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> Modern design is so beautiful to look at - but an absolute nightmare to use. You either need to use trial an error on every element, or hope that someone else

> Modern design is so beautiful to look at - but an absolute nightmare to use. You either need to use trial an error on every element, or hope that someone else can tell you what you need to do. This. Aesthetics has overtaken usability. Back when it was web design, a good interface was defined as one that was easy to use first, pretty to look at second. During the rise of mobile interfaces, this got flipped. Now pretty to look at ranks highest, and easy to use is secondary. Is this because of real-estate? Mobile screens are smaller, and something had to go.

handrous 5y ago
What's crazy is that at one point the new wave of designers was hailed as digital native designers replacing the bad old print-trained designers. They'd save us from treating the screen like paper, unlocking the true potential of these interfaces. The worst sins of the print-designer era may have been pretty bad, but I'd say the average actually got a lot worse when the new crowd took over. First for the Web, then for native when Web-trained designers started working there, too.
- teucris 5y ago
  The idea of grounding UX in physical analogues, in my view, is incredibly important. No matter how much we interact with digital screens, we still walk on ground, pick things up with our hands, etc. Just because we can do anything in a digital experience doesn’t mean we should. Skeuomorphism may have gone too far, but the pendulum seemed to swing back too far.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    At some point skeuomorphism becomes anachronism, though. The canonical example is the continued use of the floppy disk icon for save. A mechanical stopwatch for a timer. A telephone with a switch hook and dial. A desk calendar with rings and pages. A pencil and paper for text editor.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      The problem with trying to get rid of those "anachronistic" symbols is that when you task someone with it, they will come up with a bunch of very arbitrary symbols that are also simple permutations that are hard to distinguish. There was an example in a previous HN thread on this topic. For "save", they had a rounded rectangle and an arrow, and then a bunch of operations had something similar, but with the orientation and details of the two elements changed. Or, another example that made an impression on me when OS X first came out, was when the basic window controls became circular, jewel like bubbles, only distinguished by color - instead of each having a distinctive pattern/symbol. It's so easy to fall into the trap as a designer of applying a pleasing uniformity that undermines the user experience. Imagine the nuclear power plant controls with hundreds of identical switches in rows and columns. Or an aircraft. Nothing would mean anything without the past providing context, so complaining about anachronism is paradoxically complaining that a meaning is too well established. The letter A is thought to come originally from a diagrammatic ox head, but should we eliminate it because we no longer use it in relation to livestock? Just because people don't like a floppy disk icon shouldn't count for anything unless it can be demonstrated there is in fact some other symbol that is more associated with saving.
      - cratermoon 5y ago
        If we still used an ox head to mean the phoneme for 'A', that would be closer to the floppy disk icon for save. Consider, also, that the word 'save' predates computers. What, if the computer or floppy disk didn't exist, might we use to signify 'save'? Perhaps a currency symbol? A money bag? A bank? A life preserver? A piggy bank? Or maybe we don't even need a 'save' action any more (the best programs have autosave already) but some kind of "mark this state so I can come back to it (undo) later. Apple's Time Machine is one paradigm to consider as well: there's no never a "save" step, but you can go back to a previous state with not much effort.
ectopod 5y ago
App companies are optimising for sales, and pretty sells better than usable. This isn't just true for software. There are lots of things, even trivial kitchen items, where you can't appreciate just how badly designed they are until you've used them for a bit. It is infuriating!

handrous 5y ago

What's crazy is that at one point the new wave of designers was hailed as digital native designers replacing the bad old print-trained designers. They'd save us from treating the screen like paper, unlocking the true potential of these interfaces. The worst sins of the print-designer era may have been pretty bad, but I'd say the average actually got a lot worse when the new crowd took over. First for the Web, then for native when Web-trained designers started working there, too.

teucris 5y ago
The idea of grounding UX in physical analogues, in my view, is incredibly important. No matter how much we interact with digital screens, we still walk on ground, pick things up with our hands, etc. Just because we can do anything in a digital experience doesn’t mean we should. Skeuomorphism may have gone too far, but the pendulum seemed to swing back too far.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  At some point skeuomorphism becomes anachronism, though. The canonical example is the continued use of the floppy disk icon for save. A mechanical stopwatch for a timer. A telephone with a switch hook and dial. A desk calendar with rings and pages. A pencil and paper for text editor.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    The problem with trying to get rid of those "anachronistic" symbols is that when you task someone with it, they will come up with a bunch of very arbitrary symbols that are also simple permutations that are hard to distinguish. There was an example in a previous HN thread on this topic. For "save", they had a rounded rectangle and an arrow, and then a bunch of operations had something similar, but with the orientation and details of the two elements changed. Or, another example that made an impression on me when OS X first came out, was when the basic window controls became circular, jewel like bubbles, only distinguished by color - instead of each having a distinctive pattern/symbol. It's so easy to fall into the trap as a designer of applying a pleasing uniformity that undermines the user experience. Imagine the nuclear power plant controls with hundreds of identical switches in rows and columns. Or an aircraft. Nothing would mean anything without the past providing context, so complaining about anachronism is paradoxically complaining that a meaning is too well established. The letter A is thought to come originally from a diagrammatic ox head, but should we eliminate it because we no longer use it in relation to livestock? Just because people don't like a floppy disk icon shouldn't count for anything unless it can be demonstrated there is in fact some other symbol that is more associated with saving.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      If we still used an ox head to mean the phoneme for 'A', that would be closer to the floppy disk icon for save. Consider, also, that the word 'save' predates computers. What, if the computer or floppy disk didn't exist, might we use to signify 'save'? Perhaps a currency symbol? A money bag? A bank? A life preserver? A piggy bank? Or maybe we don't even need a 'save' action any more (the best programs have autosave already) but some kind of "mark this state so I can come back to it (undo) later. Apple's Time Machine is one paradigm to consider as well: there's no never a "save" step, but you can go back to a previous state with not much effort.

ectopod 5y ago

App companies are optimising for sales, and pretty sells better than usable. This isn't just true for software. There are lots of things, even trivial kitchen items, where you can't appreciate just how badly designed they are until you've used them for a bit. It is infuriating!