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The UIs of the 80s and 90s were designed to be learned, and carefully refined through focus testing. These UIs used consistent visual affordances, and contained
by RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
The UIs of the 80s and 90s were designed to be learned, and carefully refined through focus testing. These UIs used consistent visual affordances, and contained contextual help. Constraints on memory, resolution, and color depth discouraged the inclusion of visual elements that did not contribute directly to usability and functionality.
The UIs of today are largely designed by people who have experienced GUIs for their entire lives, and assume that everyone is already familiar with conventions. Focus testing is seen as slow and expensive, so designers lean on A/B testing and telemetry, randomly breaking live user experiences in small batches to creep toward local maxima. Needing a help system is viewed as old-fashioned; users should paw at UIs like a puzzle box to discover features. Computers and displays are powerful enough for every application to be a unique "branded experience".
- mysterydip 3y agoThere's a good paper here on the (95) UI team's design goals and how they were achieved: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-95s-user-interface/ https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...
- wizzwizz4 3y agoAlso https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 (doi:10.1145/238386.238611).
- xattt 3y ago> … 1980s and 1990s … Leopard introduced the pop-over and HUD elements in 2007, and I think this was the last of intuitive UI that I’ve encountered.
- aworks 3y agoe.g. Spotify
- zelos 3y agoOur A/B testing shows that making the "Next Page" button on our app tiny and virtually the same colour as the background has massively increased user engagement! Just look at how much more time users spend on each page, scrolling up and down like they're really studying the content.