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UIs should be repetitive, but we keep reinventing them anyway to satisfy the vanity of product owners/designers/managers/clients/... and built entire industries

UIs should be repetitive, but we keep reinventing them anyway to satisfy the vanity of product owners/designers/managers/clients/... and built entire industries around making slightly the UIs slightly more differently than the last time.

gtirloni 3y ago
Usually things naturally get mature and stop changing so much (e.g. some software reaches such maturity level that it starts offering LTS releases). This doesn't seem to be the case with UI toolkits. Is that because we still don't understand things well enough to design a decent foundation?
- creshal 3y ago
  I suspect a large part is that the visual nature of the topic simply lends itself to endless bike shedding and fashion cycles; maturity and stability are going to be anathemata in these contexts. But it also doesn't help that input/output formfactors keep changing. We just about understood what did and didn't work with terminals when desktop GUIs sprung up, by the time those started maturing, we had to figure out how to adapt to PDAs and pen inputs, then came smartphones and tablets, then 3D for a while, then VR, and in parallel to that increasingly exotic "classic" form factors like folding devices with fluid screen sizes, ...
- pc86 3y ago
  In my experience it's because every time you give a page or product spec to a designer they give you something slightly different based on however they happen to be feeling that day. Combine that with whatever product people do, and you get basically random UIs for each task.
- dogleash 3y ago
  > Is that because we still don't understand things well enough to design a decent foundation? Nope. Don't let the conmen fool you that the incremental changes in HCI justify all the new coats of paint. Form and function changes are happening in parallel. Fashion has to change, that's just the nature of fashion. Fashion will also spin yarn to justify itself. That's also just the nature of fashion. Don't get me wrong, I want all my software to be palatable to modern tastes. But entropy always increases with time.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  I would say that in the long term/big picture we have figured out a pretty standard UI for computers. In the 1980s you probably had to read a pretty hefty book for any given model of computer to be useful. Now, we can sit down in front of just about any computer and trust that the Mouse and Keyboard will exist, and act like we expect (i.e. the left button on the mouse is for selecting, there are arrows on the keyboard which can control a cursor, etc), and that the GUI software will be substantially similar regardless of manufacturer (windowed programs, a bar of some sort on the lower edge of the screen for controlling the OS, a bar at the top of the screen for controlling the active window, etc.) The parts of the UI toolkits that change are the least consequential. Round or square corners, buttons, skeumorphism, etc...

gtirloni 3y ago

Usually things naturally get mature and stop changing so much (e.g. some software reaches such maturity level that it starts offering LTS releases). This doesn't seem to be the case with UI toolkits. Is that because we still don't understand things well enough to design a decent foundation?

creshal 3y ago
I suspect a large part is that the visual nature of the topic simply lends itself to endless bike shedding and fashion cycles; maturity and stability are going to be anathemata in these contexts. But it also doesn't help that input/output formfactors keep changing. We just about understood what did and didn't work with terminals when desktop GUIs sprung up, by the time those started maturing, we had to figure out how to adapt to PDAs and pen inputs, then came smartphones and tablets, then 3D for a while, then VR, and in parallel to that increasingly exotic "classic" form factors like folding devices with fluid screen sizes, ...
pc86 3y ago
In my experience it's because every time you give a page or product spec to a designer they give you something slightly different based on however they happen to be feeling that day. Combine that with whatever product people do, and you get basically random UIs for each task.
dogleash 3y ago
> Is that because we still don't understand things well enough to design a decent foundation? Nope. Don't let the conmen fool you that the incremental changes in HCI justify all the new coats of paint. Form and function changes are happening in parallel. Fashion has to change, that's just the nature of fashion. Fashion will also spin yarn to justify itself. That's also just the nature of fashion. Don't get me wrong, I want all my software to be palatable to modern tastes. But entropy always increases with time.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
I would say that in the long term/big picture we have figured out a pretty standard UI for computers. In the 1980s you probably had to read a pretty hefty book for any given model of computer to be useful. Now, we can sit down in front of just about any computer and trust that the Mouse and Keyboard will exist, and act like we expect (i.e. the left button on the mouse is for selecting, there are arrows on the keyboard which can control a cursor, etc), and that the GUI software will be substantially similar regardless of manufacturer (windowed programs, a bar of some sort on the lower edge of the screen for controlling the OS, a bar at the top of the screen for controlling the active window, etc.) The parts of the UI toolkits that change are the least consequential. Round or square corners, buttons, skeumorphism, etc...