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I think we software developers tend to overstate the impact that the inner world of software developement has on this kind of thing. It wouldn't even occur to m

by edanm 5y ago

I think we software developers tend to overstate the impact that the inner world of software developement has on this kind of thing. It wouldn't even occur to me that "release often KPIs" has anything to do with it. The reason the web looks like it does today is because it mostly works, for the value of works that the people building the web care about. Most things on the web are there because someone wants to make money from them. And apparently they do. Things being "hostile" are a side effect of them being effective at making money. That's mostly the whole story.

javajosh 5y ago
Yours is a solid neo-liberal explanation that ignores one important fact: so much of what's online is not market-driven. It cannot survive in the steady-state on it's own. Much of it is investor funded. It's someone's best guess about what the public will find acceptable. And then, remarkably, these guesses are used by others to triangulate their own guesses, and you get something like a "UX bubble" divorced from economic reality. (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction). OSS components being the preeminent example - although github has done a good job commoditizing the design around distributing such things. But these also create bubbles, of a different kind.)
- edanm 5y ago
  I'm not sure about the impact of VCs here. For all their power, I think most people's biggest interactions on the web are with Facebook, Youtube, Amazon and Google. Do you have any good examples of VC-funded UX experiences that fairly prevalent?
  - javajosh 5y ago
    The OP is not a blog post, but an Ask HN participant. Most of the poeple on this site are building VC-funded UX, and are early-adopters of the same. My comment is addressed to them, not most people. Additionally, it is beyond my ken to even begin to comment on the bigness of people's interactions with anything, in general.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction) I would not agree that the consequence of lacking a profit motive is an absence of corrective market forces. There are many kinds of markets out there, and many kinds of market forces that aren't related to monetary profit. For example, the marketplace of ideas is very powerful for people without a profit motive -- they toil in order to earn currency in their communities, which can be something as trivial as Github stars.
  - javajosh 5y ago
    Very true, although it is an embarrassing thing to admit (for me, anyway). Although, now that it comes to it I wonder: is it really something to be embarrassed about, to care about github stars more than zeroes in your bank account, and the wonderful things that gets you? Will not the stars really and truly affect more people more meaningfully than the zeroes? I suppose in the end it's a struggle between pleasure and vanity, as always.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      Tell me about it, I definitely look at my stars every day, and get overjoyed when even a single person stars one of my projects. I feel this is a little more justified than the dopamine rush caused by a like on a tweet, because I put so much effort into the underlying software project (as opposed to the thoughtless, throwaway effort spent on most tweets and fb posts). That's why I think you shouldn't be embarrassed about putting weight on such a thing. I need food and electricity to power my body and computer. But I also need external validation to power my ego. The software doesn't get written if I don't think it's a good idea and worth doing, no matter how full my belly is.
Clubber 5y ago
>effective at making money I think you hit the nail on the head. I also want to add that one of the arguments on moving everything to the web (applications I mean) was that the web interface was intuitive and didn't require documentation. That may have been true in many cases in 1999, but it certainly isn't now. That leaves users to click around to try to figure out how to use the web app through trial and error. Not a great user XP. When apps were local, you could always hit F1 and get context sensitive documentation on the particular form you were on and it would (try) to explain what the app was looking for. Apps also had a conformity being all Windows apps using the Windows SDK. It certainly wasn't perfect, but at least it was something. That is mostly long gone and many developers just assume the users know how to use their interface, just because it's intuitive to the developer. Either that or companies don't want to spend the money or have the talent to make complex interactions simple.
- edanm 5y ago
  > I also want to add that one of the arguments on moving everything to the web (applications I mean) was that the web interface was intuitive and didn't require documentation. I strongly disagree with this. The reason most apps (or rather, most software) moved to the web is because of a few factors: 1. No installer necessary - this made getting people running much faster and more reliable. 2. You could monetize in a way you simply couldn't with offline software. Instead of selling it once, on the web you have myriad ways to finance software, e.g. SaaS, other forms of selling continued access, advertising, etc. Note that point reason 2 is exactly my point - companies moved to the web in large part because it was far more profitable. (And I say this as someone who's been a developer during most of the time this shift was happening, and was part of companies making the business-model transition to subscription software.) > When apps were local, you could always hit F1 and get context sensitive documentation on the particular form you were on and it would (try) to explain what the app was looking for. Apps also had a conformity being all Windows apps using the Windows SDK. It certainly wasn't perfect, but at least it was something. And again I have to chime in here as a long-time computer veteran - if you think what most people do with computers today is harder than it was in the past, you are just plain wrong. Being able to hit F1 to get help was something that was done by maybe .1% of the population. Yes, desktop software supposedly enforcing UX conformity was an advantage, but not as crazy an advantage as you would think. As someone who has been helping users out for years, I have no doubt at all that the average UX has gotten way better. (Though side note, I don't think this is just the influence of the web... we've also just gotten better as an industry on making software, IMO)

by edanm 5y ago

javajosh 5y ago

Yours is a solid neo-liberal explanation that ignores one important fact: so much of what's online is not market-driven. It cannot survive in the steady-state on it's own. Much of it is investor funded. It's someone's best guess about what the public will find acceptable. And then, remarkably, these guesses are used by others to triangulate their own guesses, and you get something like a "UX bubble" divorced from economic reality. (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction). OSS components being the preeminent example - although github has done a good job commoditizing the design around distributing such things. But these also create bubbles, of a different kind.)

edanm 5y ago
I'm not sure about the impact of VCs here. For all their power, I think most people's biggest interactions on the web are with Facebook, Youtube, Amazon and Google. Do you have any good examples of VC-funded UX experiences that fairly prevalent?
- javajosh 5y ago
  The OP is not a blog post, but an Ask HN participant. Most of the poeple on this site are building VC-funded UX, and are early-adopters of the same. My comment is addressed to them, not most people. Additionally, it is beyond my ken to even begin to comment on the bigness of people's interactions with anything, in general.
ModernMech 5y ago
> (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction) I would not agree that the consequence of lacking a profit motive is an absence of corrective market forces. There are many kinds of markets out there, and many kinds of market forces that aren't related to monetary profit. For example, the marketplace of ideas is very powerful for people without a profit motive -- they toil in order to earn currency in their communities, which can be something as trivial as Github stars.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Very true, although it is an embarrassing thing to admit (for me, anyway). Although, now that it comes to it I wonder: is it really something to be embarrassed about, to care about github stars more than zeroes in your bank account, and the wonderful things that gets you? Will not the stars really and truly affect more people more meaningfully than the zeroes? I suppose in the end it's a struggle between pleasure and vanity, as always.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Tell me about it, I definitely look at my stars every day, and get overjoyed when even a single person stars one of my projects. I feel this is a little more justified than the dopamine rush caused by a like on a tweet, because I put so much effort into the underlying software project (as opposed to the thoughtless, throwaway effort spent on most tweets and fb posts). That's why I think you shouldn't be embarrassed about putting weight on such a thing. I need food and electricity to power my body and computer. But I also need external validation to power my ego. The software doesn't get written if I don't think it's a good idea and worth doing, no matter how full my belly is.

Clubber 5y ago

>effective at making money I think you hit the nail on the head. I also want to add that one of the arguments on moving everything to the web (applications I mean) was that the web interface was intuitive and didn't require documentation. That may have been true in many cases in 1999, but it certainly isn't now. That leaves users to click around to try to figure out how to use the web app through trial and error. Not a great user XP. When apps were local, you could always hit F1 and get context sensitive documentation on the particular form you were on and it would (try) to explain what the app was looking for. Apps also had a conformity being all Windows apps using the Windows SDK. It certainly wasn't perfect, but at least it was something. That is mostly long gone and many developers just assume the users know how to use their interface, just because it's intuitive to the developer. Either that or companies don't want to spend the money or have the talent to make complex interactions simple.

edanm 5y ago
> I also want to add that one of the arguments on moving everything to the web (applications I mean) was that the web interface was intuitive and didn't require documentation. I strongly disagree with this. The reason most apps (or rather, most software) moved to the web is because of a few factors: 1. No installer necessary - this made getting people running much faster and more reliable. 2. You could monetize in a way you simply couldn't with offline software. Instead of selling it once, on the web you have myriad ways to finance software, e.g. SaaS, other forms of selling continued access, advertising, etc. Note that point reason 2 is exactly my point - companies moved to the web in large part because it was far more profitable. (And I say this as someone who's been a developer during most of the time this shift was happening, and was part of companies making the business-model transition to subscription software.) > When apps were local, you could always hit F1 and get context sensitive documentation on the particular form you were on and it would (try) to explain what the app was looking for. Apps also had a conformity being all Windows apps using the Windows SDK. It certainly wasn't perfect, but at least it was something. And again I have to chime in here as a long-time computer veteran - if you think what most people do with computers today is harder than it was in the past, you are just plain wrong. Being able to hit F1 to get help was something that was done by maybe .1% of the population. Yes, desktop software supposedly enforcing UX conformity was an advantage, but not as crazy an advantage as you would think. As someone who has been helping users out for years, I have no doubt at all that the average UX has gotten way better. (Though side note, I don't think this is just the influence of the web... we've also just gotten better as an industry on making software, IMO)