4 ms·

UX was a field in the 1990s when it was at its height. We still have designers, but most software houses closed their academic UI/UX research houses and just hi

• eru 2y ago
  Windows 95, of all things, was actually a good example of a company doing 'proper' research driving UI work. Btw, I loathe the term UX, because 'interface' (in UI) should already be a big enough term to not just mean pretty graphics, but the whole _interface_ between user and program. But such is the euphemism treadmill.
  • VilleSalonen 2y ago
    But UX is bigger than UI. Good UX might simplify some use case so that user might not need to see any UI at all.
    • somat 2y ago
      That is still the man-machine interface UX is just a weaselly sales term, "Our product is not some mere (sneers) interface, no, over here it is a whole experience, you want an experience don't you?"
      • necovek 2y ago
        I don't think it's weaselly: it's not the first term that has lost its original meaning (like "hacker" or, ahem, "cloud") and required introducing specifiers to go back to the original meaning.
        • thaumasiotes 2y ago
          For fun, I did a search for "user interface" before:1996-06-01 . I found a paper that was definitely taking the perspective that the "user interface" encompasses all the ways in which the user can accomplish something via the software. It rated the effectiveness of a user interface in terms of the time taken to complete various specific tasks. (While remarking that other metrics matter to the concept too, and also measuring user satisfaction and error rates.) But that paper also suggested how the term might have specialized - four pieces of software were studied, and they are presented in a table that gives their "interface technology", in two cases a "character-based interface" and in the other two a "graphical user interface". Enough usage like that and you can see how "interface" might come to mean "what the user interacts with" as opposed to "how tasks are performed". ( https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ . It really is dated 1993, which I made a point of checking because Google assigns the "date" of a search result based on textual analysis, and it is frequently very badly wrong. I can't really slam the approach, which I assume was necessary to get the right answer here, but the implementation isn't working.)
      • eru 2y ago
        I wouldn't be so harsh. It's just the euphemism treadmill. Just like people perennially come up with new technical terms for the not-so-smart that are meant to be just technically and inoffensive, and over time they always become offensive, so someone has to come up with new technical terms. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot > 'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard themself against common physical dangers. The term was gradually replaced by 'profound mental retardation', which has since been replaced by other terms.[1] Along with terms like moron, imbecile, retard and cretin, its use to describe people with mental disabilities is considered archaic and offensive.[2]
        • 6510 2y ago
          I once upon a time coin the term scientific physics. UX is not progress, it is the astrology of UI design. The UI exists between the silicon and the wetware computer as a means to interface the two. UX aims to modify the human and invade their state of mind. Doom scrolling is an example of great UX. Interact vs subdue. I want to experience the meaning of the email not the email application.
    • necovek 2y ago
      See my above comment: UI used to mean all of those and then it became just "pretty", so a new term was invented.
    • taylorius 2y ago
      UX includes the possibility that the software will be actively influencing the user, rather than merely acting as a tool to be used. (websites selling you stuff versus a utilitarian desktop app).
    • hulitu 2y ago
      > Good UX might simplify some use case so that user might not need to see any UI at all. Yeah, just look at Windows {10,11} and Android. They simplified so much that it's unusable.
    • kleiba 2y ago
      The thing with not well-defined names is that they're open to interpretation. To me, the difference between UX and UI is on a completely different axis. When I was at university, I attended a UI class which - although in the CS department - was taught by a senior psychologist. Here, the premise was very much on how to design interfaces in such a way that the user can intuitively operate a system with minimal error. That is, the design should enable the user to work with the system optimally. I only heard the term UX much later, and when I first became aware of it, it seemed to be much less about designing for use and more about designing for feel. That is, the user should walk away from a system saying "that was quite enjoyable". And these two concepts are, of course, not entirely orthogonal. For instance, you can hardly enjoy using a system when you just don't seem to get the damn thing to do what you want. But they still have different focuses. If I had to put in a nutshell how I conceptualize the two disciplines, it would be "UI: psychology; UX: graphics design". And of course such a simplification will create an outcry if you're conceptualization is completely different. But that just takes us back to my very first sentence: not well-defined names are open to interpretation.
      • eru 2y ago
        Thanks for sharing! > Here, the premise was very much on how to design interfaces in such a way that the user can intuitively operate a system with minimal error. Yes, that's a good default goal for most software, but not always appropriate. Eg for safety critical equipment to be used only by trained professionals (think airplane controls or nuclear power plant controls) you'd put a lot more emphasis on 'minimal error' than on 'intuitive'. We can also learn a lot from how games interact with their users. Most games want their interface to be a joy to use and easy to learn. So they are good example for what you normally want to do! But for some select few having a clunky interface is part of the point. 'Her Story' might be an interesting example of that: the game has you searching through a video database, and it's only a game, because that search feature is horribly broken.
  • nine_k 2y ago
    "Experience" is more than just "interface". E.g. which actions are lightning-fast, and which are painfully slow is an important part of user experience, even if the UI is exactly the same. Performance and space limitations, things like limited / unlimited undo, interoperability with other software / supported data formats, etc are all important parts of UX that are not UI.
    • necovek 2y ago
      UI, where I stands for "interface" just like in HCI, used to mean all those things. But in the industry the focus turned to aesthetics, so a new term was invented to differentiate between focusing on the entire interface ("experience") vs just the look. Just like "design" encompasses all of it, but we add qualifiers to ensure it's not misunderstood for "pretty".
      • rvense 2y ago
        And that has happened again. Changing the colours is "improving UX".
        • eru 2y ago
          Thing is: changing the colours _could_ be improving the UX. Eg I'm colourblind, and a careful revision of a colourscheme can make my life easier. (Though I would suggest also using other attributes to differentiate like size, placement, texture, saturation, brightness etc.)
    • hulitu 2y ago
      > "Experience" is more than just "interface". UX has become equivalent with crap. Give me back GUI.
  • xlii 2y ago
    I remember studying and the difference was not only about interaction but a general impact on the user. I always found MacOS Finder's spatial file placement a good example (Non-MacOS users - Finder has this thing where it remembers windows locations and file locations in window, so one can arrange files as they please and they stick). Given that that feature is removed the UI stays the same (there are file icons, some windows, same layout), but it does remove some of the cognitive load. UX is impacted by many non-UI things: load times, responsivity to input, reliability (hello dreaded printer dialogs that promise to print, but never will). Anti-pattern I hate with passion is MacOS update bar. I want to do some work in the morning, I open my computer and it's friggin' updating. This sucks, but happens, we got forced into this. And then there's this progress bar that jumps: 20%, 80%, 50%, 30%, 90%. Colleague asks when I'm going to be online - "oh, 10% left, probably soon" - ding - progress bar backs to 30%. UI is the same from observers point of view (it shows the progress, which I suppose is correct and takes into consideration multiple update phases) but UX is dropping ball here.
    • eru 2y ago
      'Interface' used to encompass all these things. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396140
    • rat87 2y ago
      Spatial file placement is probably not even good on the desktop. In a file manager its definitely an antipattern
      • dsego 2y ago
        I think on earlier windows (95 maybe?) opening a folder would also always open in a new explorer window so you had the impression that the window is actually the folder you are opening. Whereas today we're more used to the browsing metaphor where the window "chrome" is separate from the content. I also don't think today it's useful to have the spatial metaphor, but it probably made more sense back then.
        • 2y ago
  • Jare 2y ago
    To make a simile with books, to me the UI is the writing and the UX is the story plus how it's ingested via the writing.
    • contrast 2y ago
      That’s a good example for showing how “UI” and “UX” are essentially the same thing. At least in a practical context. We can call an excellent story teller a “writer”. A good story can be described as “good writing”. A great story, let’s say a film being adapted as a book, can become a terrible book if it is “let down by the writing”. In the context of books and storytelling, “writing” is the all-encompassing word that experts use to describe the whole thing. Just like “UI” used to mean the whole thing.
• swarnava-dutta 2y ago
  [dead]
• eurleif 2y ago
  UX, as a term, didn't really exist in the 1990s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=user+interface%2Cuser+experience&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=user+interface... That's consistent with your timeline of the decline of UI/UX though. My sense is that the birth of the term UX marked the beginning of the decline because it meant redefining the term UI as being purely about aesthetics, implying that no one was paying attention to all of the non-aesthetic work that had previously been done in the field.
  • n3storm 2y ago
    UX was Ergonomics back them, but current term also implies some "desire" to return to application, a tint of marketing maybe?
    • tpurves 2y ago
      UX was Human Factors Engineering, Usability research, and library science. UX was the rebranded label after the visual designers took over everything.
      • Propelloni 2y ago
        I remember it as "human-machine interaction" and "HMI design" or "interaction design". It was mostly about positioning interface elements, clear iconography, and workflows with as little surprises and opportunities for errors as possible. In industrial design, esp. for SCADA, it is often still called HMI.
    • InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      Yeah, if you wanted to study usability (or what we call UX today), you'd take the ergonomics course, and there'd be usability classes. So you'd learn about how to sit at a desk, how to design a remote control, and where to put the buttons in an application. It does seem a bit weird, but I feel like this bigger picture is what a lot of today's design lacks.
  • 2y ago
• yonatan8070 2y ago
  I have a guy at work who does most of our UI/UX design, and recently one of the screenes we needed to implement involved a list where the user needs to select one option then click "Save". He designed it with checkboxes... some people just have no idea that UX conventions exist.
  • hulitu 2y ago
    > some people just have no idea that UX conventions exist. Because those were (G)UI conventions. The new "UX" is in the line of "Fuck ICCCM or Style Guide, i'll implement my own".
  • lenkite 2y ago
    He committed a clear and factual mistake in design - a [Basic Engineering Defect]. It cannot be merely called not following "convention". Now if the question was between radio buttons and a drop-down list - that is a designer's choice.
• toadi 2y ago
  The last two companies I worked for had UI/UX teams with knowledgeable directors. It is not dead; it is just that some people don't see the ROI in it.
• usrusr 2y ago
  My impression was that at some point, they went too far with the scientific approach. As in round up all the last persons who had never touched a computer, put them in an experiment and make their success rate as the only metric that counts. Established conventions? "Science says they don't work". This attack on convention then paved the way for the "just make it pretty" we see today.
• consteval 2y ago
  The fundamental problem with UI/UX is that it’s so heavily dependent on your audience, and most software caters too disproportionately to one audience. New users want pop ups, pretty colors, lots of white space, and stuff hidden. Experienced users want to throw the computer through a window when their tab is eaten because of a “did you know?” popup. Enterprise, professional software is used a lot. Sometimes decades. You need dense UI with a UX that’s almost comically long-lived. Experienced users don’t want to figure out where a new button is, they’ve already optimized their workflow to the max.