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The amount of scrutiny UI changes would need to go into production should exponentially increase with how long the existing UI has been in production. We reall
by systemvoltage 6y ago
The amount of scrutiny UI changes would need to go into production should exponentially increase with how long the existing UI has been in production.
We really need to stop changing UI for the sake of changing it. Nothing in the laws of nature, nothing of any fundamental significance, nothing in any rule book or of any engineering consideration says that UI belongs to a particular era or it’s “outdated”. More often than not, it’s purely some designer’s personal taste.
Even if the current UI sucks, changing it should require serious justification and weighed against retraining millions of people.
- voidfunc 6y agoWhat will all the designers and frontend folks do though if we don't keep tweaking, tweaking, and tweaking...?
- dundercoder 6y agoWork on fixing compatibility for safari on windows
- benburleson 6y agoPeople use Safari on anything other than Mac?
- paulryanrogers 6y agoIt used to work on Windows. They dropped support years ago.
- nerdponx 6y agoDesign and implement the UX and UI for actual distinguishing features. Or improving the settings menus, the "customize" view, adding more tab management features (adjustable minimum tab width?), et alia.
- pseudalopex 6y agoDesigners in charge of UX is how we got into this mess. We need more HCI researchers and fewer designers.
- spython 6y agoCome up with new design paradigms. You can't tweak yourself out of local maxima.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SilasX 6y agoI think it's more about, what will they be able to claim as an achievement on their resume. None of them want to say "kept the site majestically usable in the same way so that ever larger ecosystems started depending on it", even though that's what we want.
- thatguy0900 6y agoMaybe the design team should have to personally retrain 100 computer illiterate users before the redesign goes live?
- usrusr 6y agoHistory is full of failures where they did almost exactly that, just without the "re" in front of "training". The creation of that weird MS Office toolbar thing for example must have consumed a large fraction of the last remaining blank slate non-users in the experiments that led to it's design.
- dralley 6y agoThe MS Office toolbar can hardly be considered a failure in retrospect. It's like Python 3, a very painful transition with long-term positives.
- thatguy0900 6y agoFunnily enough, I just installed windows 10 on a old computer for somebody, and the new office online that's installed defaults to "ribbon simplified" view which looks like the old office before ribbon
- greatgib 6y agoThis is your point of view. For me the ribbon is completely stupid as you have to constantly click 2 times for the features you want to go from one toolbar to another. And worse, you often have to click through multiple of them just to find the function that you are looking for. It is even more difficult as each one will have its buttons of random size, aspect and randomly placed.
- systemvoltage 6y agoOn the other hand, Windows 8’s full screen start menu didn’t quite pan out and Windows 10 reverted back to the classic start button.
- 6y ago
- neilpanchal 6y agoWe need to treat GUI as a specification and a contract to the users. With APIs, we version them, we're incredible careful to not break the client's code. If there is a new change, we'd create `v2/foo` to access resource foo while still maintaining v1. I think graphical interfaces are exactly the same. Instead of `GET` request, it's our eye balls consuming data from a 2D space of a computer monitor. Whenever GUIs break, we suffer from the disparity between expectation and what we're seeing. Breaking GUIs should be treated with the same level of rigor and respect as REST APIs (and other specifications/contracts).
- kodah 6y agoMy team does this. We don't really track the layout of a GUI (read: web, desktop, or CLI) but we do track inputs, output, and behavior. That said, it is very expensive to do this in terms of time and the amount of overhead it will add to each iteration of the SDLC so I can see why teams would rather not.
- andrepd 6y agoOh my god, thanks for articulating my feelings and frustration in this way. I'm gonna steal the "GUI is an API for the user" line.
- kbenson 6y agoI think an interface that could be defined and iterated on is what Mozilla used to have with their chrome UI specification layer, and I think they mothballed that a few years ago? At least I think it was called chrome, it's not exactly easily searchable anymore. Edit: Actually, I think I'm thinking of XUL? I'm not sure how much it's still the standard for Mozilla UI specification or not.
- st3fan 6y agoSimilar, nothing in the laws of nature, nothing of any fundamental significance, nothing in any rule book or of any engineering consideration says that UI should never ever change.
- stock_toaster 6y agoLike a UI Lindy effect[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- andrepd 6y agoScratch all that, let's just change it anyway and optimise for the following metric: looking good in screenshots (notice how trends like ungodly amounts of whitespace, flat widgets, flashy animations, are all explainable by optimising for subjective style over usability). For fuck's sake.
- fotta 6y agoIt doesn't seem like this new UI does much in terms of changing UX though? Besides compact mode being hidden this looks like more of a new "skin", so there's nothing new to be learned to use it.
- 271828182846 6y agoI can clearly feel a mild dopamine rush every time the UI of an app/service changes - independent of whether that being an actual improvement. I suspect this effect to be even stronger for a majority of users. From that pov changing the UI is a marketing instrument.