I just wrote about this in my blog. I'm lazy so I'll copypaste it here. _______________ Linguists already understood a long, long time ago that redundancy is

I just wrote about this in my blog. I'm lazy so I'll copypaste it here. _______________ Linguists already understood a long, long time ago that redundancy is not a bug, it's a feature; it's what allows you to decode a message even if you don't get it fully. I feel like interface designers should’ve understood the same already. Sleep-deprived, with poor sight, not tech-savvy enough to get it right, using a non-native language because the native one is not supported, interacting with the program while taking care of a kid, there are a thousand (no, a million) ways that users can miss small tidbits of info conveyed by the design, so that redundancy is essential. Yet they didn’t. On the opposite, the current design trends boil down to redundant → removable → should be removed. Also known as “minimalism”. You end with icons that look the same, not quite sure if something is clickable or not, those ugly switches that assume (why is there always some assumer behind poor decisions?) that you're aware of the "right = on, left = off" (or that on/off makes sense in that context), so goes on. And it’s kind of funny. If you actually point this out, plenty designers (or other laymen, like me, except that they agree with the design decisions being pointed out) will be quick to spit the same fallacy: “it’s new so it’s better, as an assumer I assume that you live in the past”… yeah, nah. This may or may not be related to the fact that I still use MATE, instead of GNOME 3 or similar. ________________ [Non-copypasted] Someone mentioned HN’s interface. It's the exception that proves the rule because, when you actually analyse it, it has all tidbits of redundancy here and there; such as the "next", "upvote", "collapse" and "reply" buttons appearing for all comments. A minimalist designer would've removed them all, and made the content of the comments clickable.