3 ms·

The high point of UX design was Windows 95. It was consistent. Windows had menus in the same place, and everyone knew what a menu was. Buttons looked like butto

The high point of UX design was Windows 95. It was consistent. Windows had menus in the same place, and everyone knew what a menu was. Buttons looked like buttons. Apps generally used the same Win32 API and had the same appearance. Key bindings were underlined. You could teach it to someone and they could learn it. And once they knew it they could be fast. Now I have to explain hamburgers and ellipses to my 80-year-old relatives. They have no idea what's going on. It's bewildering for them. It makes me realize how large a part of my brain is forced to run a simulation of the UX designer in my head, to play a game of long-distance charades with them. Google is to blame for a lot of this. They kicked off a minimalist trend with Chrome, which everybody aped. Now everything is a nearly-featureless shape with a few ambiguous hieroglyphs. Internationalization and cost-saving may also be part of it. The old Windows was very verbal: It used words, English words. But it's expensive to translate those to various languages. And expensive to make sure it still works in Arabic and Chinese. So instead, Tech companies have ended up with an iconographic pidgin that they don't have to translate. The burden is pushed to users. It also has to do with the move to WebApps and the absence of standardized GUI APIs. There's no "Win32" for WebApps. So people invent their own. (Actually, I take it back; there is a standard: It's the default form elements, that you had at least as far back as HTML4. When was the last time you saw a native checkbox or radio button?) But I don't think that's the main thing. I think it's mostly fashion. People would be faintly embarrassed to release a program with Win32 clicky buttons -- even though other people would find it easy to use.

jrm4 5y ago
Sure, it's fine. But I think there's a bigger point here. I could change Windows 95. Dark theme, light theme, lots more. See also Linux for even more possibilities. That's the great big ball of stupid that all of UX presently misses, and fundamentally why I don't much respect it. ALWAYS at least allow the damn user to decide if they want to change something.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  To your point, I'll add that semantic HTML with CSS was like this. It was maybe a little technical, but a motivated person could fairly easily override their browser's stylesheet. And I imagine that this was not just some esoterica to, say, people with limited vision. I don't think you can do this anymore, practically?
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Yes yes yes. Exactly. For all of its slowness and bloatedness, this is one reason why I'm slowly but strongly coming around to GUI apps made with html/css, like Electron et al. Obsidian strikes me as a great example of this; it's pretty great UI out of the box, and also you can edit it to your heart's content.

jrm4 5y ago

Sure, it's fine. But I think there's a bigger point here. I could change Windows 95. Dark theme, light theme, lots more. See also Linux for even more possibilities. That's the great big ball of stupid that all of UX presently misses, and fundamentally why I don't much respect it. ALWAYS at least allow the damn user to decide if they want to change something.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
To your point, I'll add that semantic HTML with CSS was like this. It was maybe a little technical, but a motivated person could fairly easily override their browser's stylesheet. And I imagine that this was not just some esoterica to, say, people with limited vision. I don't think you can do this anymore, practically?
- jrm4 5y ago
  Yes yes yes. Exactly. For all of its slowness and bloatedness, this is one reason why I'm slowly but strongly coming around to GUI apps made with html/css, like Electron et al. Obsidian strikes me as a great example of this; it's pretty great UI out of the box, and also you can edit it to your heart's content.