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> Most "non-technical" people use computers, especially desktops, in a professional setting. Navigating those UIs is part of their jobs and they will spent hour

> Most "non-technical" people use computers, especially desktops, in a professional setting. Navigating those UIs is part of their jobs and they will spent hours upon hours doing so. Yes, but they still reason about those interfaces totally differently. This isn't a quantitative difference in competence, it's a qualitative difference in approach. > Pretty animations may make a good first impressions but they get old and annoying very fast. It is a huge mistake in UI design to only optimize for smooth on-boarding of new users and not for long term productivity. Animations that stick out as 'being animated' are rarely desirable. I assure you that you don't notice most of the animations you benefit from in your usage. > The reason most end-user-facing FOSS projects (that don't have foundation-funded UI teams like Blender or Mozilla > Blender has great UI because they are dog-fooding their own software through blender studio. Meaning because they are the users and develop UI based on their own needs, contradicting your theory. Do you have any actual evidence for the assertion that Blender's UI designers don't actually drive the usability of the software? > Firefox UI has gotten significantly WORSE over time and the browser is becoming irrelevant based on market share. Now that is not all the fault of the UI but it is still worth noting that the height of firefox popularity was when it had a very power-user friendly UI that all that fancy "UI experts" would hate. Maybe they should replace the "foundation-funded" UI team. You're substituting your opinion for fact. Mozilla's design team publishes a lot of stuff. If you think it's wrong, there's lots of specifics available for you to counter. > As for commercial software, modern UI is so bad that many "non-technical" users actively hate using computers and feel absolutely powerless when errors occur. Modern UI is actively user-hostile. This is a common trope among developers who think their feelings about interface design carry more weight than the research that actually tests these things. It holds about as much weight as any other feelings vs facts argument.

cardanome 3y ago
> I assure you that you don't notice most of the animations you benefit from in your usage. I assure you, I do notice them. I am disabling them everywhere I can. I disable them in my Desktop Environment, I disable them on my Android smartphone. I am way more productive without them. Now, I don't hate animations per se. On the contrary as I dabble in game dev I find them crucial to "juice up" a game. They have their place but that is not productivity software that people are forced to use daily. They are for play not work. > This is a common trope among developers who think their feelings about interface design carry more weight than the research that actually tests these things. It holds about as much weight as any other feelings vs facts argument. Many open source devs are users of their software. You are making a false dichotomy where developer are some special creatures with totally different needs. I like what I like. There is no such thing as an "average user". People have different needs. Making software for the lowest common denominator will create UI that will be miserable for everyone to use. Now I am willing to listen to actual academic studies about UI design and productivity but your acting like some corporate internal studies are actually legit science is silly. We all know this things are are more drive by corporate politics.
- chefandy 3y ago
  > I assure you, I do notice them. I am disabling them everywhere I can. I disable them in my Desktop Environment, I disable them on my Android smartphone. I am way more productive without them. Now, I don't hate animations per se. On the contrary as I dabble in game dev I find them crucial to "juice up" a game. They have their place but that is not productivity software that people are forced to use daily. They are for play not work. a) Ok so you disable mouseovers on all interface elements to indicate whether or not you're going to hit a click target, indicators of where windows are moving when you drag them and click indicator animations to show that you clicked on it, the minute amount of fadeout during the click animation on a number pad so you can enter values quickly while still seeing what keys you pressed, indicators for where something minimizes to or maximizes from, progress bars, blinking cursors, notifications... sure thing. If you think most UI animations are even remotely comparable to game UI animations, we're definitely not talking about the same animations > Now I am willing to listen to actual academic studies about UI design and productivity but your acting like some corporate internal studies are actually legit science is silly. We all know this things are are more drive by corporate politics. I'm not talking about internal corporate usability studies. Ideally, you should probably google something before you try explaining a field to a professional that works in that field. > Many open source devs are users of their software. You are making a false dichotomy where developer are some special creatures with totally different needs. I like what I like. There is no such thing as an "average user". People have different needs. Making software for the lowest common denominator will create UI that will be miserable for everyone to use. Firstly, judging whether or not software is usable by looking at the handful of people that already use it and built it is like polling people to see if the dinner they cooked themselves last night should win a cooking competition. If the goal of your software is only to serve the people that wrote it, then it doesn't matter. But the vast majority of open-source software is made for other people to use, too which is why they post it publicly on the internet. I've contributed probably 10k hours of coding time to FOSS projects, all of which had the specific goal of serving people outside of the small pool of maintainers. Secondly, you accuse me of treating developers like they're special but then say that design which doesn't focus on developers' workflows is coding to the lowest common denominator. Gotcha. Thirdly, the entire point of the discipline of interface design is breaking the idea that there is an average user. How do we accomplish that? By not letting people make unilateral decisions about design based on their assumptions and folk wisdom, consult existing data that influences how we proceed, and test our assumptions on the people who actually use the software. If you're saying that developers unilaterally making design decisions are more open to different usage styles than a designer that is specifically looking at people's usage, I'm not really sure how to address that.

cardanome 3y ago

> I assure you that you don't notice most of the animations you benefit from in your usage. I assure you, I do notice them. I am disabling them everywhere I can. I disable them in my Desktop Environment, I disable them on my Android smartphone. I am way more productive without them. Now, I don't hate animations per se. On the contrary as I dabble in game dev I find them crucial to "juice up" a game. They have their place but that is not productivity software that people are forced to use daily. They are for play not work. > This is a common trope among developers who think their feelings about interface design carry more weight than the research that actually tests these things. It holds about as much weight as any other feelings vs facts argument. Many open source devs are users of their software. You are making a false dichotomy where developer are some special creatures with totally different needs. I like what I like. There is no such thing as an "average user". People have different needs. Making software for the lowest common denominator will create UI that will be miserable for everyone to use. Now I am willing to listen to actual academic studies about UI design and productivity but your acting like some corporate internal studies are actually legit science is silly. We all know this things are are more drive by corporate politics.

chefandy 3y ago
> I assure you, I do notice them. I am disabling them everywhere I can. I disable them in my Desktop Environment, I disable them on my Android smartphone. I am way more productive without them. Now, I don't hate animations per se. On the contrary as I dabble in game dev I find them crucial to "juice up" a game. They have their place but that is not productivity software that people are forced to use daily. They are for play not work. a) Ok so you disable mouseovers on all interface elements to indicate whether or not you're going to hit a click target, indicators of where windows are moving when you drag them and click indicator animations to show that you clicked on it, the minute amount of fadeout during the click animation on a number pad so you can enter values quickly while still seeing what keys you pressed, indicators for where something minimizes to or maximizes from, progress bars, blinking cursors, notifications... sure thing. If you think most UI animations are even remotely comparable to game UI animations, we're definitely not talking about the same animations > Now I am willing to listen to actual academic studies about UI design and productivity but your acting like some corporate internal studies are actually legit science is silly. We all know this things are are more drive by corporate politics. I'm not talking about internal corporate usability studies. Ideally, you should probably google something before you try explaining a field to a professional that works in that field. > Many open source devs are users of their software. You are making a false dichotomy where developer are some special creatures with totally different needs. I like what I like. There is no such thing as an "average user". People have different needs. Making software for the lowest common denominator will create UI that will be miserable for everyone to use. Firstly, judging whether or not software is usable by looking at the handful of people that already use it and built it is like polling people to see if the dinner they cooked themselves last night should win a cooking competition. If the goal of your software is only to serve the people that wrote it, then it doesn't matter. But the vast majority of open-source software is made for other people to use, too which is why they post it publicly on the internet. I've contributed probably 10k hours of coding time to FOSS projects, all of which had the specific goal of serving people outside of the small pool of maintainers. Secondly, you accuse me of treating developers like they're special but then say that design which doesn't focus on developers' workflows is coding to the lowest common denominator. Gotcha. Thirdly, the entire point of the discipline of interface design is breaking the idea that there is an average user. How do we accomplish that? By not letting people make unilateral decisions about design based on their assumptions and folk wisdom, consult existing data that influences how we proceed, and test our assumptions on the people who actually use the software. If you're saying that developers unilaterally making design decisions are more open to different usage styles than a designer that is specifically looking at people's usage, I'm not really sure how to address that.