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Why play chess with ornate pieces, over simple wooden ones? Why don't professional chess players use those large sculpted sets? Because chess isnt the pieces.

Why play chess with ornate pieces, over simple wooden ones? Why don't professional chess players use those large sculpted sets? Because chess isnt the pieces. The interface isnt the game. If you're attending to the interface, you're being distracted. When you use computers as tools you don't want interfaces to appear as objects in the world, you want them to dissolve into the tool that they are. The more I am "impressed" by a menu, button layout, interface, etc. the worse it is at being an interface. The question is, rather, why do others want to be distracted by the interface? Why do they choose the oranate chess set? Well, because they're consumers of computers, not users. They barely use them as tools, and so their default relationship to them is one of ornament. An interface is, almost literally, ornamental to most people. Like a chess set on a mantlepiece.

xeromal 4y ago
Great writeup. This is true for many if not all things humans consume. People who make food to meet their needs vs ornate recipes and styles. People who have a Toyota corolla from 1993 that gets them to work and back vs a Maserati. Knife owners Gun owners Home owners ...
Tronno 4y ago
> why do others want to be distracted by the interface? UI design need not be distracting. There is a wide spectrum ranging from "fancy" flourishes of art to brutalist simplicity. Somewhere in the middle, careful use of font, color, and layout can drastically improve readability and usability. Compare, say, the default appearance of an unstyled HTML page, to that same page in your browser's reader mode. Both are very plain, but the latter is much more pleasant to absorb. I believe this is what OP is referring to. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, design can be distracting as you say, but lack of it can be equally prickly and unpleasant. Neither is good. Consider that few people play chess with rocks and sticks standing in for pieces.
6keZbCECT2uB 4y ago
My motivation is to interact with the content of the website. Form is good only while it improves function. For example, simple css improves my ability to read a website over the default rendering of .txt (often seen in websites about K). However, the new reddit design isn't worth it for me because the improved form decreases the function. With lazy loading, controls that are more difficult to interact with, higher footprint, higher idle cost, etc., it's a less pleasant reading experience. Beyond the experience of a loaded site, its ability to emphasize the text and to not interfere with the current visual field / search (badly implemented lazy loading for example), size alone impacts experience on bad internet connections. I use HN as a test website to see if the internet works over something like msn because it is so lightweight. I measured around 8KB transferred after caching on the home page. (>3000KB from MSN with an idle transfer of 7KB every couple of seconds.)

xeromal 4y ago

Great writeup. This is true for many if not all things humans consume. People who make food to meet their needs vs ornate recipes and styles. People who have a Toyota corolla from 1993 that gets them to work and back vs a Maserati. Knife owners Gun owners Home owners ...

Tronno 4y ago

> why do others want to be distracted by the interface? UI design need not be distracting. There is a wide spectrum ranging from "fancy" flourishes of art to brutalist simplicity. Somewhere in the middle, careful use of font, color, and layout can drastically improve readability and usability. Compare, say, the default appearance of an unstyled HTML page, to that same page in your browser's reader mode. Both are very plain, but the latter is much more pleasant to absorb. I believe this is what OP is referring to. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, design can be distracting as you say, but lack of it can be equally prickly and unpleasant. Neither is good. Consider that few people play chess with rocks and sticks standing in for pieces.

6keZbCECT2uB 4y ago

My motivation is to interact with the content of the website. Form is good only while it improves function. For example, simple css improves my ability to read a website over the default rendering of .txt (often seen in websites about K). However, the new reddit design isn't worth it for me because the improved form decreases the function. With lazy loading, controls that are more difficult to interact with, higher footprint, higher idle cost, etc., it's a less pleasant reading experience. Beyond the experience of a loaded site, its ability to emphasize the text and to not interfere with the current visual field / search (badly implemented lazy loading for example), size alone impacts experience on bad internet connections. I use HN as a test website to see if the internet works over something like msn because it is so lightweight. I measured around 8KB transferred after caching on the home page. (>3000KB from MSN with an idle transfer of 7KB every couple of seconds.)