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Of course this author's happy--they're a designer. Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their br

Of course this author's happy--they're a designer. Meanwhile, everyone else has to absorb the burden of the "pendulum" ceaselessly swinging, retraining their brains yet again to absorb new visual memories and habits. There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."

Razengan 6y ago
I'm a user and I'm also happy. :) Change is fun. Being stuck with the same aesthetics for much longer than 5 years sounds like a special circle of Hell.
merrvk 6y ago
Keeps them in a job i guess
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Programming is currently hating on OOP, in love with strong typing, and somewhere on the way from loving microservices to disowning ever to have spoken in their favor. Ten years ago, it was the opposite. So this particular quirk of thinking in groups doesn't seem to be confined to the design domain. Nor do "swings of pendulum" preclude the pendulum also having some forward momentum in sum. Think of it as a skier's waving, or a sailboat crossing against the wind, and the sideways motions is actually required for any forward motion to happen.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  Some of the things you mentioned are pure aesthetics - and they change with time - forward and backward. Some others change with the advent of tools and other developments. Micro services are hard to do right and they have been hard. But people rushed into it. With better tools in the future that might change. Same with beginner/new projects embracing dynamic programming. It’s perfect for a new code add. It bites only later; when the enthusiasm has died off and you got to keep the codebase and tests up to date and things start slipping here and there. Go is a darling now because it’s constraining. It skipped passed the last three decades of advancement in languages like they never happened. And then as it becomes way more popular people will ask for the same set of features that other languages have had forever.
- x3haloed 6y ago
  Yes. This. Things change. Deal with it. And yet, things don’t have to change at an indigestible rate. Windows, for example, is changing so fast lately, that directions for use change on a semi-annual basis, and self-consistency is almost entirely gone. They never release a finished product, and It creates highly unnecessary cognitive burden.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  I totally agree. I call it "throw the baby out with the bathwater" syndrome. Usually some technology has a particular problem, probably not huge, but as that technology becomes dominant, its warts start to grate on more people. So someone comes up with a new technology and says "Look! It fixes all the problems of Technology A!" And people who are new enough to the field who pretty much only have experience with Technology A think it's great, because this new thing fixes A's problems. Meanwhile, though, Technology B has its own host of problems, and oftentimes those kinds of problems are the ones Technology A was originally created to fix! And so the pendulum swings until you get enough years behind you on Technology B where it's problems become apparent enough, so someone comes up with Technology C, which is basically Technology A with more modern trappings. Whenever you make a technology switch, be very cognizant about what you're losing as well as what you're gaining.
  - sidpatil 6y ago
    What you're describing is known as the hype cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
joubert 6y ago
> There seems to be no such concept as "good enough." For a moment in time, "good enough" exists. But in a dynamic world we should probably accept that "good enough" is ephemeral.
buboard 6y ago
Design is not an optimization procedure like chip design. It's dominated by trends, like fashion. There is a small subset of people who care about optimal design, which measures things like perceptual reaction time etc. That's the military
x3haloed 6y ago
> There seems to be no such concept as "good enough." I don’t think that concept has had any meaning since the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism is built upon the belief that nothing is ever good enough. You will never see “good enough” in consumer goods in a capitalistic society.
swalls 6y ago
I'm a designer, and this may be a cynical take on this but all I see is Apple shifting to skeumorphic design just so that they can go back to flat in 5-10 years and go "Look at how timeless our previous designs were!"
baddox 6y ago
It doesn’t seem that outrageous. Clothing fashion changes, and while there is some tongue in cheek complaining about it, I think our brains are quite okay “retraining.” Same with musical trends changing. Surely we don’t just say “that’s great for working musicians, but it sucks for everyone else who has to get accustomed to new music.”
adrianmonk 6y ago
The people making these decisions think customers respond better if the UI gets a "visual refresh" from time to time, and they're probably right. It's human nature to judge by superficial attributes. If you have a perfectly good UI but it never changes, it gives people the feeling that your software is stagnant and out of date. It's inconvenient for the user, but it catches the user's attention and makes them think about the software. Essentially it boosts brand awareness. It's the same reason that they change the design on a box of granola bars and write "new look, same great taste!" on it. It also costs engineering / designer labor. And there's a danger of replacing the old design with a newer one that doesn't work as well. The people making these decisions probably know that but think it's worth the cost anyway.

Razengan 6y ago

I'm a user and I'm also happy. :) Change is fun. Being stuck with the same aesthetics for much longer than 5 years sounds like a special circle of Hell.

merrvk 6y ago

Keeps them in a job i guess

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

Programming is currently hating on OOP, in love with strong typing, and somewhere on the way from loving microservices to disowning ever to have spoken in their favor. Ten years ago, it was the opposite. So this particular quirk of thinking in groups doesn't seem to be confined to the design domain. Nor do "swings of pendulum" preclude the pendulum also having some forward momentum in sum. Think of it as a skier's waving, or a sailboat crossing against the wind, and the sideways motions is actually required for any forward motion to happen.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
8ytecoder 6y ago
Some of the things you mentioned are pure aesthetics - and they change with time - forward and backward. Some others change with the advent of tools and other developments. Micro services are hard to do right and they have been hard. But people rushed into it. With better tools in the future that might change. Same with beginner/new projects embracing dynamic programming. It’s perfect for a new code add. It bites only later; when the enthusiasm has died off and you got to keep the codebase and tests up to date and things start slipping here and there. Go is a darling now because it’s constraining. It skipped passed the last three decades of advancement in languages like they never happened. And then as it becomes way more popular people will ask for the same set of features that other languages have had forever.
x3haloed 6y ago
Yes. This. Things change. Deal with it. And yet, things don’t have to change at an indigestible rate. Windows, for example, is changing so fast lately, that directions for use change on a semi-annual basis, and self-consistency is almost entirely gone. They never release a finished product, and It creates highly unnecessary cognitive burden.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I totally agree. I call it "throw the baby out with the bathwater" syndrome. Usually some technology has a particular problem, probably not huge, but as that technology becomes dominant, its warts start to grate on more people. So someone comes up with a new technology and says "Look! It fixes all the problems of Technology A!" And people who are new enough to the field who pretty much only have experience with Technology A think it's great, because this new thing fixes A's problems. Meanwhile, though, Technology B has its own host of problems, and oftentimes those kinds of problems are the ones Technology A was originally created to fix! And so the pendulum swings until you get enough years behind you on Technology B where it's problems become apparent enough, so someone comes up with Technology C, which is basically Technology A with more modern trappings. Whenever you make a technology switch, be very cognizant about what you're losing as well as what you're gaining.
- sidpatil 6y ago
  What you're describing is known as the hype cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

joubert 6y ago

> There seems to be no such concept as "good enough." For a moment in time, "good enough" exists. But in a dynamic world we should probably accept that "good enough" is ephemeral.

buboard 6y ago

Design is not an optimization procedure like chip design. It's dominated by trends, like fashion. There is a small subset of people who care about optimal design, which measures things like perceptual reaction time etc. That's the military

x3haloed 6y ago

> There seems to be no such concept as "good enough." I don’t think that concept has had any meaning since the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism is built upon the belief that nothing is ever good enough. You will never see “good enough” in consumer goods in a capitalistic society.

swalls 6y ago

I'm a designer, and this may be a cynical take on this but all I see is Apple shifting to skeumorphic design just so that they can go back to flat in 5-10 years and go "Look at how timeless our previous designs were!"

baddox 6y ago

It doesn’t seem that outrageous. Clothing fashion changes, and while there is some tongue in cheek complaining about it, I think our brains are quite okay “retraining.” Same with musical trends changing. Surely we don’t just say “that’s great for working musicians, but it sucks for everyone else who has to get accustomed to new music.”

adrianmonk 6y ago

The people making these decisions think customers respond better if the UI gets a "visual refresh" from time to time, and they're probably right. It's human nature to judge by superficial attributes. If you have a perfectly good UI but it never changes, it gives people the feeling that your software is stagnant and out of date. It's inconvenient for the user, but it catches the user's attention and makes them think about the software. Essentially it boosts brand awareness. It's the same reason that they change the design on a box of granola bars and write "new look, same great taste!" on it. It also costs engineering / designer labor. And there's a danger of replacing the old design with a newer one that doesn't work as well. The people making these decisions probably know that but think it's worth the cost anyway.