4 ms·

Tufte: USPTO dashboard "one of the worst interfaces ever designed"

25 points by zb 15y ago

bbq 15y ago
Direct link to the USPTO dashboard: http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml Tufte doesn't appear to be exaggerating.
ntkachov 15y ago
Just wondering, Is it possible for a patent troll to sue the USPTO because of their website?
- driverdan 15y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if displaying data as a gauge on a website is patented.
hkmurakami 15y ago
I just blurted out "What the f*ck. Oh my God" in front of my computer. I only started learning about data visualization a few months ago, but even to my nearly-untrained pair of eyes, the flaws of this monstrosity are readily apparent. To quote Tufte from his link, "Can someone, perhaps an Inspector General, find out the cost and the contracting company that did this?"
blahedo 15y ago
And as bad as it is, that post is more than a year old, apparently without any effects on the dashboard. Alas.
zlotty 15y ago
Tufte is completely overhyped. The quality of his work is meh and his website is a joke. If this is the high priest of design, god help us all.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  > "If this is the high priest of design, god help us all." You're confusing Tufte with a graphics designer. He's known for data visualization. There's a huge difference between those two professions. Tufte is one of the old guard of information presentation - not pretty, not even good looking, but unambiguous and copiously informative. His displays is what you might find in an airplane cockpit, not a Web 2.0 website. Data visualization and cognitive ergonomics are fields that existed long before CS, and should not be conflated with "design" as software geeks understand it.
  - zlotty 15y ago
    Actually, no. Graphic design/UI design is not what I was talking about. Tufte makes a lot of noise about communicating complex information visually. But frankly and ironically, he does an abysmal job of this himself. Have you ever looked at his books? They're a hodge podge of unrelated, poorly visually articulated thoughts that fail to create a larger narrative. I think the biggest problem is that he's considered the go-to guy on this, when in reality his own work is substandard at best.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - zlotty 15y ago
    Also, amusingly, you referenced Tufte as designing an airplane cockpit -- looks pretty similar to the dashboard being lampooned in this blog post.
    - potatolicious 15y ago
      Only in the most superficial of ways. If your definition of "looks pretty similar" is "using widgets shaped in similar ways", then, well, I guess I'd have to hand it to you. The USPTO has built its dashboard around familiar looking instruments - ones that work in many other contexts (airplanes, cars, etc), but is completely inappropriate in their usage. A dial in a cockpit is not a trivially designed instrument - it provides valuable context to the operator that simply hasn't been replicated in the USPTO dashboard. The rate at which a needle moves gives valuable feedback as to the rate of change of value - the needles on the USPTO page doesn't even move. Similarly, a dial can be a valuable glimpse at the current quantity in relation to the whole (e.g., a tachometer, or a fuel gauge), but few of the dials on the USPTO dashboard have this relevance. In other words, the entire point of the original post lampooning this dashboard is that they chose ways to represent the information that's pretty, but entirely inappropriate for the data they're trying to communicate, which not only makes it useless, but misleading as well. You drawing this comparison to the airplane cockpit (a comparatively well-designed, well-thought out interface that does use appropriate representations for information) really completely misses the point.
FrancescoRizzi 15y ago
Anyone submitted "A Method for making eyes bleed" for patenting yet?

25 points by zb 15y ago

bbq 15y ago

Direct link to the USPTO dashboard: http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml Tufte doesn't appear to be exaggerating.

ntkachov 15y ago

Just wondering, Is it possible for a patent troll to sue the USPTO because of their website?

driverdan 15y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if displaying data as a gauge on a website is patented.

hkmurakami 15y ago

I just blurted out "What the f*ck. Oh my God" in front of my computer. I only started learning about data visualization a few months ago, but even to my nearly-untrained pair of eyes, the flaws of this monstrosity are readily apparent. To quote Tufte from his link, "Can someone, perhaps an Inspector General, find out the cost and the contracting company that did this?"

blahedo 15y ago

And as bad as it is, that post is more than a year old, apparently without any effects on the dashboard. Alas.

zlotty 15y ago

Tufte is completely overhyped. The quality of his work is meh and his website is a joke. If this is the high priest of design, god help us all.

potatolicious 15y ago
> "If this is the high priest of design, god help us all." You're confusing Tufte with a graphics designer. He's known for data visualization. There's a huge difference between those two professions. Tufte is one of the old guard of information presentation - not pretty, not even good looking, but unambiguous and copiously informative. His displays is what you might find in an airplane cockpit, not a Web 2.0 website. Data visualization and cognitive ergonomics are fields that existed long before CS, and should not be conflated with "design" as software geeks understand it.
- zlotty 15y ago
  Actually, no. Graphic design/UI design is not what I was talking about. Tufte makes a lot of noise about communicating complex information visually. But frankly and ironically, he does an abysmal job of this himself. Have you ever looked at his books? They're a hodge podge of unrelated, poorly visually articulated thoughts that fail to create a larger narrative. I think the biggest problem is that he's considered the go-to guy on this, when in reality his own work is substandard at best.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- zlotty 15y ago
  Also, amusingly, you referenced Tufte as designing an airplane cockpit -- looks pretty similar to the dashboard being lampooned in this blog post.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    Only in the most superficial of ways. If your definition of "looks pretty similar" is "using widgets shaped in similar ways", then, well, I guess I'd have to hand it to you. The USPTO has built its dashboard around familiar looking instruments - ones that work in many other contexts (airplanes, cars, etc), but is completely inappropriate in their usage. A dial in a cockpit is not a trivially designed instrument - it provides valuable context to the operator that simply hasn't been replicated in the USPTO dashboard. The rate at which a needle moves gives valuable feedback as to the rate of change of value - the needles on the USPTO page doesn't even move. Similarly, a dial can be a valuable glimpse at the current quantity in relation to the whole (e.g., a tachometer, or a fuel gauge), but few of the dials on the USPTO dashboard have this relevance. In other words, the entire point of the original post lampooning this dashboard is that they chose ways to represent the information that's pretty, but entirely inappropriate for the data they're trying to communicate, which not only makes it useless, but misleading as well. You drawing this comparison to the airplane cockpit (a comparatively well-designed, well-thought out interface that does use appropriate representations for information) really completely misses the point.

FrancescoRizzi 15y ago

Anyone submitted "A Method for making eyes bleed" for patenting yet?