4 ms·

Civil engineering is very different from UI design.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Well, i wouldn't want you to overthink it...but they're not so far apart. Games have the best UI; ideally a game will only show you the bare minimum of information required, and make the play experience as smooth and intuitive as possible. But games also have very narrowly defined win/loss conditions, and even in sandbox games (like Grand Theft Auto) success means that that players in the middle of the normal distribution are able to complete the game and interested enough to spend time doing so. For creative or productivity software, the definition of success is open-ended, because while designers can anticipate the kind of tasks/problems users will want to perform/solve, the end product of their labors is fundamentally unknowable, rather than waiting within the software to be discovered by the diligent user (player). Sure, Michaelangelo used to say that the statue already existed within the block of marble and his job was simply to reveal it, but you should probably see that as an early example of successful branding rather than a design document. A game is like a theme park ride insofar as the riders may change but their interaction with the ride is highly constrained. An application is more like a civil engineering task insofar as it has to bear a substantial amount of traffic, but its job is to facilitate rather than fulfill. You want those things available on the toolbar, even though many of them may not see regular use, because it's the easiest way to signal the availability of such functionality. The relative utility distribution of toolbar buttons or menu items follows Benford's law just like everything else.
- jhdavids8 15y ago
  If your ridiculously large intellect can stop applauding itself for one second, I hope you can find time to read this. That was probably the largest amount of psychobabble condensed into 2 paragraphs I've ever seen. Seriously, your first point was extremely over-simplified and you were called out on it, rightfully. I could make your first argument about anything. Watch: "Only 50% of people went out to eat this weekend. Clearly, we should get rid of 50% of restaurants." or "Only 50% of cars are driven on any given day. Clearly, we should just git rid of 50% of the cars." Your first point was a miss, and chetan called you out on it. Then, you insult his intelligence and go into a psychobabble rant about little to nothing that applies. Jesus dude, come down a peg or two.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    My first post was a joke, to emphasize how silly I thought the UX critique was. Complaining that software and civil engineering are not the same is so obvious as to be trite. I stand by my point above, though. Call it psychobabble if you like, but I like my metaphors. Shoot me.
    - jhdavids8 15y ago
      I completely realize that. My point was to show how easy it was to make that critique with such an over-simplification, which was chetan's point as well.
- jhdavids8 15y ago
  And your argument starts off with some random assumption that "games have the best UI". You can't lead into the rest of your argument with some random tidbit you assume is true. Some games have great UIs, some have shitty ones. Largely, it's irrelevant to your point, whatever it may be.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Most people are perfectly capable of drawing the necessary inferences from a generalization. If I say that 'cows have four legs', this is not to deny the fact that some cows come up short in the leg department. Games with shitty UIs tend to fail rapidly in the marketplace, because few people want to play a game with a shitty UI. There's a reason that I included qualifiers like 'I wouldn't want to overthink it' and 'ideally...' and 'players in the middle of the normal distribution...'. The reason is that I'm sketching out a philosophy of UI design in only a few sentences, and want to signal this to people who are reading. You seem determined to interpret my remarks in the most literal and narrow sense possible, to the point of completely overlooking the contextual qualifiers that accompanied them.

Well, i wouldn't want you to overthink it...but they're not so far apart. Games have the best UI; ideally a game will only show you the bare minimum of information required, and make the play experience as smooth and intuitive as possible. But games also have very narrowly defined win/loss conditions, and even in sandbox games (like Grand Theft Auto) success means that that players in the middle of the normal distribution are able to complete the game and interested enough to spend time doing so. For creative or productivity software, the definition of success is open-ended, because while designers can anticipate the kind of tasks/problems users will want to perform/solve, the end product of their labors is fundamentally unknowable, rather than waiting within the software to be discovered by the diligent user (player). Sure, Michaelangelo used to say that the statue already existed within the block of marble and his job was simply to reveal it, but you should probably see that as an early example of successful branding rather than a design document. A game is like a theme park ride insofar as the riders may change but their interaction with the ride is highly constrained. An application is more like a civil engineering task insofar as it has to bear a substantial amount of traffic, but its job is to facilitate rather than fulfill. You want those things available on the toolbar, even though many of them may not see regular use, because it's the easiest way to signal the availability of such functionality. The relative utility distribution of toolbar buttons or menu items follows Benford's law just like everything else.

jhdavids8 15y ago
If your ridiculously large intellect can stop applauding itself for one second, I hope you can find time to read this. That was probably the largest amount of psychobabble condensed into 2 paragraphs I've ever seen. Seriously, your first point was extremely over-simplified and you were called out on it, rightfully. I could make your first argument about anything. Watch: "Only 50% of people went out to eat this weekend. Clearly, we should get rid of 50% of restaurants." or "Only 50% of cars are driven on any given day. Clearly, we should just git rid of 50% of the cars." Your first point was a miss, and chetan called you out on it. Then, you insult his intelligence and go into a psychobabble rant about little to nothing that applies. Jesus dude, come down a peg or two.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  My first post was a joke, to emphasize how silly I thought the UX critique was. Complaining that software and civil engineering are not the same is so obvious as to be trite. I stand by my point above, though. Call it psychobabble if you like, but I like my metaphors. Shoot me.
  - jhdavids8 15y ago
    I completely realize that. My point was to show how easy it was to make that critique with such an over-simplification, which was chetan's point as well.
jhdavids8 15y ago
And your argument starts off with some random assumption that "games have the best UI". You can't lead into the rest of your argument with some random tidbit you assume is true. Some games have great UIs, some have shitty ones. Largely, it's irrelevant to your point, whatever it may be.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Most people are perfectly capable of drawing the necessary inferences from a generalization. If I say that 'cows have four legs', this is not to deny the fact that some cows come up short in the leg department. Games with shitty UIs tend to fail rapidly in the marketplace, because few people want to play a game with a shitty UI. There's a reason that I included qualifiers like 'I wouldn't want to overthink it' and 'ideally...' and 'players in the middle of the normal distribution...'. The reason is that I'm sketching out a philosophy of UI design in only a few sentences, and want to signal this to people who are reading. You seem determined to interpret my remarks in the most literal and narrow sense possible, to the point of completely overlooking the contextual qualifiers that accompanied them.