11 ms·

Laws of UX

134 points by mgdo 3y ago

nelsonenzo 3y ago
These seem like theories, not laws. And imho, some of it is very wrong, such as: > Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.
- lexicality 3y ago
  That one is actually genuinely true and why so many price comparison and search websites artificially load slowly with fancy loading screens.
  - germinalphrase 3y ago
    TurboTax also allegedly adds delays to increase the perception that the work the product does is very technical and difficult (which, of course, is not true).
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    I think that's more of pseudo-science. I've never heard anybody express any distrust for a service just because it's fast. Let's say you go to a store and ask if they have a certain product. The clerk says "Sure, here it is". Is that worse than saying "Hmmm, I have to check in the warehouse first"?
    - lexicality 3y ago
      Wrong analogy, imagine you ask where the butter is and they answer "aisle 14" and turn away before you even finish speaking. The butter might be there, but it will feel at least a little like they were saying anything to get rid of you. Humans want things to operate at human speeds and computers are way faster than that.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > The butter might be there, but it will feel at least a little like they were saying anything to get rid of you. But that's because you're interacting with a human and that sort of behavior from another human typically indicates a kind of hostility. Interacting with software is nothing like interacting with a human, and doesn't trigger those human social cues.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        If the software is fast, you ask for the butter and he puts it right in front of you. I say fast interactions and response is always better than slowness or fake loading screens.
    - kepler 3y ago
      A more suitable comparison might be this: envision yourself at a Michelin-starred restaurant, placing an order, only to have your meal instantly served. This leads to a crucial question: would you prefer to represent the immediacy of a fast-food establishment or the meticulousness of a Michelin-starred restaurant? Ultimately, HCI aims to create solutions that mirror the conceptual models of the real world.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        Funny example! I used to work in a place like that, and we could make many plates extremely fast, and sometimes getting a head start from overhearing the clients order while they were still talking to the waiter. And yes, sometimes we would wait a little bit to get the food out, just because it would be weird for the client to get his food instantly. But apart from that, clients usually appreciated getting their food about twice as fast as they would normally expect. As long as the quality is there, nothing is wrong with speed. And a restaurant is kind of a poor comparison, since cooking is always time dependent, while other goods can be ready for purchase at once.
        kepler 3y ago
        My point is, context shapes the approach in computer interaction. Certain actions like ordering Uber involve wait and load times, while others don't. Theee is no one-size-fits-all solution. The system should harmonize with the user, bridging the gap between existing conceptual models.
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        If we go back to the original example. Some hotel booking aggregators still show the fake "Looking for best deals..." popup or screen. The largest aggregator Booking.com doesn't show any such thing, but instead loads the results as fast as it can. As for disorienting, there are ways to avoid that without slowing the user down - I think in almost every situation or use case.
    - somat 3y ago
      On the other hand I can imagine there being some sort of study that claims that having to "check the warehouse" makes the client now invested in the process and more likely to complete the sale. I get it, sales and marketing are an essential part of doing business, you will not have a business if you can't sell anything. But it is an inherently evil practice, the whole goal is to coerce somebody into doing something they would not have other wise done. When kept to a moderate amount this is not a problem, the business sells things the customer gets things, everybody is happy. But sometime the marketing department can push thing to a very unhealthy level, psychological manipulation, dark patterns, obsessive tracking, etc.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It may be effective (although I'm skeptical), but is the sort of manipulative bullshit that sends me running. Sites and applications that do this are very shady sites and applications.
    - b112 3y ago
      I get fed up waiting, even for a few seconds, and go to another site. I wonder, are they tracking that? Doubtful.
      - lexicality 3y ago
        You had better believe that companies with margins that thin are tracking absolutely everything, often regardless of what your answer to the GDPR popup is
      - rapfaria 3y ago
        Oh but they are. We three don't like it, but they have the data to back it up.
        TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
        It doesn’t matter, Big Co. owns the other sites anyways.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    Reminds me when i was a kid back in the DOS days and made my own GUI system in Turbo Pascal on a 386DX machine i had. It had its own GUI library and simple applications and i had made it look kinda like Windows 95 (because i only had Win3.1 and i wanted 95 - though my take was based on screenshots i saw in magazines so it wasn't very faithful, just what i imagined to be). The problem was, it was too fast. The shell was up and running pretty much once i pressed the enter key after typing the command in DOS. Real Windows didn't do that, so mine felt bad and fake (to me). So i added some code in initialization to create and delete 1000 random files with some random delays between them (to cause the HDD to make "doing stuff" noises and its LED light to blink) and show a progress bar for it. After that it felt properly professional :-D.
  - ourmandave 3y ago
    Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com) pretends to take forever gathering the car price info so they can just run ads. Strangely there's a "click here if fails to load in 10 seconds" link that lets you bypass it all immediately.
  - AtNightWeCode 3y ago
    BS. Google have shown that any time loss in any stage of any payment process directly affect conversion rates.
    - lexicality 3y ago
      Payment process is different. This is all about implying serious work and complexity is taking place for some interaction there the user thinks there should be some. PayPal used to have an entirely artificial five second wait between the user hitting "log in" and the browser sending the request because it raised perceived security in user testing. Many banking apps will display "establishing secure connection" for a while for the same reason. (Possibly paypal still have an artificial delay, but it's hard to tell given how badly the site works these days)
- pickingdinner 3y ago
  Ya, sounds dark, as in dark pattern.
  - rolae 3y ago
    Not necessarily. Something being too fast can be confusing. If you expect a process to take some time and it ends immediately, it can feel like it failed. I remember the people from Blogger (google) talking about this problems. People were not very familiar with blog / website builders and users were confused when their blogs got created instantly, like "This is a big deal, me getting an entire website, what happened, what went wrong? It must have aborted the process…"
    - pickingdinner 3y ago
      > can be confusing Confuse who? An instant "success" notice beats waiting every single time, regardless of user level, if we're even classifying that.
      - b112 3y ago
        The middlings are the problem. Users tech savvy enough to think "wow, that was so fast!", but not tech savvy enough to look and see if there was a 404 or whatever, in the web console. Which, sadly, is the tech level of most UX people. Unskilled users are just happy it was fast. Why would it take time, it's a computer! It's a little like psychiatrists. A surprising number have loads of issues, and go into the business to help themselves. But this skews perception. UX people make all sorts of unfounded rules up, many created decades ago, when almost everyone was a "new user".
  - markhnthoraway 3y ago
    Depends on context. There's nothing wrong with slowing down to communicate discrete steps that may happen very quickly under the hood. - Input was received - Input was processed/stored correctly - Outcome is X Doing everything in real time can reduce confidence and understanding. If everything takes like 5ms it feels weird, sometimes feels even like nothing happened, so people might submit again or feel the need to call and check or whatever. It's deceptive in the sense that you are waiting maybe 500ms instead of 5ms. But it can be better UX in terms of communicating what's actually going on and having people feel comfortable with their understanding. On the other hand, artificially slowing down something like closing an advertising modal - antipattern for sure.
- vogon_laureate 3y ago
  Maybe a bit of a misnomer as the description states it's more of a "collection of best practices" that designers "can consider".
- raincole 3y ago
  Not only very correct, but far more common than you think.
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  I added a 2 second delay to a near instant process and made it feel significantly better and like “something happened”. When it was instant it felt … wrong.
  - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
    If I were you're user, I'd appreciate a setting to remove all such delays. That is, assuming I've little chance of convincing you to remove them permanently. (-:
- thealchemistdev 3y ago
  I experienced this first hand with the manual sync button on one of my apps. I got feedback stating it didn't work when, in reality, there was no work to be done and the interface didn't have time to display 'syncing' before it finished. The solution was to add a 50-300ms delay before the network request. Why? Because feelings and perception matter more than facts.
  - _thisdot 3y ago
    Perceived loading time was a matter of debate during the NextJS vs RemixJS thing. RemixJS argued for fast loading time, while NextJS argued for perceived loading time. Remix would show a white screen and two seconds later have everything ready. Next would show the header and a loader first then gradually over the course of 3-5 seconds have everything ready.
  - samsolomon 3y ago
    I see a lot of comments here about added animations because the request is too fast. In this case I would guess the issue is not with speed but feedback. The user did something, nothing changed, so they thought it was broken. Instead of the delay you could add a toast or some text with near the button indicating that the action actually happened.
    - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
      Moderate preference for the added text, rather than an an ephemeral 'toast' message.
- mattkevan 3y ago
  We found adding a slight delay in between the user clicking the payment button and showing the success message in the checkout improved trust. It felt like the system was doing something important, whereas if happened instantly people worried that something had gone wrong because it was ‘too quick’. The user is part of the system too, and sometimes giving them a bit of time to process what’s happening can be beneficial.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    It is akin to people adding weights to items to make them seem higher quality. Not in hiking gear certainly, but disassembly of held kitchen appliances or tools often turns up steel chunks used for that purpose.
    - ourmandave 3y ago
      Couldn't they just use lead solder on the IoT circuit board?
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  I recall that at some point Paypal added an artifical delay for logging in with a spinner that said "securely signing you in" and it increased trust in their product, which increased usage. Just because you find something surprising, it doesn't mean it's "very wrong".
- AtNightWeCode 3y ago
  Yes, it is incorrect. Some UX designs even try to make you feel like something happens instantly when it is not. Best example I can think of is that Spotify used to have this animation on the play button that was just there to hide the delay between click and play.
pickingdinner 3y ago
The perfect UX is one obvious button that obviously does exactly what you need, that presents itself exactly when you need it. And all you need is to be able to read it.
- BariumBlue 3y ago
  The perfect UX is the interface is that displays and works exactly how the user wants and expects. The perfect UI is the interface that has the quickest, most optimal workflow to accomplish a user's tasks
  - pickingdinner 3y ago
    > quickest, And this can be scientifically measured by mouse distance and clicks. > most optimal workflow to accomplish a user's tasks And this can be scientifically assessed by taking all use cases and refactoring over them. List all the available goals at any given "location" in the program. List all the steps users take to get accomplish their goals. Consolidate and refactor, then optimize on the shortness, obviousness, and fault tolerance of every flow. This is more fundamental to the user experience than colors or animations or the availability of any single feature.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > And this can be scientifically measured by mouse distance and clicks. [...] > And this can be scientifically assessed by taking all use cases and refactoring over them. And I can't count the number of times I've seen applications do this, resulting in a terrible UI that is hard (and therefore slow) to use.
      - pickingdinner 3y ago
        This contradicts the premise. > hard (and therefore slow) to use. You assess the use case, as in each case the user goes from want to finish. If it's slow and hard, you fix that. 1 click is the fastest. An obvious button that does exactly what you want is the easiest. There is nothing slow or hard about an interface optimized based on a complete understanding of what the user wants to the point that they can distill it in one button.
cptcobalt 3y ago
The first time I saw this site, I thought some of it was heavy handed, but reading it again today—yeah, it's good. I'm buying the deck form of this to have sitting on my desk. Of note: "Laws" can be broken when you have a very good reason to do so. These are definitely good rule of thumbs.
JohnMakin 3y ago
I would like to see more support in UI/UX for people who are not neurotypical. Or, customizable interfaces to support people with disabilities. When you build for the common denominator, these people get left out.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  When you build for the common denominator, a huge number of people are left out, including those with disabilities. > customizable interfaces to support people with disabilities. Customizable interfaces are the only real solution -- not just for people with disabilities, but for everybody. There are a number of websites and applications that I stopped using because of UX choices I am allergic to. If they were configurable, it might have been possible for me to mitigate the worst parts. Further, UX/UI decisions have been getting worse over time, making configurability even more important as time goes on.
  - uxcolumbo 3y ago
    Exactly. It's unfortunate that accessibility is usually treated as an add-on in a lot of 'UX' project. Focus is heavily on visual design. Accessibility needs to be considered from the start when designing new apps. Making things accessible means making it easier for all users. Which apps / sites have you stopped using because of poor UX choices. And what are those things that made you stop using those sites?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > Which apps have you stopped using because the UX choices. The biggest example for me is Firefox. FF's UX has always been horrible, but until the revamp, it was always possible to configure it to be OK without a great deal of effort. After the revamp, the UX is still horrible (although in different ways), but the ability to configure the bad parts away has been seriously reduced. > And what are those things that made you stop using those sites? Overreliance on Javascript, hidden functionality, and (related) the lack of discoverability top my list of peeves. Also, with websites, being too aggressive with enforcing a particular layout, color scheme, fonts, etc.
graypegg 3y ago
Under Aesthetic-Usability Effect > 2: People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing. I think this is true for someone’s first interaction with a thing. But if you rely on something, minor usability issues skyrocket in importance, and aesthetic importance drops really fast.
- user3939382 3y ago
  > if you rely on something ... aesthetic importance drops really fast IMHO it bothers me more because I'm forced to experience it more. It's like the annoyance accumulates. I may care more about UI than the average user though, or maybe I'm just more able to articulate my thoughts about it because of my profession? Not sure.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    Humans are pattern-matching machines though. I think anyone, UX-designer or not, can notice annoyances that are clearly just not following the obvious pattern. I know people that have quit jobs, because they were forced to use software that “I could never learn”. (Salesforce) It got in the way of them doing their job. However, I’ve seen way more people tolerate an outdated or badly styled UI because “it just works for me, ok?”. No one is quitting a job because their CRM is aesthetically unpleasing.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      As a dev, I've never quit a job because I didn't like the software I had to use. But if I'm evaluating whether or not to take a position somewhere, the use of certain software is certainly a mark in the minus column.
  - godshatter 3y ago
    In some ways I prefer the older interfaces to more modern ones because, even though they were ugly, it was often more obvious what was clickable, what workflow was expected, and if you needed something it would probably be in the horrendous menu tree somewhere. Nowadays it's often impossible to determine what is clickable and what is not, but things look much prettier. I don't really need pretty, it's just a nice-to-have. Of course there are newer interfaces that are easy to understand and older interfaces that are borderline unusable. It's just been my experience that an older interface will be easier to use, though probably more annoying to go through. YMMV.
elliottkember 3y ago
I love HN and UX articles. Every time this comes up, the thread is full of smart people disagreeing with these principles. The reason these need to be written down in the first place is that they can be counter-intuitive.
askura 3y ago
This site does what it preaches but these seem a little off. Some of these I'd argue against but I'd also argue I'm not qualified to. Anyone care to chime in with their caveats to some of these?
user3939382 3y ago
My ideal for UX or UI is that a new user, understanding the domain and what the application is supposed to do at the most abstract level, should be able to immediately use it without any training or explanation.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I agree, but the problem is that the UI that is great for new users tends to be horrible for experienced users.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    One way to handle that is through multiple user modes. A simple case is how MS office shifted UI many times, but the keyboard shortcuts remained the same and accumulated to some extent. The key sequences are still there to navigate menus that disappeared before ribbons, or even before MS bought out the originating product. Key combos are a common thing experienced users learn almost unintentionally to speed up a workflow, but it doesn't harm the discoverability for new users or of new features.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Yes, although key combos is no magic bullet. Personally, I prefer having an "advanced" UI option that you can select when the introductory UI becomes irritating or restrictive.
- stevenwoo 3y ago
  That's one of the messages of The Design of Everyday Things. It's too bad Apple hired the author and ignored him.
- antigonemerlin 3y ago
  Discoverability is an underrated feature in software. I like how in Microsoft Word (off the top of my head), all shortcuts are displayed when you go to the file menu. Redundancy is also an underrated design feature. In Word, if you want to copy/paste, there are at least 3 ways (I'm sure I'm missing some obscure way). - menu->edit->copy - right click->context menu->copy - ctrl-c And it's a great way of transitioning users from new mode to expert mode. A hotkey is just about useless if you don't know it exists, whereas the menu is slow. So, beginner users start using the menu, then transition as they memorize the particular hotkeys for this software as they become expert users. Somebody put thought into this design. Also taking this opportunity to shamelessly plug the nested tooltips in Crusader Kings III. As far as learning context in-situ without breaking flow, it is amazing, though sadly not generalizable to all applications. Seriously, whoever designed that needs another raise; I have yet to see a minor UI component receive any mention at all, let alone praise, save this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/102gtm8/nested_tooltips_on_wikipedia_in_action/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/102gtm8/nest...
revskill 3y ago
Wait, why not the site use tailwindcss ?
pazimzadeh 3y ago
I don't really get the point of Tesler’s Law: "any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced" Is it basically saying don't try to hide a bunch of options behind a hamburger menu?
- skipnup 3y ago
  From the site itself: > 1. All processes have a core of complexity that cannot be designed away and therefore must be assumed by either the system or the user. > 2. Ensure as much as possible of the burden is lifted from users by dealing with inherent complexity during design and development. > 3. Take care not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.
- pembrook 3y ago
  It's become common practice in B2C software to distill the UI down to an insane degree (eg. basically an infinite scroll feed). Since the job to be done of most B2C software is basically: placate my existential angst with various forms of content, this works. Consuming content is not a complex task. However, it's become en vogue to apply this same design logic to B2B software, where this approach is bound to screw things up. In B2B software, the tasks are often much more complex (eg. help my large organization collaborate on bespoke long term projects and juggle hundreds of stakeholders, while offering cascading permission management), so any software suitable for this task is going to be a nightmare to use no matter how good the design is (because its a nightmarish task). The same goes for front-end website builders. Wix has a simple UI because it only lets you do simple things. Webflow's UI is super complex, because it offers all the powers inherent in coding HTML/CSS by hand. So you essentially have to learn HTML/CSS to use it. The UI of any tool must match the complexity of the job to be done. This doesn't mean UIs can't make things easier/faster. It just means UIs can't remove steps unless you remove requirements. Often when a tool is lauded for "good design," its because it encourages removing steps that were unnecessary all along, but people were still doing out of tradition. The tool then gives people an excuse to stop doing the stupid tradition, because "X doesn't allow that."
montroser 3y ago
For a site espousing UX platitudes, I don't feel it's too nit picky to call out their completely terrible back-button behavior. You click on one of these items, read down the item detail page, then click back to go to back to the index page, and this happens: - it scrolls you back to the top of the item detail page - it fades out the detail page - it fades in the index page It's janky, and wastes my brain cycles trying to parse the fleeting intermediate states. Also, the fade animations are too slow -- literally making me wait through the jank to get back to the content I'm looking for...
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  The "montroser principal": "Enough with the animations already".
  - chrstphrknwtn 3y ago
    No, it's important that every single element vertically slide and fade in as I scroll the page. How am I supposed to know this is "design".
    - jonny_eh 3y ago
      That's the "chrstphrknwtn principal", use whichever principal best applies.
      - drekipus 3y ago
        This is the "jonny_eh meta-principle" at work! Finally see it with my own eyes!
        jonny_eh 3y ago
        I, personally, see it everywhere!
  - markeibes 3y ago
    The orthography principle.
dang 3y ago
Related: Laws of UX - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24030969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24030969 - Aug 2020 (293 comments) Laws of UX - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118 - Jan 2018 (207 comments)
Jemm 3y ago
Noticing that most websites are designed for mobile now and barely work on desktop especially if zoomed in or using accessibility features. Sticky headers take up half the page. Margins are too wide for the browser Images are way too big compared to text size Images don't fit on the page no matter what zoom level you use.
jasmer 3y ago
[dead]
anste 3y ago
Every time I see this site it still amuses me that despite all the valuable UX information, it is very annoying to use on a desktop because it feels like it was designed entirely for tablets or phones.

134 points by mgdo 3y ago

These seem like theories, not laws. And imho, some of it is very wrong, such as: > Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.

lexicality 3y ago
That one is actually genuinely true and why so many price comparison and search websites artificially load slowly with fancy loading screens.
- germinalphrase 3y ago
  TurboTax also allegedly adds delays to increase the perception that the work the product does is very technical and difficult (which, of course, is not true).
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  I think that's more of pseudo-science. I've never heard anybody express any distrust for a service just because it's fast. Let's say you go to a store and ask if they have a certain product. The clerk says "Sure, here it is". Is that worse than saying "Hmmm, I have to check in the warehouse first"?
  - lexicality 3y ago
    Wrong analogy, imagine you ask where the butter is and they answer "aisle 14" and turn away before you even finish speaking. The butter might be there, but it will feel at least a little like they were saying anything to get rid of you. Humans want things to operate at human speeds and computers are way faster than that.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > The butter might be there, but it will feel at least a little like they were saying anything to get rid of you. But that's because you're interacting with a human and that sort of behavior from another human typically indicates a kind of hostility. Interacting with software is nothing like interacting with a human, and doesn't trigger those human social cues.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      If the software is fast, you ask for the butter and he puts it right in front of you. I say fast interactions and response is always better than slowness or fake loading screens.
  - kepler 3y ago
    A more suitable comparison might be this: envision yourself at a Michelin-starred restaurant, placing an order, only to have your meal instantly served. This leads to a crucial question: would you prefer to represent the immediacy of a fast-food establishment or the meticulousness of a Michelin-starred restaurant? Ultimately, HCI aims to create solutions that mirror the conceptual models of the real world.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      Funny example! I used to work in a place like that, and we could make many plates extremely fast, and sometimes getting a head start from overhearing the clients order while they were still talking to the waiter. And yes, sometimes we would wait a little bit to get the food out, just because it would be weird for the client to get his food instantly. But apart from that, clients usually appreciated getting their food about twice as fast as they would normally expect. As long as the quality is there, nothing is wrong with speed. And a restaurant is kind of a poor comparison, since cooking is always time dependent, while other goods can be ready for purchase at once.
      - kepler 3y ago
        My point is, context shapes the approach in computer interaction. Certain actions like ordering Uber involve wait and load times, while others don't. Theee is no one-size-fits-all solution. The system should harmonize with the user, bridging the gap between existing conceptual models.
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        If we go back to the original example. Some hotel booking aggregators still show the fake "Looking for best deals..." popup or screen. The largest aggregator Booking.com doesn't show any such thing, but instead loads the results as fast as it can. As for disorienting, there are ways to avoid that without slowing the user down - I think in almost every situation or use case.
  - somat 3y ago
    On the other hand I can imagine there being some sort of study that claims that having to "check the warehouse" makes the client now invested in the process and more likely to complete the sale. I get it, sales and marketing are an essential part of doing business, you will not have a business if you can't sell anything. But it is an inherently evil practice, the whole goal is to coerce somebody into doing something they would not have other wise done. When kept to a moderate amount this is not a problem, the business sells things the customer gets things, everybody is happy. But sometime the marketing department can push thing to a very unhealthy level, psychological manipulation, dark patterns, obsessive tracking, etc.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It may be effective (although I'm skeptical), but is the sort of manipulative bullshit that sends me running. Sites and applications that do this are very shady sites and applications.
  - b112 3y ago
    I get fed up waiting, even for a few seconds, and go to another site. I wonder, are they tracking that? Doubtful.
    - lexicality 3y ago
      You had better believe that companies with margins that thin are tracking absolutely everything, often regardless of what your answer to the GDPR popup is
    - rapfaria 3y ago
      Oh but they are. We three don't like it, but they have the data to back it up.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
        It doesn’t matter, Big Co. owns the other sites anyways.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  Reminds me when i was a kid back in the DOS days and made my own GUI system in Turbo Pascal on a 386DX machine i had. It had its own GUI library and simple applications and i had made it look kinda like Windows 95 (because i only had Win3.1 and i wanted 95 - though my take was based on screenshots i saw in magazines so it wasn't very faithful, just what i imagined to be). The problem was, it was too fast. The shell was up and running pretty much once i pressed the enter key after typing the command in DOS. Real Windows didn't do that, so mine felt bad and fake (to me). So i added some code in initialization to create and delete 1000 random files with some random delays between them (to cause the HDD to make "doing stuff" noises and its LED light to blink) and show a progress bar for it. After that it felt properly professional :-D.
- ourmandave 3y ago
  Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com) pretends to take forever gathering the car price info so they can just run ads. Strangely there's a "click here if fails to load in 10 seconds" link that lets you bypass it all immediately.
- AtNightWeCode 3y ago
  BS. Google have shown that any time loss in any stage of any payment process directly affect conversion rates.
  - lexicality 3y ago
    Payment process is different. This is all about implying serious work and complexity is taking place for some interaction there the user thinks there should be some. PayPal used to have an entirely artificial five second wait between the user hitting "log in" and the browser sending the request because it raised perceived security in user testing. Many banking apps will display "establishing secure connection" for a while for the same reason. (Possibly paypal still have an artificial delay, but it's hard to tell given how badly the site works these days)
pickingdinner 3y ago
Ya, sounds dark, as in dark pattern.
- rolae 3y ago
  Not necessarily. Something being too fast can be confusing. If you expect a process to take some time and it ends immediately, it can feel like it failed. I remember the people from Blogger (google) talking about this problems. People were not very familiar with blog / website builders and users were confused when their blogs got created instantly, like "This is a big deal, me getting an entire website, what happened, what went wrong? It must have aborted the process…"
  - pickingdinner 3y ago
    > can be confusing Confuse who? An instant "success" notice beats waiting every single time, regardless of user level, if we're even classifying that.
    - b112 3y ago
      The middlings are the problem. Users tech savvy enough to think "wow, that was so fast!", but not tech savvy enough to look and see if there was a 404 or whatever, in the web console. Which, sadly, is the tech level of most UX people. Unskilled users are just happy it was fast. Why would it take time, it's a computer! It's a little like psychiatrists. A surprising number have loads of issues, and go into the business to help themselves. But this skews perception. UX people make all sorts of unfounded rules up, many created decades ago, when almost everyone was a "new user".
- markhnthoraway 3y ago
  Depends on context. There's nothing wrong with slowing down to communicate discrete steps that may happen very quickly under the hood. - Input was received - Input was processed/stored correctly - Outcome is X Doing everything in real time can reduce confidence and understanding. If everything takes like 5ms it feels weird, sometimes feels even like nothing happened, so people might submit again or feel the need to call and check or whatever. It's deceptive in the sense that you are waiting maybe 500ms instead of 5ms. But it can be better UX in terms of communicating what's actually going on and having people feel comfortable with their understanding. On the other hand, artificially slowing down something like closing an advertising modal - antipattern for sure.
vogon_laureate 3y ago
Maybe a bit of a misnomer as the description states it's more of a "collection of best practices" that designers "can consider".
raincole 3y ago
Not only very correct, but far more common than you think.
simonbarker87 3y ago
I added a 2 second delay to a near instant process and made it feel significantly better and like “something happened”. When it was instant it felt … wrong.
- IIsi50MHz 3y ago
  If I were you're user, I'd appreciate a setting to remove all such delays. That is, assuming I've little chance of convincing you to remove them permanently. (-:
thealchemistdev 3y ago
I experienced this first hand with the manual sync button on one of my apps. I got feedback stating it didn't work when, in reality, there was no work to be done and the interface didn't have time to display 'syncing' before it finished. The solution was to add a 50-300ms delay before the network request. Why? Because feelings and perception matter more than facts.
- _thisdot 3y ago
  Perceived loading time was a matter of debate during the NextJS vs RemixJS thing. RemixJS argued for fast loading time, while NextJS argued for perceived loading time. Remix would show a white screen and two seconds later have everything ready. Next would show the header and a loader first then gradually over the course of 3-5 seconds have everything ready.
- samsolomon 3y ago
  I see a lot of comments here about added animations because the request is too fast. In this case I would guess the issue is not with speed but feedback. The user did something, nothing changed, so they thought it was broken. Instead of the delay you could add a toast or some text with near the button indicating that the action actually happened.
  - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
    Moderate preference for the added text, rather than an an ephemeral 'toast' message.
mattkevan 3y ago
We found adding a slight delay in between the user clicking the payment button and showing the success message in the checkout improved trust. It felt like the system was doing something important, whereas if happened instantly people worried that something had gone wrong because it was ‘too quick’. The user is part of the system too, and sometimes giving them a bit of time to process what’s happening can be beneficial.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  It is akin to people adding weights to items to make them seem higher quality. Not in hiking gear certainly, but disassembly of held kitchen appliances or tools often turns up steel chunks used for that purpose.
  - ourmandave 3y ago
    Couldn't they just use lead solder on the IoT circuit board?
jonny_eh 3y ago
I recall that at some point Paypal added an artifical delay for logging in with a spinner that said "securely signing you in" and it increased trust in their product, which increased usage. Just because you find something surprising, it doesn't mean it's "very wrong".
AtNightWeCode 3y ago
Yes, it is incorrect. Some UX designs even try to make you feel like something happens instantly when it is not. Best example I can think of is that Spotify used to have this animation on the play button that was just there to hide the delay between click and play.

pickingdinner 3y ago

The perfect UX is one obvious button that obviously does exactly what you need, that presents itself exactly when you need it. And all you need is to be able to read it.

BariumBlue 3y ago
The perfect UX is the interface is that displays and works exactly how the user wants and expects. The perfect UI is the interface that has the quickest, most optimal workflow to accomplish a user's tasks
- pickingdinner 3y ago
  > quickest, And this can be scientifically measured by mouse distance and clicks. > most optimal workflow to accomplish a user's tasks And this can be scientifically assessed by taking all use cases and refactoring over them. List all the available goals at any given "location" in the program. List all the steps users take to get accomplish their goals. Consolidate and refactor, then optimize on the shortness, obviousness, and fault tolerance of every flow. This is more fundamental to the user experience than colors or animations or the availability of any single feature.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > And this can be scientifically measured by mouse distance and clicks. [...] > And this can be scientifically assessed by taking all use cases and refactoring over them. And I can't count the number of times I've seen applications do this, resulting in a terrible UI that is hard (and therefore slow) to use.
    - pickingdinner 3y ago
      This contradicts the premise. > hard (and therefore slow) to use. You assess the use case, as in each case the user goes from want to finish. If it's slow and hard, you fix that. 1 click is the fastest. An obvious button that does exactly what you want is the easiest. There is nothing slow or hard about an interface optimized based on a complete understanding of what the user wants to the point that they can distill it in one button.

cptcobalt 3y ago

The first time I saw this site, I thought some of it was heavy handed, but reading it again today—yeah, it's good. I'm buying the deck form of this to have sitting on my desk. Of note: "Laws" can be broken when you have a very good reason to do so. These are definitely good rule of thumbs.

JohnMakin 3y ago

I would like to see more support in UI/UX for people who are not neurotypical. Or, customizable interfaces to support people with disabilities. When you build for the common denominator, these people get left out.

JohnFen 3y ago
When you build for the common denominator, a huge number of people are left out, including those with disabilities. > customizable interfaces to support people with disabilities. Customizable interfaces are the only real solution -- not just for people with disabilities, but for everybody. There are a number of websites and applications that I stopped using because of UX choices I am allergic to. If they were configurable, it might have been possible for me to mitigate the worst parts. Further, UX/UI decisions have been getting worse over time, making configurability even more important as time goes on.
- uxcolumbo 3y ago
  Exactly. It's unfortunate that accessibility is usually treated as an add-on in a lot of 'UX' project. Focus is heavily on visual design. Accessibility needs to be considered from the start when designing new apps. Making things accessible means making it easier for all users. Which apps / sites have you stopped using because of poor UX choices. And what are those things that made you stop using those sites?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Which apps have you stopped using because the UX choices. The biggest example for me is Firefox. FF's UX has always been horrible, but until the revamp, it was always possible to configure it to be OK without a great deal of effort. After the revamp, the UX is still horrible (although in different ways), but the ability to configure the bad parts away has been seriously reduced. > And what are those things that made you stop using those sites? Overreliance on Javascript, hidden functionality, and (related) the lack of discoverability top my list of peeves. Also, with websites, being too aggressive with enforcing a particular layout, color scheme, fonts, etc.

graypegg 3y ago

Under Aesthetic-Usability Effect > 2: People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing. I think this is true for someone’s first interaction with a thing. But if you rely on something, minor usability issues skyrocket in importance, and aesthetic importance drops really fast.

user3939382 3y ago
> if you rely on something ... aesthetic importance drops really fast IMHO it bothers me more because I'm forced to experience it more. It's like the annoyance accumulates. I may care more about UI than the average user though, or maybe I'm just more able to articulate my thoughts about it because of my profession? Not sure.
- graypegg 3y ago
  Humans are pattern-matching machines though. I think anyone, UX-designer or not, can notice annoyances that are clearly just not following the obvious pattern. I know people that have quit jobs, because they were forced to use software that “I could never learn”. (Salesforce) It got in the way of them doing their job. However, I’ve seen way more people tolerate an outdated or badly styled UI because “it just works for me, ok?”. No one is quitting a job because their CRM is aesthetically unpleasing.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    As a dev, I've never quit a job because I didn't like the software I had to use. But if I'm evaluating whether or not to take a position somewhere, the use of certain software is certainly a mark in the minus column.
- godshatter 3y ago
  In some ways I prefer the older interfaces to more modern ones because, even though they were ugly, it was often more obvious what was clickable, what workflow was expected, and if you needed something it would probably be in the horrendous menu tree somewhere. Nowadays it's often impossible to determine what is clickable and what is not, but things look much prettier. I don't really need pretty, it's just a nice-to-have. Of course there are newer interfaces that are easy to understand and older interfaces that are borderline unusable. It's just been my experience that an older interface will be easier to use, though probably more annoying to go through. YMMV.

elliottkember 3y ago

I love HN and UX articles. Every time this comes up, the thread is full of smart people disagreeing with these principles. The reason these need to be written down in the first place is that they can be counter-intuitive.

askura 3y ago

This site does what it preaches but these seem a little off. Some of these I'd argue against but I'd also argue I'm not qualified to. Anyone care to chime in with their caveats to some of these?

user3939382 3y ago

My ideal for UX or UI is that a new user, understanding the domain and what the application is supposed to do at the most abstract level, should be able to immediately use it without any training or explanation.

JohnFen 3y ago
I agree, but the problem is that the UI that is great for new users tends to be horrible for experienced users.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  One way to handle that is through multiple user modes. A simple case is how MS office shifted UI many times, but the keyboard shortcuts remained the same and accumulated to some extent. The key sequences are still there to navigate menus that disappeared before ribbons, or even before MS bought out the originating product. Key combos are a common thing experienced users learn almost unintentionally to speed up a workflow, but it doesn't harm the discoverability for new users or of new features.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes, although key combos is no magic bullet. Personally, I prefer having an "advanced" UI option that you can select when the introductory UI becomes irritating or restrictive.
stevenwoo 3y ago
That's one of the messages of The Design of Everyday Things. It's too bad Apple hired the author and ignored him.
antigonemerlin 3y ago
Discoverability is an underrated feature in software. I like how in Microsoft Word (off the top of my head), all shortcuts are displayed when you go to the file menu. Redundancy is also an underrated design feature. In Word, if you want to copy/paste, there are at least 3 ways (I'm sure I'm missing some obscure way). - menu->edit->copy - right click->context menu->copy - ctrl-c And it's a great way of transitioning users from new mode to expert mode. A hotkey is just about useless if you don't know it exists, whereas the menu is slow. So, beginner users start using the menu, then transition as they memorize the particular hotkeys for this software as they become expert users. Somebody put thought into this design. Also taking this opportunity to shamelessly plug the nested tooltips in Crusader Kings III. As far as learning context in-situ without breaking flow, it is amazing, though sadly not generalizable to all applications. Seriously, whoever designed that needs another raise; I have yet to see a minor UI component receive any mention at all, let alone praise, save this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/102gtm8/nested_tooltips_on_wikipedia_in_action/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/102gtm8/nest...

revskill 3y ago

Wait, why not the site use tailwindcss ?

pazimzadeh 3y ago

I don't really get the point of Tesler’s Law: "any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced" Is it basically saying don't try to hide a bunch of options behind a hamburger menu?

skipnup 3y ago
From the site itself: > 1. All processes have a core of complexity that cannot be designed away and therefore must be assumed by either the system or the user. > 2. Ensure as much as possible of the burden is lifted from users by dealing with inherent complexity during design and development. > 3. Take care not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.
pembrook 3y ago
It's become common practice in B2C software to distill the UI down to an insane degree (eg. basically an infinite scroll feed). Since the job to be done of most B2C software is basically: placate my existential angst with various forms of content, this works. Consuming content is not a complex task. However, it's become en vogue to apply this same design logic to B2B software, where this approach is bound to screw things up. In B2B software, the tasks are often much more complex (eg. help my large organization collaborate on bespoke long term projects and juggle hundreds of stakeholders, while offering cascading permission management), so any software suitable for this task is going to be a nightmare to use no matter how good the design is (because its a nightmarish task). The same goes for front-end website builders. Wix has a simple UI because it only lets you do simple things. Webflow's UI is super complex, because it offers all the powers inherent in coding HTML/CSS by hand. So you essentially have to learn HTML/CSS to use it. The UI of any tool must match the complexity of the job to be done. This doesn't mean UIs can't make things easier/faster. It just means UIs can't remove steps unless you remove requirements. Often when a tool is lauded for "good design," its because it encourages removing steps that were unnecessary all along, but people were still doing out of tradition. The tool then gives people an excuse to stop doing the stupid tradition, because "X doesn't allow that."

montroser 3y ago

For a site espousing UX platitudes, I don't feel it's too nit picky to call out their completely terrible back-button behavior. You click on one of these items, read down the item detail page, then click back to go to back to the index page, and this happens: - it scrolls you back to the top of the item detail page - it fades out the detail page - it fades in the index page It's janky, and wastes my brain cycles trying to parse the fleeting intermediate states. Also, the fade animations are too slow -- literally making me wait through the jank to get back to the content I'm looking for...

jonny_eh 3y ago
The "montroser principal": "Enough with the animations already".
- chrstphrknwtn 3y ago
  No, it's important that every single element vertically slide and fade in as I scroll the page. How am I supposed to know this is "design".
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    That's the "chrstphrknwtn principal", use whichever principal best applies.
    - drekipus 3y ago
      This is the "jonny_eh meta-principle" at work! Finally see it with my own eyes!
      - jonny_eh 3y ago
        I, personally, see it everywhere!
- markeibes 3y ago
  The orthography principle.

dang 3y ago

Related: Laws of UX - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24030969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24030969 - Aug 2020 (293 comments) Laws of UX - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118 - Jan 2018 (207 comments)

Jemm 3y ago

Noticing that most websites are designed for mobile now and barely work on desktop especially if zoomed in or using accessibility features. Sticky headers take up half the page. Margins are too wide for the browser Images are way too big compared to text size Images don't fit on the page no matter what zoom level you use.

jasmer 3y ago

[dead]

anste 3y ago

Every time I see this site it still amuses me that despite all the valuable UX information, it is very annoying to use on a desktop because it feels like it was designed entirely for tablets or phones.