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This reminds me of something that happened to us recently. So one of the internal things we have is a giant turd that sits on top of some Oracle/SAP mess. The u

by neepi 1y ago

This reminds me of something that happened to us recently. So one of the internal things we have is a giant turd that sits on top of some Oracle/SAP mess. The user interface is circa 2001 and hasn’t changed really. Looks like a cross between Motif and GTK1 it’s that bad. The icons are off the shelf ones from some clip art collection. So they need to rewrite it and got a consultancy to do it. The whole UI got rewritten using react and used an off the shelf flat design. A week after launch they sent out a user survey and nearly every respondent complained about the flat UI. So they made it look like the old one again very quickly. So now we have a shiny new React app that looks like something from 2001. I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken.

williamdclt 1y ago
They actually polled for user feedback, listened to it and acted on it quickly? That sounds like a great consultancy! TBH I’d guess that people would have complained whatever the new design was, people hate change. But yes, flat designs are often on the worse end of the spectrum
- neepi 1y ago
  No we dug out a faculty statistician and did the analysis and paid them even more money to fuck it off. The consultancy resisted this horribly because the tech lead is a performative bullshitter and it doesn’t look good on his portfolio page that it looks like something from 2001.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    He should show both the prettier and the ugly version side by side and give it as an example of him being adaptable and willing to please his client instead of himself.
mrweasel 1y ago
> I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken. My impression was that it was an attempt to get engineers to be able to do the design, rather than involving graphic artists. I also think that we often conflate pretty with usable. There's nothing more interesting than these user interfaces that has grown organically for 20+ years. They look "bad" or at least old, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily have poor ergonomics. Some people, myself included, have tried to force that old-school, hodgepodge look, but you can't really do that either, it doesn't work. You just end up with ugly and confusing. Those interfaces has to evolve organically.
giva 1y ago
Sane people don't want to invest time learning a new UI just because it's prettier.
- esafak 1y ago
  But it might improve the UX for others. You can't please everyone.
RajT88 1y ago
> So they need to rewrite it and got a consultancy to do it. Why? Was it broken?
cardanome 1y ago
I think modern UI is mostly optimized for onboarding new users. For that it makes sense to have a more minimalist UI that doesn't make the user think too hard and does not overwhelm them. But if you need to do actual work you want maximum information density. You want icons that are easy to tell apart by color, not some sleek minimalist grey in grey. If you use a tool every day for multiple hours your UI needs will be vastly different. We have forgotten how to build tools for power users.
- kunzhi 1y ago
  > But if you need to do actual work you want maximum information density. You want icons that are easy to tell apart by color, not some sleek minimalist grey in grey. IMHO Photoshop is still the classic example of this. The UI can feel overwhelming at first, like dropping into a helicopter cockpit. But once you start getting a hang of what you're doing, anything more "minimal" just feels like dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator. From what I've seen in large enterprises, it's also why OG users are so attached to their mainframe terminal UIs. Yes, it's very hard to learn, but once you've developed some facility, everything else feels unusably slow. I've never had a bad experience designing like I respect the users intelligence. Humans are insanely smart and capable, treat them that way and good results occur.
  - rondini 1y ago
    How is photoshop a classic example when all of the icons and controls are quite literally grey in grey like the person you quoted was denouncing?
    - DiggyJohnson 1y ago
      because of the information / functionality density and the fact that it's optimized for power users
    - skydhash 1y ago
      It's not grey on grey. It has cleanly delineated section, and most of them has been in the same place for ages. And there's thing like tooltips that help.
dahjelle 1y ago
> I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken. I don’t have any experience in running user studies, but it sounds difficult separate the momentary frustration and drop in efficiency that a change in _familiarity_ brings from an actual difference in long-term _usability_. Do you know if the user survey the consultancy did tried to account for this?
gherkinnn 1y ago
Familiarity bias and coping mechanisms. https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
KronisLV 1y ago
> A week after launch they sent out a user survey and nearly every respondent complained about the flat UI. When have most users ever enjoyed a new UI in a system that they're used to? Genuinely asking, because while I enjoy things like new icon themes and even the UI of Windows 11, most of the time I've seen people complain about any new UI that displaces something that they're familiar with. If I'm wrong and it's just the flat design that is the real issue (which might also be true), then wouldn't the solution be to pick any other modern look and feel, instead of necessarily reverting to the very old one? Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with the more old timey UI design, I think that Windows 9X versions had really good design, perhaps despite some usability issues like no proper fuzzy search in the actual OS etc. I quite like how themable PrimeVue/PrimeReact/PrimeNG is and swapping themes shouldn't be something impossible, though I don't doubt that with many of the libraries out there that ends up being the case: https://primereact.org/inputgroup/ https://primereact.org/inputgroup/ (click the little palette in the corner to switch themes)
- skydhash 1y ago
  Flat design doesn't help with discoverability, because you're never sure what's an icon and a button, and if it's one, what it is for. But familiarity is another constraint, especially spatial relations and action flows.
- neepi 1y ago
  Well the problem was that they got a new UI anyway when they didn’t need or want one. I think that was the problem.
- cardanome 1y ago
  > When have most users ever enjoyed a new UI in a system that they're used to? Blender. Is has seen some drastic changes in UI but barely any backlash. Even holy-cows like right-click select got mercilessly slaughtered and I am not even mad about it, in fact I love the changes. The main thing is that they are focusing on providing value to users and are dog footing their own software to create movies. But yeah, generally people hate change and you should avoid changing things as much as possible. Sadly that doesn't work with the way incentives in most companies work.
nkrisc 1y ago
Doing a proper, unbiased usability study is difficult. I only worked at once company that had a dedicated user research team. The rest the time we designers had to run remote usability tests ourselves, for our own work, which is of course a pretty poor way to get any kind of objective result. No one wants to say, "hey, I tested my design and it sucked hard. Can I have another four weeks to try again?" Furthermore, we often didn't really have much of a say in the fundamentals of the visual appearance, we had to follow the brand standards and GUI pattern library that was chosen by other people. The brand guidelines were often delivered from on high from an outside consultancy, while the GUI pattern library was often produced in-house and robustly tested, but never perfect.
hulitu 1y ago
> Looks like a cross between Motif and GTK1 it’s that bad You should see Material design or Windows 11.
xandrius 1y ago
Sounds like a win for the tech team at least.
bazoom42 1y ago
The best UI is the UI the users are already familiar with.
b3ing 1y ago
Nobody wants to relearn an application, that’s most likely what it was

by neepi 1y ago

williamdclt 1y ago

They actually polled for user feedback, listened to it and acted on it quickly? That sounds like a great consultancy! TBH I’d guess that people would have complained whatever the new design was, people hate change. But yes, flat designs are often on the worse end of the spectrum

neepi 1y ago
No we dug out a faculty statistician and did the analysis and paid them even more money to fuck it off. The consultancy resisted this horribly because the tech lead is a performative bullshitter and it doesn’t look good on his portfolio page that it looks like something from 2001.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  He should show both the prettier and the ugly version side by side and give it as an example of him being adaptable and willing to please his client instead of himself.

mrweasel 1y ago

> I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken. My impression was that it was an attempt to get engineers to be able to do the design, rather than involving graphic artists. I also think that we often conflate pretty with usable. There's nothing more interesting than these user interfaces that has grown organically for 20+ years. They look "bad" or at least old, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily have poor ergonomics. Some people, myself included, have tried to force that old-school, hodgepodge look, but you can't really do that either, it doesn't work. You just end up with ugly and confusing. Those interfaces has to evolve organically.

giva 1y ago

Sane people don't want to invest time learning a new UI just because it's prettier.

esafak 1y ago
But it might improve the UX for others. You can't please everyone.

RajT88 1y ago

> So they need to rewrite it and got a consultancy to do it. Why? Was it broken?

cardanome 1y ago

I think modern UI is mostly optimized for onboarding new users. For that it makes sense to have a more minimalist UI that doesn't make the user think too hard and does not overwhelm them. But if you need to do actual work you want maximum information density. You want icons that are easy to tell apart by color, not some sleek minimalist grey in grey. If you use a tool every day for multiple hours your UI needs will be vastly different. We have forgotten how to build tools for power users.

kunzhi 1y ago
> But if you need to do actual work you want maximum information density. You want icons that are easy to tell apart by color, not some sleek minimalist grey in grey. IMHO Photoshop is still the classic example of this. The UI can feel overwhelming at first, like dropping into a helicopter cockpit. But once you start getting a hang of what you're doing, anything more "minimal" just feels like dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator. From what I've seen in large enterprises, it's also why OG users are so attached to their mainframe terminal UIs. Yes, it's very hard to learn, but once you've developed some facility, everything else feels unusably slow. I've never had a bad experience designing like I respect the users intelligence. Humans are insanely smart and capable, treat them that way and good results occur.
- rondini 1y ago
  How is photoshop a classic example when all of the icons and controls are quite literally grey in grey like the person you quoted was denouncing?
  - DiggyJohnson 1y ago
    because of the information / functionality density and the fact that it's optimized for power users
  - skydhash 1y ago
    It's not grey on grey. It has cleanly delineated section, and most of them has been in the same place for ages. And there's thing like tooltips that help.

dahjelle 1y ago

> I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken. I don’t have any experience in running user studies, but it sounds difficult separate the momentary frustration and drop in efficiency that a change in _familiarity_ brings from an actual difference in long-term _usability_. Do you know if the user survey the consultancy did tried to account for this?

gherkinnn 1y ago

Familiarity bias and coping mechanisms. https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/

KronisLV 1y ago

> A week after launch they sent out a user survey and nearly every respondent complained about the flat UI. When have most users ever enjoyed a new UI in a system that they're used to? Genuinely asking, because while I enjoy things like new icon themes and even the UI of Windows 11, most of the time I've seen people complain about any new UI that displaces something that they're familiar with. If I'm wrong and it's just the flat design that is the real issue (which might also be true), then wouldn't the solution be to pick any other modern look and feel, instead of necessarily reverting to the very old one? Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with the more old timey UI design, I think that Windows 9X versions had really good design, perhaps despite some usability issues like no proper fuzzy search in the actual OS etc. I quite like how themable PrimeVue/PrimeReact/PrimeNG is and swapping themes shouldn't be something impossible, though I don't doubt that with many of the libraries out there that ends up being the case: https://primereact.org/inputgroup/ https://primereact.org/inputgroup/ (click the little palette in the corner to switch themes)

skydhash 1y ago
Flat design doesn't help with discoverability, because you're never sure what's an icon and a button, and if it's one, what it is for. But familiarity is another constraint, especially spatial relations and action flows.
neepi 1y ago
Well the problem was that they got a new UI anyway when they didn’t need or want one. I think that was the problem.
cardanome 1y ago
> When have most users ever enjoyed a new UI in a system that they're used to? Blender. Is has seen some drastic changes in UI but barely any backlash. Even holy-cows like right-click select got mercilessly slaughtered and I am not even mad about it, in fact I love the changes. The main thing is that they are focusing on providing value to users and are dog footing their own software to create movies. But yeah, generally people hate change and you should avoid changing things as much as possible. Sadly that doesn't work with the way incentives in most companies work.

nkrisc 1y ago

Doing a proper, unbiased usability study is difficult. I only worked at once company that had a dedicated user research team. The rest the time we designers had to run remote usability tests ourselves, for our own work, which is of course a pretty poor way to get any kind of objective result. No one wants to say, "hey, I tested my design and it sucked hard. Can I have another four weeks to try again?" Furthermore, we often didn't really have much of a say in the fundamentals of the visual appearance, we had to follow the brand standards and GUI pattern library that was chosen by other people. The brand guidelines were often delivered from on high from an outside consultancy, while the GUI pattern library was often produced in-house and robustly tested, but never perfect.

hulitu 1y ago

> Looks like a cross between Motif and GTK1 it’s that bad You should see Material design or Windows 11.

xandrius 1y ago

Sounds like a win for the tech team at least.

bazoom42 1y ago

The best UI is the UI the users are already familiar with.

b3ing 1y ago

Nobody wants to relearn an application, that’s most likely what it was