sanctimonious attitude. Say what you want about their juvenile tone, the criticisms on RTFHIG are mostly valid. What are we going to do next? Pillory literary, film and food critics because their insights are inconvenient to the sensitive feelings of creators in those realms? Come on. Creating things for other people has a long, rich history of criticism. Some valid, some bullshit, but all essential to the advancement of whatever creative field is under scrutiny. The shovelware artists who RTFHIG pick on might find a genuine direction for improving their work. Meanwhile, we're all talking about what genuinely makes a good interface. That these guys are provocative makes their insights more valuable, since they get more attention. If you don't have or can't grow a thick skin, you don't belong in a creative field. It's as simple as that.

msbarnett 16y ago
We do pillory film, literary and food critics who are caught basing their review on a publicity still of the work in question. It is not unreasonable to expect a critic to watch/read/eat/use the film/book/food/UI in question before calling its creator a "fucking hack".
- bradleyland 16y ago
  I need not take a bit of a cow pie to tell you that it will taste like shit. I can tell from where I'm sitting.
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  - alexgartrell 16y ago
    It's a cute metaphor, but what would you think of eating a lobster from looking at one? If you're going to be the authority on the taste of cow shit (shit tastes like shit is, of course, a tautology), you better eat some cow shit.
    - danilocampos 16y ago
      You don't need to use an application to know that a close button that is sixty pixels large, with an appearance that's completely inconsistent with the rest of the application, along with the operating system at large, and is positioned in the wrong place... is poor design. http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/post/2651530636/when-you-think-this-blog-makes-you-pessimistic http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/post/2651530636/when-you... Half of using a visual interface is visual. You can tell a lot about the quality of a GUI-based application by the level of effort that went into making it look correct.
      - derefr 16y ago
        Or, to ground this in actual HCI terms: from a screenshot alone, you should be able to see the affordances of a design. If you need more than the screenshot to find your way around the app, the app is badly designed in other ways (mystery-meat navigation.) Thus, it is actually the Principle of Charity that would have us evaluate the app by a screenshot.
    - bradleyland 16y ago
      Let's run with the cow shit metaphor a bit. A large component of taste is smell, and I can tell without taking a bite that the smell of cow shit would foul any pleasant flavor. Likewise with UI, a large component of its quality is visual. There is plenty we can gather about an application design just by looking at it. That isn't unfair, it's just plain observation.
      - bad_user 16y ago
        Your nose is trained by generations upon generations to recognize shit as something bad. I also know a dog perfectly happy to eat his own shit, but that would refuse to eat a Big Mac or other fast-food. It's a 12 year old Rottweiler in perfect health with beautifully looking hair without special care. So I'm not sure our nose is doing a good job :)
- jarin 16y ago
  I think a screenshot is probably more than adequate if you're judging an application's visual appearance.
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    It's sufficient only if you conflate design and visual aesthetics. Since the blog in question hammers on apps that don't follow the Apple HIG, a document dedicated to the argument that good design is a lot more than visual aesthetics, this is an oddly contradictory position for him to attempt to occupy.
    - jbri 16y ago
      Yes, good design is more than visual aesthetics. But you seem to be saying that the aesthetics are then not important, which is completely false. If it looks terrible, it's a bad design. Period. At best, top-notch effort in other areas can drag it up to the same approximate level as pristine-looking-but-utterly-unusable designs, which are still terrible. His position would only be contradictory if he somehow claimed that something was a good design based solely on a screenshot.
      - derleth 16y ago
        > If it looks terrible, it's a bad design. Looks terrible by whose standards? If you go by my standards, all Mac stuff has 'bad design' by this rule if only because of the font rendering.
    - danilocampos 16y ago
      Have you even read the blog? The UIs in question are, for the most part, immediately recognizable as bad. It's not about artistic or aesthetic interpretation. It's about this is not how any sane or competent person would design UI.
      - msbarnett 16y ago
        There are a few that are fairly cluttered visually, but the vast majority are simply different, and I can't say, looking at them, whether or not they'd be any good in practice because I haven't used them, and I'm not so full of myself as to believe that I know everything about something based on a single picture of it. For instance, there's nothing obviously wrong with the interface of the grammar app currently at the top of the blog, but he goes off on it like it shot his dog.
jawngee 16y ago
Completely agree. I love that site and I think most of the criticisms are on point. There is/was something special about apps on a Mac versus their equivalent shareware versions on Windows. I think it's fair to assume the Mac App Store will bring with it the same kind of UI trash that is in the iPhone app store.
- KaeseEs 16y ago
  That special something was the $30 you paid for them compared to $0 for an equivalent Win32 application
palish 16y ago
That these guys are provocative makes their insights more valuable, since they get more attention. If you don't have or can't grow a thick skin, you don't belong in a creative field. It's as simple as that. Nonsense.

msbarnett 16y ago

We do pillory film, literary and food critics who are caught basing their review on a publicity still of the work in question. It is not unreasonable to expect a critic to watch/read/eat/use the film/book/food/UI in question before calling its creator a "fucking hack".

bradleyland 16y ago
I need not take a bit of a cow pie to tell you that it will taste like shit. I can tell from where I'm sitting.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  It's a cute metaphor, but what would you think of eating a lobster from looking at one? If you're going to be the authority on the taste of cow shit (shit tastes like shit is, of course, a tautology), you better eat some cow shit.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    You don't need to use an application to know that a close button that is sixty pixels large, with an appearance that's completely inconsistent with the rest of the application, along with the operating system at large, and is positioned in the wrong place... is poor design. http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/post/2651530636/when-you-think-this-blog-makes-you-pessimistic http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/post/2651530636/when-you... Half of using a visual interface is visual. You can tell a lot about the quality of a GUI-based application by the level of effort that went into making it look correct.
    - derefr 16y ago
      Or, to ground this in actual HCI terms: from a screenshot alone, you should be able to see the affordances of a design. If you need more than the screenshot to find your way around the app, the app is badly designed in other ways (mystery-meat navigation.) Thus, it is actually the Principle of Charity that would have us evaluate the app by a screenshot.
  - bradleyland 16y ago
    Let's run with the cow shit metaphor a bit. A large component of taste is smell, and I can tell without taking a bite that the smell of cow shit would foul any pleasant flavor. Likewise with UI, a large component of its quality is visual. There is plenty we can gather about an application design just by looking at it. That isn't unfair, it's just plain observation.
    - bad_user 16y ago
      Your nose is trained by generations upon generations to recognize shit as something bad. I also know a dog perfectly happy to eat his own shit, but that would refuse to eat a Big Mac or other fast-food. It's a 12 year old Rottweiler in perfect health with beautifully looking hair without special care. So I'm not sure our nose is doing a good job :)
jarin 16y ago
I think a screenshot is probably more than adequate if you're judging an application's visual appearance.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  It's sufficient only if you conflate design and visual aesthetics. Since the blog in question hammers on apps that don't follow the Apple HIG, a document dedicated to the argument that good design is a lot more than visual aesthetics, this is an oddly contradictory position for him to attempt to occupy.
  - jbri 16y ago
    Yes, good design is more than visual aesthetics. But you seem to be saying that the aesthetics are then not important, which is completely false. If it looks terrible, it's a bad design. Period. At best, top-notch effort in other areas can drag it up to the same approximate level as pristine-looking-but-utterly-unusable designs, which are still terrible. His position would only be contradictory if he somehow claimed that something was a good design based solely on a screenshot.
    - derleth 16y ago
      > If it looks terrible, it's a bad design. Looks terrible by whose standards? If you go by my standards, all Mac stuff has 'bad design' by this rule if only because of the font rendering.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    Have you even read the blog? The UIs in question are, for the most part, immediately recognizable as bad. It's not about artistic or aesthetic interpretation. It's about this is not how any sane or competent person would design UI.
    - msbarnett 16y ago
      There are a few that are fairly cluttered visually, but the vast majority are simply different, and I can't say, looking at them, whether or not they'd be any good in practice because I haven't used them, and I'm not so full of myself as to believe that I know everything about something based on a single picture of it. For instance, there's nothing obviously wrong with the interface of the grammar app currently at the top of the blog, but he goes off on it like it shot his dog.

jawngee 16y ago

Completely agree. I love that site and I think most of the criticisms are on point. There is/was something special about apps on a Mac versus their equivalent shareware versions on Windows. I think it's fair to assume the Mac App Store will bring with it the same kind of UI trash that is in the iPhone app store.

KaeseEs 16y ago
That special something was the $30 you paid for them compared to $0 for an equivalent Win32 application

palish 16y ago

That these guys are provocative makes their insights more valuable, since they get more attention. If you don't have or can't grow a thick skin, you don't belong in a creative field. It's as simple as that. Nonsense.