8 ms·

There are so many things that bother me about contemporary UI in general, I ranted on here the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293 https://

There are so many things that bother me about contemporary UI in general, I ranted on here the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293 I sincerely feel that the discipline of building user interfaces is long lost and perhaps never to come back. From car dashboards to loud typography, the whole field is regressing. Minimalism, too much white space, infantilization of users, design trends, loss of predictability, etc. are all symptoms of this. There are still some gems that I find here and there: https://neil.computer/notes/the-design-of-diskprices-com/ https://neil.computer/notes/the-design-of-diskprices-com/

userbinator 6y ago
Minimalism, too much white space Those two tend to be related. It really angers me every time I see a huge amount of whitespace for no good reason, but then most of the functionality is hidden behind a dropdown menu whose equally stupid '...' indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF. Back when UIs were still good, things would usually be hidden only if there wasn't enough space. You could see almost everything you needed at a glance. The "designers" dismiss that as "messy" and "clutter", which is frankly absurd --- something functional is not going to look "clean", much like a machine shop that's in active use: Tools and parts are laid out everywhere, because the user needs access to them. That diskprices.com site is great. Craigslist is another one that comes to mind. The only thing it's missing is a "submit" button for those who have JS disabled... otherwise it's a perfect example of extremely functional design that wasn't ruined by "UI/UX designers".
- towndrunk 6y ago
  "indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF." My wife and I had this conversation the other day. There are things in iOS you only get or see if you long press. How the hell are you to discover these things?
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    > How the hell are you to discover these things? Sometimes by accident, sometimes from hearing about it from others, sometimes from searching on Google for how to do something.
  - andai 6y ago
    I keep hearing about these secret iOS features. Is there a manual or something I should have read?
    - userbinator 6y ago
      But "modern" software is perfectly usable without documentation! /s I miss the days when software actually came with very detailed documentation for the user. They had their hidden features too, but at least there was documentation for them.
      - iaml 6y ago
        Both ios and android have 'tips' app that fulfills this role and are hard to miss since they spam notifications at you.
  - chii 6y ago
    It's a subtle psychological manipulation of the mind of the users of computers - stick to the simple use case, and don't do complicated things, don't try to be an advanced user, don't think for yourself and just consume what we tell you to. I hate it.
    - echelon 6y ago
      > I hate it. There's nothing you can do. Computing stopped being about expert users the minute the rest of the world got online. Now the giants control all the devices, platforms, and mindshare. They will never cater to you. Informed users aren't the ones clicking the ads or buying the things as intended. We've crossed into the gravity well of user hostility, and there's no longer any escape. I hate it too.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Hamburgers and Hieroglyphs are where UX goes to die.
- p49k 6y ago
  This is all personal preference, but personally I strongly disagree with you. I find that diskprices site to be poorly organized, difficult to use, and the majority of the site is the full (non-normalized) text descriptions of the individual items, which is not only a giant mess of text, but also unnecessarily replicates data. The data columns are misaligned, too much repetition of certain words that could be abbreviated ("External/ Internal"), etc. I think it's good design to hide certain functions behind "..." - For example, I can't tell you the number of times I've accidentally flagged a post on HN just because my finger accidentally touched my phone or because I was trying to click the comments link a few pixels away (which is the feature that people want to access on 95% of clicks that occur in that region). If I had to hit "..." first, it would never happen because I would have just accidentally opened a menu. (And if you flag something, you may never be able to unflag it because it loses ranking and appears at another position somewhere on the site or disappears entirely).
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I think the current trend away from good UI is itself a symptom of a larger trend in our industry: the trend away from respecting the user. Users are not customers now, they are cattle. You farm their attention and don't care about enabling them.
nostromo 6y ago
This soulless corporate style of illustration not a single person likes: https://www.imgur.com/DcL05OA.gif https://www.imgur.com/DcL05OA.gif (This could be a subset of infantilization, since this art style seems to come from books for toddlers.)
- rajacombinator 6y ago
  What is the name for this abhorrent trend, and how did it originate and become ubiquitous?
  - userbinator 6y ago
    "Corporate Memphis": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877
  - 0xfffafaCrash 6y ago
    It's a "flat design" vector art style inspired by the work of the Memphis Group that's called "Corporate Memphis" primarily by critics. While Hacker News is apparently too sophisticated to be condescended to with simplistic animations that look good at very different resolutions, I think a lot of people like it. If everyone hated this and considered it "corporate," it wouldn't be the one used by some of the animation studios that create the most popular content (e.g. Kurzgesagt).
    - anfilt 6y ago
      I don't think it has anything todo with vectors. Sure general vector art tends to be simpler. What I see is mostly people complaining about empty space, that can be used, and have to access common actions through a menu, also a lot of times no way to add common action like customizable readily available menu ect... While the uncluttered design for something someone only uses a couple times might be fine to avoid overwhelming someone. If you use it daily and even multiple times a day that can make it harder to use. It also remind me something i read about a ticket kiosk for some transit system. They updated the kiosk with simpler interface to select various things. While effective for infrequent riders, people who would purchase tickets daily found it much slower because the old kiosk allowed them to type in codes they memorized.
jtolmar 6y ago
I appreciate the structure of that diskprices website, a big list and a filter bar is one of those classic designs that has disappeared in the modern web. Nowadays it'd be an AI-sorted list that attempts to filter with a search bar, the list would fit four items per page because it insists on showing you pictures of hard drives, and it'd be paginated at some absurdly small number of results per page (or infinite scroll). That said, I disagree with its FAQ claiming whitespace and color wouldn't help. It'd be a lot easier to actually read the data with a light alternating row color, slightly more vertical spacing, and not styling the links as a wall of underlined blue text.
pottertheotter 6y ago
I agree with you overall, but diskprices is far from perfect UI. The layout of the information and how it is accessed is useful. But other design elements, such as color, would make it better. One of the best designed products I've ever used is the TiVo DVR. We first got one in 1999, the year it came out. I loved it, but realized how well it was designed when I started using other DVRs in the mid 2000s. As a prime example, to delete an episode on a TiVo required pressing one button. On another DVR I had it was six button presses! It was like this for countless things. It was obvious the folks at TiVo had thought long and hard about usability and design and other manufacturers couldn't care less. Now imagine if TiVo made their remote a rectangular cuboid with hard edges, and all the buttons were hard plastic squares that were all the same color. It would still be much easier for me to delete an episode on the TiVo than on other DVRs, but holding and using the remote would not be a positive experience. Putting some work into the remote so it fits in your hands, the buttons are nice to press, and color and shape of buttons helps you find the button you want would make it so much better (thankfully they did). Diskprices is similar to the hypothetical TiVo with a crappy remote. Someone worked hard on some aspects of design and usability, but out of either ignorance or arrogance ignored the rest of the aspects.
RedShift1 6y ago
100% agree. When I look at the Windows 10 UI, like for example the settings app, everything is flat, square, 2 tone and all the whitespace makes it look disorganized. It looks downright depressing.
NetOpWibby 6y ago
Neil has some great posts and I agree with everything you said. Twitter, Facebook, and Google all look like Fisher-Price design, it’s annoying.
abhinav22 6y ago
I like your website too! Very nicely done
jspash 6y ago
My biggest gripe - since I can’t add to your excellent critique of today’s design problems - is when someone comes up with yet another css framework or the like which removes ALL affordances, hides critical functions under mysterious icons, removes ALL colour and personality... then calls it “beautiful”.
antihero 6y ago
See whilst diskprices is very functional, it is aesthetically poor. Good design has both functionality and form. Design is not only about being as useful as possible, but also to present something that is beautiful - it is easier to build a relationship with a user when they are compelled to enjoy a product more due to its visual appeal. I think a lot of developers seem oblivious to the power of aesthetics because they are so ardently in the functionality camp. The density of information on DiskPrices, whist great for a power user, would probably be daunting and overloading for the average user and whilst it has a retro vibe, is catering to a niche - people technical enough to be looking at disk prices.
iFreilicht 6y ago
I don't agree with you 100% here, I believe some small tweaks could make diskprices.com more accessible. But your own main website is so damn good: https://neil.computer/ https://neil.computer/ Functional, high visibility, accessibility, discoverability. There's no bullshit, no hidden anything, it's true minimalism and 100% honest. This is what actual good design looks like. A dark mode would be nice, though.
ju_sh 6y ago
Agreed. Finding the right balance between beauty and functionality is definitely a something that seems to be in decline. I've used applications that present too much data and others that hide it all away, both equally frustrating.

userbinator 6y ago

Minimalism, too much white space Those two tend to be related. It really angers me every time I see a huge amount of whitespace for no good reason, but then most of the functionality is hidden behind a dropdown menu whose equally stupid '...' indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF. Back when UIs were still good, things would usually be hidden only if there wasn't enough space. You could see almost everything you needed at a glance. The "designers" dismiss that as "messy" and "clutter", which is frankly absurd --- something functional is not going to look "clean", much like a machine shop that's in active use: Tools and parts are laid out everywhere, because the user needs access to them. That diskprices.com site is great. Craigslist is another one that comes to mind. The only thing it's missing is a "submit" button for those who have JS disabled... otherwise it's a perfect example of extremely functional design that wasn't ruined by "UI/UX designers".

towndrunk 6y ago
"indicator only shows up when you happen to hover over it. WTF." My wife and I had this conversation the other day. There are things in iOS you only get or see if you long press. How the hell are you to discover these things?
- codetrotter 6y ago
  > How the hell are you to discover these things? Sometimes by accident, sometimes from hearing about it from others, sometimes from searching on Google for how to do something.
- andai 6y ago
  I keep hearing about these secret iOS features. Is there a manual or something I should have read?
  - userbinator 6y ago
    But "modern" software is perfectly usable without documentation! /s I miss the days when software actually came with very detailed documentation for the user. They had their hidden features too, but at least there was documentation for them.
    - iaml 6y ago
      Both ios and android have 'tips' app that fulfills this role and are hard to miss since they spam notifications at you.
- chii 6y ago
  It's a subtle psychological manipulation of the mind of the users of computers - stick to the simple use case, and don't do complicated things, don't try to be an advanced user, don't think for yourself and just consume what we tell you to. I hate it.
  - echelon 6y ago
    > I hate it. There's nothing you can do. Computing stopped being about expert users the minute the rest of the world got online. Now the giants control all the devices, platforms, and mindshare. They will never cater to you. Informed users aren't the ones clicking the ads or buying the things as intended. We've crossed into the gravity well of user hostility, and there's no longer any escape. I hate it too.
jjoonathan 6y ago
Hamburgers and Hieroglyphs are where UX goes to die.
p49k 6y ago
This is all personal preference, but personally I strongly disagree with you. I find that diskprices site to be poorly organized, difficult to use, and the majority of the site is the full (non-normalized) text descriptions of the individual items, which is not only a giant mess of text, but also unnecessarily replicates data. The data columns are misaligned, too much repetition of certain words that could be abbreviated ("External/ Internal"), etc. I think it's good design to hide certain functions behind "..." - For example, I can't tell you the number of times I've accidentally flagged a post on HN just because my finger accidentally touched my phone or because I was trying to click the comments link a few pixels away (which is the feature that people want to access on 95% of clicks that occur in that region). If I had to hit "..." first, it would never happen because I would have just accidentally opened a menu. (And if you flag something, you may never be able to unflag it because it loses ranking and appears at another position somewhere on the site or disappears entirely).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

I think the current trend away from good UI is itself a symptom of a larger trend in our industry: the trend away from respecting the user. Users are not customers now, they are cattle. You farm their attention and don't care about enabling them.

nostromo 6y ago

This soulless corporate style of illustration not a single person likes: https://www.imgur.com/DcL05OA.gif https://www.imgur.com/DcL05OA.gif (This could be a subset of infantilization, since this art style seems to come from books for toddlers.)

rajacombinator 6y ago
What is the name for this abhorrent trend, and how did it originate and become ubiquitous?
- userbinator 6y ago
  "Corporate Memphis": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877
- 0xfffafaCrash 6y ago
  It's a "flat design" vector art style inspired by the work of the Memphis Group that's called "Corporate Memphis" primarily by critics. While Hacker News is apparently too sophisticated to be condescended to with simplistic animations that look good at very different resolutions, I think a lot of people like it. If everyone hated this and considered it "corporate," it wouldn't be the one used by some of the animation studios that create the most popular content (e.g. Kurzgesagt).
  - anfilt 6y ago
    I don't think it has anything todo with vectors. Sure general vector art tends to be simpler. What I see is mostly people complaining about empty space, that can be used, and have to access common actions through a menu, also a lot of times no way to add common action like customizable readily available menu ect... While the uncluttered design for something someone only uses a couple times might be fine to avoid overwhelming someone. If you use it daily and even multiple times a day that can make it harder to use. It also remind me something i read about a ticket kiosk for some transit system. They updated the kiosk with simpler interface to select various things. While effective for infrequent riders, people who would purchase tickets daily found it much slower because the old kiosk allowed them to type in codes they memorized.

jtolmar 6y ago

I appreciate the structure of that diskprices website, a big list and a filter bar is one of those classic designs that has disappeared in the modern web. Nowadays it'd be an AI-sorted list that attempts to filter with a search bar, the list would fit four items per page because it insists on showing you pictures of hard drives, and it'd be paginated at some absurdly small number of results per page (or infinite scroll). That said, I disagree with its FAQ claiming whitespace and color wouldn't help. It'd be a lot easier to actually read the data with a light alternating row color, slightly more vertical spacing, and not styling the links as a wall of underlined blue text.

pottertheotter 6y ago

I agree with you overall, but diskprices is far from perfect UI. The layout of the information and how it is accessed is useful. But other design elements, such as color, would make it better. One of the best designed products I've ever used is the TiVo DVR. We first got one in 1999, the year it came out. I loved it, but realized how well it was designed when I started using other DVRs in the mid 2000s. As a prime example, to delete an episode on a TiVo required pressing one button. On another DVR I had it was six button presses! It was like this for countless things. It was obvious the folks at TiVo had thought long and hard about usability and design and other manufacturers couldn't care less. Now imagine if TiVo made their remote a rectangular cuboid with hard edges, and all the buttons were hard plastic squares that were all the same color. It would still be much easier for me to delete an episode on the TiVo than on other DVRs, but holding and using the remote would not be a positive experience. Putting some work into the remote so it fits in your hands, the buttons are nice to press, and color and shape of buttons helps you find the button you want would make it so much better (thankfully they did). Diskprices is similar to the hypothetical TiVo with a crappy remote. Someone worked hard on some aspects of design and usability, but out of either ignorance or arrogance ignored the rest of the aspects.

RedShift1 6y ago

100% agree. When I look at the Windows 10 UI, like for example the settings app, everything is flat, square, 2 tone and all the whitespace makes it look disorganized. It looks downright depressing.

NetOpWibby 6y ago

Neil has some great posts and I agree with everything you said. Twitter, Facebook, and Google all look like Fisher-Price design, it’s annoying.

abhinav22 6y ago

I like your website too! Very nicely done

jspash 6y ago

My biggest gripe - since I can’t add to your excellent critique of today’s design problems - is when someone comes up with yet another css framework or the like which removes ALL affordances, hides critical functions under mysterious icons, removes ALL colour and personality... then calls it “beautiful”.

antihero 6y ago

See whilst diskprices is very functional, it is aesthetically poor. Good design has both functionality and form. Design is not only about being as useful as possible, but also to present something that is beautiful - it is easier to build a relationship with a user when they are compelled to enjoy a product more due to its visual appeal. I think a lot of developers seem oblivious to the power of aesthetics because they are so ardently in the functionality camp. The density of information on DiskPrices, whist great for a power user, would probably be daunting and overloading for the average user and whilst it has a retro vibe, is catering to a niche - people technical enough to be looking at disk prices.

iFreilicht 6y ago

I don't agree with you 100% here, I believe some small tweaks could make diskprices.com more accessible. But your own main website is so damn good: https://neil.computer/ https://neil.computer/ Functional, high visibility, accessibility, discoverability. There's no bullshit, no hidden anything, it's true minimalism and 100% honest. This is what actual good design looks like. A dark mode would be nice, though.

ju_sh 6y ago

Agreed. Finding the right balance between beauty and functionality is definitely a something that seems to be in decline. I've used applications that present too much data and others that hide it all away, both equally frustrating.