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> The first screen is a long scroll of 20 elegant looking blocks and titles none of which mean anything on their own. I have to click on each and sit through so

by ardy42 6y ago

> The first screen is a long scroll of 20 elegant looking blocks and titles none of which mean anything on their own. I have to click on each and sit through some superfluous animation before I can even get access to the explanation. Bad user! You're not following the first law of UX: > Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable. > Aesthetically pleasing design can make users more tolerant of minor usability issues. > Aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually works better. > Aesthetically pleasing design can mask usability problems and prevent issues from being discovered during usability testing. You're supposed to go "oh, pretty!" and forget how crappy it really is! /s Seriously now: the first law of UX should be that aesthetics are secondary to usability. If your focus is on making something "eye catching" or "beautiful" then you're doing bad UX. If designers followed that, we wouldn't have so many UX trainwreaks.

andrepd 6y ago
Oh my god, this is exactly how I feel about most modern software UI. It seems like it's optimised to look pretty on screenshots, rather than to actually be usable!
- userbinator 6y ago
  ...and "pretty" is highly subjective. I find the current "sea of white/blackspace with almost no affordances" and "hide everything that could possibly be useful" trend rather repugnant --- but perhaps that's because it almost always comes with a lack of usability.
  - CoryAlexMartin 6y ago
    Yes, the "hide everything" trend is really annoying. An egregious example of this is how iTunes hides the track number and/or duration when you hover over or have a track selected: https://i.imgur.com/IhwHnfO.png https://i.imgur.com/IhwHnfO.png
Shared404 6y ago
> [T]he first law of UX should be that aesthetics are secondary to usability. I would argue that instead it should be aesthetics and functionality need to be balanced. Your usability will suffer if lack of aesthetics obscure the usability of a tool. Conversely, your aesthetics need to be reigned in, so that they do not obscure the usability of your tool.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  Aesthetics should happen as a result of trying to make a tool highly usable. Ever performed your craft and you just nail it and as a side effect the thing looks positively beautiful?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > Aesthetics should happen as a result of trying to make a tool highly usable. Once again someone on HN phrases something better then I could hope to. > Ever performed your craft and you just nail it and as a side effect the thing looks positively beautiful? Best feeling in the world, on the rare occasions I manage it.
- bananaface 6y ago
  I dunno man, I don't think it's a tradeoff. Make a good UX, then slap on a nice color scheme, some shiny buttons, whatever. The hard part is making the UX good.
tlow 6y ago
Hard no. The first law of UX is that human resources are precious. Therefore design must seek to maximize the economy of user time, cognition, and effort.
- andialo 6y ago
  I wish we lived in a world where this was true. This is the biggest problem with tech today, making "eye catchy" software which is horrible to use and getting anything done (and I mean simple things as making a payment if it's just little bit different than the "designer" imagined, for example you want to add a note) is so frustrating because it takes so much time. Yet it was not like that few years ago. Thanks apple I guess ? EDIT: And then to make the software "easier to use" security goes down the drain. There is a small fintech bank where all you need to know is email and 6 digit pin number to pair the account with a phone. That is, the 6 digit pin number is all you need to know to access the customer's funds. Now keep in mind attacker wouldn't care about a specific account, just get loads of customer emails and try the most common pin numbers and fish what you can - there is no notification when a new device is paired either, indeed. Not really the best user experience and use of my time if I lose my money and need to fight with the fintech bank to get it back or when my account gets locked needlessly. The same goes for the constant redesigns. How is that mindful to the user if you change everything (again) so they need to spend their time to learn again how to use your app just to get the same stuff done as before.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    The problem with many sites and free-to-use commercial products isn't that interfaces are designed around minimizing user interactions but instead that they're designed around minimizing the most profitable user interactions. This is what leads to email sign up forms and dark patterns taking precedence.
sgustard 6y ago
The 20 laws are presented alphabetically, not in any order of importance. (I'm not defending it, just observing.)
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  Let's comment: awful decision. The "laws" are not equally important and as a user I would expect that their order reflects that. It never even occurred to me it could be done differently. To be honest, this site looks like some designer's playground, not something an UX expert put together.
p1necone 6y ago
I suspect in a lot of large organizations the first rule of UX isn't even make it aesthetically pleasing to users, it's make it aesthetically pleasing to PMs in product demos. And they may or may not even interact with the software directly, or for very long. Teams will build software aligned with the immediate incentives they have, never assume those incentives are even remotely close to those that might make the business succeed in the actual market.
muzani 6y ago
Honestly, it looks like it was purposely designed to be poor UX to demonstrate the first rule. The rule seems to imply UI > UX lol

by ardy42 6y ago

andrepd 6y ago

Oh my god, this is exactly how I feel about most modern software UI. It seems like it's optimised to look pretty on screenshots, rather than to actually be usable!

userbinator 6y ago
...and "pretty" is highly subjective. I find the current "sea of white/blackspace with almost no affordances" and "hide everything that could possibly be useful" trend rather repugnant --- but perhaps that's because it almost always comes with a lack of usability.
- CoryAlexMartin 6y ago
  Yes, the "hide everything" trend is really annoying. An egregious example of this is how iTunes hides the track number and/or duration when you hover over or have a track selected: https://i.imgur.com/IhwHnfO.png https://i.imgur.com/IhwHnfO.png

Shared404 6y ago

> [T]he first law of UX should be that aesthetics are secondary to usability. I would argue that instead it should be aesthetics and functionality need to be balanced. Your usability will suffer if lack of aesthetics obscure the usability of a tool. Conversely, your aesthetics need to be reigned in, so that they do not obscure the usability of your tool.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 6y ago
Aesthetics should happen as a result of trying to make a tool highly usable. Ever performed your craft and you just nail it and as a side effect the thing looks positively beautiful?
- Shared404 6y ago
  > Aesthetics should happen as a result of trying to make a tool highly usable. Once again someone on HN phrases something better then I could hope to. > Ever performed your craft and you just nail it and as a side effect the thing looks positively beautiful? Best feeling in the world, on the rare occasions I manage it.
bananaface 6y ago
I dunno man, I don't think it's a tradeoff. Make a good UX, then slap on a nice color scheme, some shiny buttons, whatever. The hard part is making the UX good.

tlow 6y ago

Hard no. The first law of UX is that human resources are precious. Therefore design must seek to maximize the economy of user time, cognition, and effort.

andialo 6y ago
I wish we lived in a world where this was true. This is the biggest problem with tech today, making "eye catchy" software which is horrible to use and getting anything done (and I mean simple things as making a payment if it's just little bit different than the "designer" imagined, for example you want to add a note) is so frustrating because it takes so much time. Yet it was not like that few years ago. Thanks apple I guess ? EDIT: And then to make the software "easier to use" security goes down the drain. There is a small fintech bank where all you need to know is email and 6 digit pin number to pair the account with a phone. That is, the 6 digit pin number is all you need to know to access the customer's funds. Now keep in mind attacker wouldn't care about a specific account, just get loads of customer emails and try the most common pin numbers and fish what you can - there is no notification when a new device is paired either, indeed. Not really the best user experience and use of my time if I lose my money and need to fight with the fintech bank to get it back or when my account gets locked needlessly. The same goes for the constant redesigns. How is that mindful to the user if you change everything (again) so they need to spend their time to learn again how to use your app just to get the same stuff done as before.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  The problem with many sites and free-to-use commercial products isn't that interfaces are designed around minimizing user interactions but instead that they're designed around minimizing the most profitable user interactions. This is what leads to email sign up forms and dark patterns taking precedence.

sgustard 6y ago

The 20 laws are presented alphabetically, not in any order of importance. (I'm not defending it, just observing.)

Drdrdrq 6y ago
Let's comment: awful decision. The "laws" are not equally important and as a user I would expect that their order reflects that. It never even occurred to me it could be done differently. To be honest, this site looks like some designer's playground, not something an UX expert put together.

p1necone 6y ago

I suspect in a lot of large organizations the first rule of UX isn't even make it aesthetically pleasing to users, it's make it aesthetically pleasing to PMs in product demos. And they may or may not even interact with the software directly, or for very long. Teams will build software aligned with the immediate incentives they have, never assume those incentives are even remotely close to those that might make the business succeed in the actual market.

muzani 6y ago

Honestly, it looks like it was purposely designed to be poor UX to demonstrate the first rule. The rule seems to imply UI > UX lol