> I instead urge UI designers to consider the powerful concepts of consistency and familiarity just a bit more often than they presently seem to do. I've been

> I instead urge UI designers to consider the powerful concepts of consistency and familiarity just a bit more often than they presently seem to do. I've been developing UIs in some form or another for almost 20 years and this really hit home for me. I often use the analogy that UI/UX designers are like interior designers and architects rolled into one while developers are the general contractors and tradespeople (you need to pretend "software architecture" isn't a thing for the analogy to work). In my experience, I could ask a general contractor to come up with a design/layout for a kitchen and I would probably be satisfied with the result. That contractor has built hundreds or thousands of kitchens. A good GC will know how to lay out the space efficiently given the dimensions of the room. You won't end up with weird issues like needing to open the oven door in order to access a cabinet drawer (something I'm dealing with in my current apartment). It probably won't be flashy or unique or have a "wow" factor. In fact, it would probably be so unremarkable as to be forgettable, but it would feel immediately familiar to anyone who comes to visit and function perfectly as a kitchen. I try to push for this type of approach in my current job. I don't want to try implementing novel design ideas. Novel design ideas don't have reference implementations or accessibility guidelines. I think familiarity is the best UX. Are the familiar approaches always the best ones? Maybe not, but I don't want to be the trailblazer. Whenever I encounter a novel design, I ask the person who came up with it to find me 3 other apps that implemented something similar. If they can't, I suggest a more idiomatic solution. Sometimes people push back, but once I start asking very specific questions about how this thing is supposed to behave, they usually end up deciding to drop it and go the idiomatic route. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing a lot of the articles and blog posts out there complaining about the state of user interfaces aren't written by the folks that have to implement them. There are so many variables involved in accommodating for user interactions with basic controls, let alone complex ones (if you've ever built a custom <select> component that meets all a11y requirements, you know what I mean). So to end my rant: just use the dang controls we have available, don't try to reinvent the wheel, and focus on making your product really good at what people are paying for it to do. I wouldn't spend extra money on an application just because they came up with a novel alternative to a slider control, and I'm guessing most other people wouldn't either.