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I'd be totally fine with UX designers having final authority on these matters if more of them were actually good at UX design. It seems that UX these days just

I'd be totally fine with UX designers having final authority on these matters if more of them were actually good at UX design. It seems that UX these days just means making interfaces that match some arbitrary opinion of "beautiful" without any actual regard to what works and doesn't for a user interface. I miss when actual UX designers did actual studies to find actually good ways to put interfaces together.

atatatat 5y ago
Well-put. Thanks for noticing — I hope to be on a project of yours soon.
pm90 5y ago
I believe that most trained UI/UX designers (ie those who have internalized that UX is supposed to help people and not just how fancy or standard conformant you can get) do build pretty great designs, but I’ve noticed a lot of ego in this area from design leaders in my personal experience. Nearly every time design becomes political and every change needs to be conformant to even the most minute standards even if they may not have any material effects on the product. I think the field just has a lot of shitty “leaders”, most of the “grunts” I’ve worked with have been incredibly helpful and willing to think out of the box to make UX easier.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Death by 1000 cuts. "Is this component really that shitty for the user?" is how you end up with...hell, insert any Enterprise software here.
swiley 5y ago
I'd completely disagree. Software engineers tend to be very pragmatic. Perhaps it's really due to the involvement of the community but you look at open source software that has no "UX person" and it tends to be miles ahead of closed software that has them.
- p0nce 5y ago
  miles _ahead_? I'm not seeing that, at all. Software without UX persons... often has bad UX.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I'd agree, for desktop programs specifically. "Web App" UX & design is a source of much UX & design employment, yet is largely god-awful, and it's infected desktop program design (via Electron, in part). The result is that 90s-style programmer-designed desktop UI sometimes is better, not because they're especially good, but because current trends are terrible and 90s-style desktop program design is better than what's trendy now. I don't think this means open source desktop programs are a great place to look for top-notch UI/UX inspiration.
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      >(via Electron, in part) Electron is basically the digital equivalent of coal-rolling in my opinion, technologies like React Native are a much more elegant way of achieving what Electron tries to.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > Perhaps it's really due to the involvement of the community but you look at open source software that has no "UX person" and it tends to be miles ahead of closed software that has them. You're setting a really low bar there. If you compare open source UX to the UX of closed source applications pre-iphone, you'll find that their incomprehensibility was frequently criticized. Case in point: GIMP. What's changed is that closed source UX has gotten worse faster than open source UX (unless you count GNOME, which has set world records for how fast it degraded).
  - swiley 5y ago
    Why does everyone point out GIMP as having bad UX? You apt-get install it, you double click on your photo, you use a pretty standard WIMP interface to edit it. Compared to modern Adobe software that's fucking amazing.
ectopod 5y ago
UI designers of old were working to improve the user's experience of the UI. UX designers are optimising the user's experience for the benefit of the business. For apps and websites this often involves actively user-hostile patterns.

atatatat 5y ago

Well-put. Thanks for noticing — I hope to be on a project of yours soon.

pm90 5y ago

I believe that most trained UI/UX designers (ie those who have internalized that UX is supposed to help people and not just how fancy or standard conformant you can get) do build pretty great designs, but I’ve noticed a lot of ego in this area from design leaders in my personal experience. Nearly every time design becomes political and every change needs to be conformant to even the most minute standards even if they may not have any material effects on the product. I think the field just has a lot of shitty “leaders”, most of the “grunts” I’ve worked with have been incredibly helpful and willing to think out of the box to make UX easier.

atatatat 5y ago
Death by 1000 cuts. "Is this component really that shitty for the user?" is how you end up with...hell, insert any Enterprise software here.

swiley 5y ago

I'd completely disagree. Software engineers tend to be very pragmatic. Perhaps it's really due to the involvement of the community but you look at open source software that has no "UX person" and it tends to be miles ahead of closed software that has them.

p0nce 5y ago
miles _ahead_? I'm not seeing that, at all. Software without UX persons... often has bad UX.
- handrous 5y ago
  I'd agree, for desktop programs specifically. "Web App" UX & design is a source of much UX & design employment, yet is largely god-awful, and it's infected desktop program design (via Electron, in part). The result is that 90s-style programmer-designed desktop UI sometimes is better, not because they're especially good, but because current trends are terrible and 90s-style desktop program design is better than what's trendy now. I don't think this means open source desktop programs are a great place to look for top-notch UI/UX inspiration.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    >(via Electron, in part) Electron is basically the digital equivalent of coal-rolling in my opinion, technologies like React Native are a much more elegant way of achieving what Electron tries to.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Perhaps it's really due to the involvement of the community but you look at open source software that has no "UX person" and it tends to be miles ahead of closed software that has them. You're setting a really low bar there. If you compare open source UX to the UX of closed source applications pre-iphone, you'll find that their incomprehensibility was frequently criticized. Case in point: GIMP. What's changed is that closed source UX has gotten worse faster than open source UX (unless you count GNOME, which has set world records for how fast it degraded).
- swiley 5y ago
  Why does everyone point out GIMP as having bad UX? You apt-get install it, you double click on your photo, you use a pretty standard WIMP interface to edit it. Compared to modern Adobe software that's fucking amazing.

ectopod 5y ago

UI designers of old were working to improve the user's experience of the UI. UX designers are optimising the user's experience for the benefit of the business. For apps and websites this often involves actively user-hostile patterns.