4 ms·

This is what happens when "designers" who are nothing more than artists take control of UI decisions. They want things to look "clean" at the expense of discove

This is what happens when "designers" who are nothing more than artists take control of UI decisions. They want things to look "clean" at the expense of discoverability and forget that affordances make people learn. Contrast this with something like an airplane cockpit, which while full of controls and assuming expert knowledge, still has them all labeled.

jama211 1y ago
Next you’ll be complaining that the taps in your house don’t have a label telling you that they need to be twisted and in what direction. Phones aren’t 747’s, and guess what every normal person that goes into an airplane cockpit who isn’t a pilot is so overwhelmed by all the controls they wouldn’t know what anything did. Interface designers know what they’re doing. They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t, and they’ve refined down to an art how to contain a complicated feature set in a relatively simple form factor. The irony of people here with no design training that they could do a better job than any “so called designer” shows incredible levels of egotism and disrespect to a mature field of study. Also demonstrably, people use their phones really quite well with very little training, that’s a modern miracle. Stop shaking your fist at a cloud.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Interface designers know what they’re doing. They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t No they don't. The article refutes your points entirely, as does everyone else here who has been confounded by puzzling interfaces.
  - jama211 1y ago
    It doesn’t refute anything, it complains bitterly and states things are problems that demonstrably aren’t. You’re figuratively pointing at the sky and stomping your foot and saying “it’s not blue it’s green”. “I’m smarter than every designer” is such a common programmer trope at this point that it’s hilarious. Speaking as a developer myself.
- Mesopropithecus 1y ago
  "They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t" ... and then they ignore it? It triggers me when someone calls hidden swipe gestures intuitive. It's the opposite of affordance, which these designers should be familiar with if they are worth their salaries.
  - jama211 1y ago
    They don’t ignore it, they’re weighing up the pros and cons properly, something you don’t seem to want to do in good faith.
- dodomodo 1y ago
  I don't think I can do better, I just feel betrayed,
  - jama211 1y ago
    Yeah, how dare people try their best to make decent interfaces and inevitably fail to please everyone. Ultimate betrayal. But hey, at least you have more humility than most here.
moffkalast 1y ago
I still don't understand why desktop OSes now have mobile style taskbar icons that are twice as large as they need to be, grouped together so you need to hover to see which instance of what is what, and then click again to switch to the one you actually want if you can even figure out what it even is with just a thumbnail without any labels. All terminal windows look the fucking same! Win NT-Vista style, aka the way web browsers show tabs with an icon + label is peak desktop UX for context switching and nobody can convince me otherwise. GNOME can't even render taskbars that way.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Most people coming into the workforce today have grown up on iOS and Android. To them, the phone is the default, the computer used to be what grownups use to do work. Watching them start using computers is very similar to those videos from the 80s and 90s of office workers using a computer for the first time. The appification of UI is a necessary evil if you want people in their mid twenties or lower to use your OS. The world is moving to mobile-first, and UI is following suit, even in places it doesn't make sense. Give a kid a UI from the 90s, styled after industrial control panels, and they'll be as confused as you are with touch screen designs. Back in the day, stereos used to provide radio buttons and sliders for tuning, but those devices aren't used anymore. I don't remember the last device I've used that had a physical toggle button, for instance. UI is moving away from replicating the stereos from the 80s to replicating the electronics young people are actually using. That includes adding mobile paradigms in places that don't necessarily make sense, just like weird stereo controls were all over computers for no good reason. If you prefer the traditional UX, you can set things up the way you want. Classic Shell will get you your NT-Vista task bar. Gnome Shell has a whole bunch of task bar options. The old approach may no longer be the default one, but it's still an option for those that want it.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    Maybe you're right, but I mean I'm in my late twenties and I grew up on Win 95 and XP mainly, smartphones only started to become a thing in early high school. You'd probably have to look under like 16 to really find those who haven't ever seen an interface designed for the mouse. > Classic Shell, Gnome Shell task bar options Yeah mods, hacks, and extensions don't really count for either. The more time passes the more this nonsense becomes mandatory. Luckily KDE still exists for now and has it all native.
BrtByte 1y ago
The "clean aesthetic at all costs" mindset has definitely gone too far
montagg 1y ago
Most people are intimidated by airplane cockpits. I think you’re right that specialists in certain situations where they’re familiar have much higher tolerance for visual density because, to them, it isn’t dense, it’s meaningful. Most people for most situations, using most phone apps, do not have that familiarity. Mobile design has to simultaneously provide a lot of power and progressively disclose it such that it keeps users at or just past their optimal level of comfort, and that involves tradeoffs to hide some things and expose others at different levels of depth. So while I agree that a lot of mobile design, and OS design in particular, pulls back way too far on providing affordances for actions, I would not use an airplane cockpit as a good guide, unless you’re also talking about a specialist tool.

jama211 1y ago

Next you’ll be complaining that the taps in your house don’t have a label telling you that they need to be twisted and in what direction. Phones aren’t 747’s, and guess what every normal person that goes into an airplane cockpit who isn’t a pilot is so overwhelmed by all the controls they wouldn’t know what anything did. Interface designers know what they’re doing. They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t, and they’ve refined down to an art how to contain a complicated feature set in a relatively simple form factor. The irony of people here with no design training that they could do a better job than any “so called designer” shows incredible levels of egotism and disrespect to a mature field of study. Also demonstrably, people use their phones really quite well with very little training, that’s a modern miracle. Stop shaking your fist at a cloud.

userbinator 1y ago
Interface designers know what they’re doing. They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t No they don't. The article refutes your points entirely, as does everyone else here who has been confounded by puzzling interfaces.
- jama211 1y ago
  It doesn’t refute anything, it complains bitterly and states things are problems that demonstrably aren’t. You’re figuratively pointing at the sky and stomping your foot and saying “it’s not blue it’s green”. “I’m smarter than every designer” is such a common programmer trope at this point that it’s hilarious. Speaking as a developer myself.
Mesopropithecus 1y ago
"They know what’s intuitive and what isn’t" ... and then they ignore it? It triggers me when someone calls hidden swipe gestures intuitive. It's the opposite of affordance, which these designers should be familiar with if they are worth their salaries.
- jama211 1y ago
  They don’t ignore it, they’re weighing up the pros and cons properly, something you don’t seem to want to do in good faith.
dodomodo 1y ago
I don't think I can do better, I just feel betrayed,
- jama211 1y ago
  Yeah, how dare people try their best to make decent interfaces and inevitably fail to please everyone. Ultimate betrayal. But hey, at least you have more humility than most here.

moffkalast 1y ago

I still don't understand why desktop OSes now have mobile style taskbar icons that are twice as large as they need to be, grouped together so you need to hover to see which instance of what is what, and then click again to switch to the one you actually want if you can even figure out what it even is with just a thumbnail without any labels. All terminal windows look the fucking same! Win NT-Vista style, aka the way web browsers show tabs with an icon + label is peak desktop UX for context switching and nobody can convince me otherwise. GNOME can't even render taskbars that way.

jeroenhd 1y ago
Most people coming into the workforce today have grown up on iOS and Android. To them, the phone is the default, the computer used to be what grownups use to do work. Watching them start using computers is very similar to those videos from the 80s and 90s of office workers using a computer for the first time. The appification of UI is a necessary evil if you want people in their mid twenties or lower to use your OS. The world is moving to mobile-first, and UI is following suit, even in places it doesn't make sense. Give a kid a UI from the 90s, styled after industrial control panels, and they'll be as confused as you are with touch screen designs. Back in the day, stereos used to provide radio buttons and sliders for tuning, but those devices aren't used anymore. I don't remember the last device I've used that had a physical toggle button, for instance. UI is moving away from replicating the stereos from the 80s to replicating the electronics young people are actually using. That includes adding mobile paradigms in places that don't necessarily make sense, just like weird stereo controls were all over computers for no good reason. If you prefer the traditional UX, you can set things up the way you want. Classic Shell will get you your NT-Vista task bar. Gnome Shell has a whole bunch of task bar options. The old approach may no longer be the default one, but it's still an option for those that want it.
- moffkalast 1y ago
  Maybe you're right, but I mean I'm in my late twenties and I grew up on Win 95 and XP mainly, smartphones only started to become a thing in early high school. You'd probably have to look under like 16 to really find those who haven't ever seen an interface designed for the mouse. > Classic Shell, Gnome Shell task bar options Yeah mods, hacks, and extensions don't really count for either. The more time passes the more this nonsense becomes mandatory. Luckily KDE still exists for now and has it all native.

BrtByte 1y ago

The "clean aesthetic at all costs" mindset has definitely gone too far

montagg 1y ago

Most people are intimidated by airplane cockpits. I think you’re right that specialists in certain situations where they’re familiar have much higher tolerance for visual density because, to them, it isn’t dense, it’s meaningful. Most people for most situations, using most phone apps, do not have that familiarity. Mobile design has to simultaneously provide a lot of power and progressively disclose it such that it keeps users at or just past their optimal level of comfort, and that involves tradeoffs to hide some things and expose others at different levels of depth. So while I agree that a lot of mobile design, and OS design in particular, pulls back way too far on providing affordances for actions, I would not use an airplane cockpit as a good guide, unless you’re also talking about a specialist tool.