12 ms·

Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

186 points by joelkesler 10mo ago

scottjenson 10mo ago
I've given dozens of talks, but this one seems to have struck a chord, as it's my most popular video in quite a while. It's got over 14k views in less than a day. I'm excited so many people are interested in desktop UX!
- az09mugen 10mo ago
  Thanks for that nice talk, it felt like a breeze of fresh air with basic & simple yet powerful but alas "forgotten" concepts of UX. Will look into your other talks.
  - deleted 10mo ago
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- calmbonsai 10mo ago
  I concur though per my earlier post I do feel "desktop stagnation" is inevitable and we're already there. You were channeling Don Norman https://jnd.org/ https://jnd.org/ in the best of ways.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  It was quite interesting.
- NetOpWibby 10mo ago
  Fantastic talk, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot. In my research on next-generation desktop interfaces, I was referred to Ink & Switch as well and man, I sure wish they were hiring. I missed out on the Xerox and Bell Labs eras. I'm also reading this book, "Inventing the Future" by John Buck that details early Apple (there's no reason the Jonathan Computer wouldn't sell like hotcakes today, IMHO). In my downtime I'm working on my future computing concept[1]. The direction I'm going for the UI is context awareness and the desktop being more of an endless canvas. I need to flesh out my ideas into code one of these days. P.S. Just learned we're on the same Mastodon server, that's dope. --- [1]: https://systemsoft.works https://systemsoft.works
- deleted 10mo ago
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- ChuckMcM 10mo ago
  I think you did a great job of bringing fairly nuanced problems into perspective for a lot of people who take their interactions with their phone/computer/tablet for granted. That is a great skill! I think an fertile area for investigation would also be 'task specific' interactions. In XDE[1], the thing that got Steve Jobs all excited, the interaction models are different if you're writing code, debugging code, or running an application. There are key things that always work the same way (cut/paste for example) but other things that change based on context. And echoing some of the sentiment I've read here as well, consistency is a bigger win for the end user than form. By that I mean even a crappy UX is okay if it is consistent in how its crappy. Heard a great talk about Nintendo's design of the 'Mario world' games and how the secret sauce was that Mario physics are consistent, so as a game player if you knew how to use the game mechanics to do one thing, you can guess how to use them to do another thing you've not yet done. Similarly with UX, if the mechanics are consistent then they give you a stepping off point for doing a new thing you haven't done but using mechanics you are already familiar with. [1] Xerox Development Environment -- This was the environment everyone at Xerox Business Systems used when working on the Xerox Star desktop publishing workstation.
- agumonkey 10mo ago
  where can we find advanced ux labs ? i'm tired of the figma trend
- averynicepen 10mo ago
  This was a really fantastic talk and kept me riveted for 40 minutes. Where can I find more?
  - scottjenson 10mo ago
    I post nearly everyone on my blog jenson.org
- p_ing 10mo ago
  This was a great talk! I'm interested to hear what you believe the desktop UX ('human interface') issues to actually be, today. Rightly your talk was not about specific issues or specific solutions, but as a desktop user (macOS primarily, Windows secondary but historically, and KDE a distant third), beyond the mishmash of different UIs, i.e. Windows 11 presenting Windows 3.x or just outright dumb decisions such as transparent everything, what is it that you want to solve for people on the desktop space to make them more /productive/ than they currently are? Especially now that our primary vehicle to information creation and sharing is not the desktop, but the web browser alone?
- wiether 10mo ago
  I'm not into UX much, but listening to someone with such experience and knowledge in their craft, giving a well structured and coherent talk, without shouting or trying to sell anything felt... peaceful? It's only in the end that I realized I just spent 40 minutes watching the video. Thanks for sharing it with us!
joelkesler 10mo ago
Great talk about the future of desktop user-interfaces. “…Scott Jenson gives examples of how focusing on UX -- instead of UI -- frees us to think bigger. This is especially true for the desktop, where the user experience has so much potential to grow well beyond its current interaction models. The desktop UX is certainly not dead, and this talk suggests some future directions we could take.” “Scott Jenson has been a leader in UX design and strategic planning for over 35 years. He was the first member of Apple’s Human Interface group in the late '80s, and has since held key roles at several major tech companies. He served as Director of Product Design for Symbian in London, managed Mobile UX design at Google, and was Creative Director at frog design in San Francisco. He returned to Google to do UX research for Android and is now a UX strategist in the open-source community for Mastodon and Home Assistant.”
rolph 10mo ago
problem is with pushing a UX at users and enforcing that model when the user changes it to something comfortable when you should be looking at what the users are throwing away, and what they are replacing it with. MS is a prime example, dont do what MS has been doing, remember whos hardware it actually is, remain aware that what a developer, and a board room understands as improvement, is not experienced in the same way by average retail consumers.
fortyseven 10mo ago
You know, sometimes things just work. They get whittled way at until we end up with a very refined endpoint. Just look at cell phones. Black rectangles as far as the eye can see. For good reason. I'm not saying don't explore new avenues ( foldables, etc. ), but it's perfectly fine to come to settle into a metaphor that just works.
- 7thaccount 10mo ago
  The Windows 95-XP taskbar is good. Everything else has been downhill.
  - pdonis 10mo ago
    I use Trinity Desktop on Linux because it's basically the same as the Windows 95-XP taskbar interface, and has no plans to change.
    - array_key_first 10mo ago
      To be fair, modern KDE has more-or-less the same taskbar. And the taskbar is also not optimal. Having text next to the icons is great, but it means you can only really have, like, 4 or 5 applications open and see all their titles and stuff. Which is why modern windows switched to just icons - which is much worse, because now you can't tell which app window is which! The optimal taskbar, imo, is a vertical one. I basically take the KDE panel and just make it vertical. I can easily have 20+ apps open and read all their titles. Also, I generally think vertical space is more valuable for applications, and you get more of it this way. It also allows me to ungroup apps. So that each window is it's own entry in the taskbar, so one less click. And it works because I can read the window title.
      - pdonis 10mo ago
        > modern KDE has more-or-less the same taskbar. More or less, yes; Trinity Desktop is basically KDE 3. But KDE has added on a lot of other cruft since then that has no value to me. > Having text next to the icons is great, but it means you can only really have, like, 4 or 5 applications open and see all their titles and stuff. That's what multiple virtual desktops are for. My usual desktop configuration has 8. Each one has only a few apps open in it. > The optimal taskbar, imo, is a vertical one. I do this for toolbars in applications like LibreOffice; on an HD aspect ratio screen it makes a lot more sense to have all that stuff off to the side, where there's more than enough screen real estate anyway, than taking up precious vertical space at the top. But for my overall desktop taskbar, I've tried vertical and it doesn't work well for me--because to show titles it would have to be way too wide for me. The horizontal taskbar does take up some vertical space at the bottom of the screen, but I can make that pretty small by downsizing it to either "Small" or "Tiny".
analogpixel 10mo ago
Why didn't Star Trek ever tackle the big issues, like them constantly updating the LCARS interface every few episodes to make it better, or having Geordi La Forge re-writing the warp core controllers in Rust?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
  Because it’s a fantasy space opera show that has nothing to do with reality
- thaumaturgy 10mo ago
  Because, something that a lot of tech-obsessed Trek fans never seem to really come to terms with, is that Trek didn't fetishize technology. In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI updates because they would have advanced, culturally, to a point where they recognized that continuous UI updates are frustrating for users. They would have invested the time and research effort required to better understand the right kind of interface for the given devices, and then... just built that. And, sure, it probably would get updates from time to time, but nothing like the way we do things now. Because the way we do things now is immature. It's driven often by individual developers' needs to leave their fingerprints on something, to be able to say, "this project is now MY project", to be able to use it as a portfolio item that helps them get a bigger paycheck in the future. Likewise, Geordi was regularly shown to be making constant improvements to the ship's systems. If I remember right, some of his designs were picked up by Starfleet and integrated into other ships. He took risks, too, like experimental propulsion upgrades. But, each time, it was an upgrade in service of better meeting some present or future mission objective. Geordi might have rewritten some software modules in whatever counted as a "language" in that universe at some point, but if he had done so, he would have done extensive testing and tried very hard to do it in a way that wouldn't've disrupted ship operations, and he would only do so if it gained some kind of improvement that directly impacted the success or safety of the whole ship. Really cool technology is a key component of the Trek universe, but Trek isn't about technology. It's about people. Technology is just a thing that's in the background, and, sometimes, becomes a part of the story -- when it impacts some people in the story.
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ares623 10mo ago
Are we stuck with the same toothbrush UX forever?
- LeFantome 10mo ago
  I feel like toothbrush UX has improved quite a bit.
  - AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
    Toothbrush UX is the same today as it was when we were hunter gatherers: use an abrasive tool to ablate plaque from the teeth and gums without removing enamel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg The variety of form factors offered are the only difference
    - jrowen 10mo ago
      Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same experience as using an electric toothbrush. Or those weird mouthguard things they have now. I don't think most people would find this degree of reduction helpful.
      - AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
        > Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same experience as using an electric toothbrush Correct? I agree with this precisely but assume you’re writing it sarcastically From the point of view of the starting state of the mouth to the end state of the mouth the USER EXPERIENCE is the same: clean teeth The FORM FACTOR is different: Electric version means ONLY that I don’t move my arm “Most people” can’t do multiplication in their head so I’m not looking to them to understand
        echoangle 10mo ago
        That’s just not what user experience means, two products having the same start and end state doesn’t mean the user experience is the same. Imagine two tools, one a CLI and one a GUI, which both let you do the same thing. Would you say that they by definition have the same user experience?
AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
The computer form factor hasn’t changed since the mainframe: look into a screen for where to give input, select visual icons via a pointer, type text via keyboard into a text entry box, hit an action button, recieve result, repeat it’s just all gotten miniaturized Humans have outright rejected all other possible computer form factors presented to them to date including: Purely NLP with no screen head worn augmented reality contact lenses, head worn virtual reality implanted touch sensors etc… Every other possible form factor gets shit on, on this website and in every other technology newspaper. This is despite almost a century of a attempts at doing all those and making zero progress in sustained consumer penetration. Had people liked those form factors they would’ve been invested in them early on, such that they would develop the same way the laptops and iPads and iPhones and desktops have evolved. However nobody’s even interested at any type of scale in the early days of AR for example. I have a litany of augmented and virtual reality devices scattered around my home and work that are incredibly compelling technology - but are totally seen as straight up dogshit from the consumer perspective. Like everything it’s not a machine problem, it’s a human people in society problem
- nkrisc 10mo ago
  > Purely NLP with no screen Cumbersome and slow with horrible failure recovery. Great if it works, huge pain in the ass if it doesn't. Useless for any visual task. > head worn augmented reality Completely useless if what you're doing doesn't involve "augmenting reality" (editing a text document), which probably describes most tasks that the average person is using a computer for. > contact lenses Effectively impossible to use for some portion of the population. > head worn virtual reality Completely isolates you from your surroundings (most people don't like that) and difficult to use for people who wear glasses. Nevermind that currently they're heavy, expensive, and not particularly portable. > implanted sensors That's going to be a very hard sell for the vast majority of people. Also pretty useless for what most people want to do with computers. The reason these different form factors haven't caught on is because they're pretty shit right now and not even useful to most people. The standard desktop environment isn't perfect, but it's good and versatile enough for what most people need to do with a computer.
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calmbonsai 10mo ago
For desktops, basically, yes. And that's OK. Take any other praxis that's reached the 'appliance' stage that you use in your daily life from washing machines, ovens, coffee makers, cars, smartphones, flip-phones, televisions, toilets, vacuums, microwaves, refrigerators, ranges, etc. It takes ~30 years to optimize the UX to make it "appliance-worthy" and then everything afterwards consists of edge-case features, personalization, or regulatory compliance. Desktop Computers are no exception.
- Hammershaft 10mo ago
  All of the other examples you gave are products constrained by physical reality with a small set of countable use-cases. I don't think computer operating systems are simply mature appliance-like products that have been optimized down their current design. I think there is a lot of potential that hasn't been realized because the very few players in the operating system space have been been hill-climbing towards a local maxima set by path dependence 40 years ago.
  - calmbonsai 10mo ago
    To be precise, we're talking about "Desktop Computers" and not the more generic "information appliances". For example, we're not remotely close to having a standardized "watch form-factor" appliance interface. Physical reality is always a constraint. In this case, keyboard+display+speaker+mouse+arms-length-proximity+stationary. If you add/remove/alter _any_ of those 6 constraints, then there's plenty of room for innovation, but those constraints _define_ a desktop computer.
    - pegasus 10mo ago
      That's just the thing, desktops computers have always been in an important way the antithesis of a specialized appliance, a materialization of Turing's dream of the Universal Machine. It's only in recent years that this universality has come under threat, in the name of safety.
      - 10mo ago
sprash 10mo ago
Unpopular take: Windows 95 was the peak of Desktop UX. GUI elements were easily distinguishable from content and there was 100% consistency down to the last little detail (e.g. right click always gave you a meaningful context menu). The innovations after that are tiny in comparison and more opinionated (things like macos making the taskbar obsolete with the introduction of Exposé).
- fragmede 10mo ago
  Heh, the number of points you've probably gotten for that comment, I don't think that it's that unpopular. Win 98 was my jam but it looks hella dated today, but as you said, buttons were clearly marked, but also menus were navigatible via keyboard, soms support for themes and custom coloring, UIs were designable via a GUI builder in VB or Visual Studio using MFC which was very resource friendly compared to using Electron today. Because smartphones and tablets, but even the wide variety of screen sizes also didn't exist so it was a simpler time. I can't believe how much of a step back Electron is for UI creation compared to MFC, but that wasn't cross-platform and usually elements were absolute positioned instead of the relative resizable layout that's required today.
  - kvemkon 10mo ago
    > buttons were clearly marked Recently some UI ignored my action by clicking an entry in a list from drop down button. It turned out, this drop down button was additionally a normal button if you press it in the center. Awful. > UI creation compared to MFC Here I'd prefer Borland with (Pascal) Delphi / C++ Builder. > relative resizable layout that's required today. While it should be beneficial, the reality is awful. E.g. why is the URL input field on [1] so narrow? But if you shrinks the browser window width the text field becomes wide eventually! That's completely against expectations. [1] https://web.archive.org/save https://web.archive.org/save
- SoftTalker 10mo ago
  I would say Windows 2000 Pro, but that really wasn't too different from Windows 95. The OS was much better though, being based on NT.
mattkevan 10mo ago
Really interesting. Going to have to watch in detail. I’m in the process of designing an os interface that tries to move beyond the current desktop metaphor or the mobile grid of apps. Instead it’s going to use ‘frames’ of content that are acted on by capabilities that provide functionality. Very much inspired by Newton OS, HyperCard and the early, pre-Web thinking around hypermedia. A newton-like content soup combined with a persistent LLM intelligence layer, RAG and knowledge graphs could provide a powerful way to create, connect and manage content that breaks out of the standard document model.
- __d 10mo ago
  Is there anything you can share yet? It sounds interesting
- compressedgas 10mo ago
  Reminds me of Yuzuru Tanaka's Meme Media and Meme Market Architectures (2003) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/047172307X https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/047172307X
linguae 10mo ago
I enjoyed this talk, and I want to learn more about the concept of “learning loops” for interface design. Personally, I wish there were a champion of desktop usability like how Apple was in the 1980s and 1990s. I feel that Microsoft, Apple, and Google lost the plot in the 2010s due to two factors: (1) the rise of mobile and Web computing, and (2) the realization that software platforms are excellent platforms for milking users for cash via pushing ads and services upon a captive audience. To elaborate on the first point, UI elements from mobile and Web computing have been applied to desktops even when they are not effective, probably to save development costs, and probably since mobile and Web UI elements are seen as “modern” compared to an “old-fashioned” desktop. The result is a degraded desktop experience in 2025 compared to 2009 when Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were released. It’s hamburger windows, title bars becoming toolbars (making it harder to identify areas to drag windows), hidden scroll bars, and memory-hungry Electron apps galore, plus pushy notifications, nag screens, and ads for services. I don’t foresee any innovation from Microsoft, Apple, or Google in desktop computing that doesn’t have strings attached for monetization purposes. The open-source world is better positioned to make productive desktops, but without coordinated efforts, it seems like herding cats, and it seems that one must cobble together a system instead of having a system that works as coherently as the Mac or Windows. With that said, I won’t be too negative. KDE and GNOME are consistent when sticking to Qt/GTK applications, respectively, and there are good desktop Linux distributions out there.
- gtowey 10mo ago
  It's because companies are no longer run by engineers. The MBAs and accountants are in charge and they could care less about making good products. At Microsoft, Satya Nadella has an engineering background, but it seems like he didn't spend much time as an engineer before getting an MBA and playing the management advancement game. Our industry isn't what it used to be and I'm not sure it ever could.
  - Normal_gaussian 10mo ago
    It's great to hear from someone who thinks these people still care! It has rarely been my experience, but I haven't been everywhere yet.
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eek2121 10mo ago
For the same reason we don't reinvent the wheel. Or perhaps, the same reason we don't constantly change things like a vehicle. It works well, and introducing something new means a learning curve that 99% of folks won't want to deal with, so at that point, you are designing something new for the other 1% of folks willing to tackle it. Unless it's an amazing concept, it won't take off.
- ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
  > Or perhaps, the same reason we don't constantly change things like a vehicle. Are we stuck with the same brake pedal UX forever?
whatever1 10mo ago
Desktop is dead. Gamers will move to consoles and Valve-like platforms. Rest of productivity is done on a single window browser anyway. Llms will accelerate this Coders are the only ones who still should be interested in desktop UX, but even in that segment many just need a terminal window.
- snovv_crash 10mo ago
  For content consumption sure. For content creation though, desktop still rules.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    Sounds like a dead market. Nobody needs to create content any more now that we have AI.
- linguae 10mo ago
  Is it dead because people don’t want the desktop, or is it dead because Big Tech won’t invest in the desktop beyond what’s necessary for their business? Whether intentional or not, it seems like the trend is increasingly locked-down devices running locked-down software, and I’m also disturbed by the prospect of Big Tech gobbling up hardware (see the RAM shortage, for example), making it unaffordable for regular people, and then renting this hardware back to us in the form of cloud services. It’s disturbing and I wish we could stop this.
  - xnx 10mo ago
    Desktop is all about collaboration and interaction with other apps. The ideal of every contemporary SaaS is that you can never download your "files" so you stay locked in.
    - vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago
      Exactly. Interoperability is not cool anymore. You need to lock users in
  - 10mo ago
migueldeicaza 10mo ago
Scrubbed the talk, saw “M$” in a slide, flipped the bozo bit
immibis 10mo ago
I don't want to see what any of today's companies would come up with to replace the desktop. Microsoft has tried a few times and they all sucked.
xnx 10mo ago
I felt rage baited when he crossed out Jakob Nielsen and promoted Ed Zitron (https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQt=1852 https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQt=1852). Bad AI is not good UI, but objecting based on AI being "not ethically trained" and "burning the planet" aren't great reasons.
- GaryBluto 10mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ&t=1852s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ&t=1852s You're missing the ampersand. It's really strange how he spins off on this mini-rant about AI ethics towards the end. I clicked on a video about UI design.
  - xnx 10mo ago
    Same. AI is absolutely the future of human computer interaction (exactly the article from Jakob Nielsen that he crossed out). Even the father of WIMP, Douglas Engelbart, thought it was flawed: ""Here's the language they're proposing: You point to something and grunt". AI finally gives us the chance to instruct computers as humans.
- array_key_first 10mo ago
  From an economic standpoint those are both very good reasons, because: 1. Burning the planet on your servers is expensive, offloading it to a client-side LLM is not. 2. Ethics means risk means you won't be SOC compliant, your legal department will be mad, your users will be mad, etc. The current status-quo of a few giant LLMs on supercomputers operated by OpenAI and Google is basically destined to fail, in my eyes. At least from a business standpoint. Consumer stuff might be different.
- deleted 10mo ago
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jhhh 10mo ago
I understand the desire to want to fix user pain points. There are plenty to choose from. I think the problem is that most of the UI changes don't seem to fix any particular issue I have. They are just different, and when some changes do create even more problems there's never any configuration to disable them. You're trying to create a perfect, coherent system for everyone absent the ability to configure it to our liking. He even mentioned how unpopular making things configurable is in the UI community. A perfect pain point example was mentioned in the video: Text selection on mobile is trash. But each app seems to have different solutions, even from the same developer. Google Messages doesn't allow any text selection of content below an entire message. Some other apps have opted in to a 'smart' text select which when you select text will guess and randomly group select adjacent words. And lastly, some apps will only ever select a single word when you double tap which seemed to be the standard on mobile for a long time. All of this is inconsistent and often I'll want to do something like look up a word and realize oh I can't select the word at all (G message), or the system 'smartly' selected 4 words instead, or that it did what I want and actually just picked one word. Each application designer decided they wanted to make their own change and made the whole system fragmented and worse overall.
- porkbrain 10mo ago
  Text selection used to be frustrating on mobile for me too until Google fixed it with OCR. I get to just hold a button briefly and then can immediately select an area of the screen to scan text from, with a consistent UX. Like a screenshot but for text.
  - supportengineer 10mo ago
    That’s how I do it on the iPhone as well. I take a screen shot first. You can count on it, it is reliable, it always works.
    - throwaway894345 10mo ago
      Unless you need to select more text than fits on the screen
DonHopkins 10mo ago
Golan Levin quotes Joy Mountford in his "TED Talk, 2009: Art that looks back at you": >A lot of my work is about trying to get away from this. This a photograph of the desktop of a student of mine. And when I say desktop, I don't just mean the actual desk where his mouse has worn away the surface of the desk. If you look carefully, you can even see a hint of the Apple menu, up here in the upper left, where the virtual world has literally punched through to the physical. So this is, as Joy Mountford once said, "The mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try to suck all of human expression through." (Laughter) https://flong.com/archive/texts/lectures/lecture_ted_09/index.html https://flong.com/archive/texts/lectures/lecture_ted_09/inde... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Levin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Levin https://www.flong.com/ https://www.flong.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Mountford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Mountford https://www.joymountford.com/ https://www.joymountford.com/
christophilus 10mo ago
No, we’re not. Niri + Dank Material Shell is a different and mostly excellent approach.
johnea 10mo ago
A) I'm not going to watch the video because it's hosted by goggle, and I'm not interested in being goggled. B) However, even without watching the video, it must be describing corporate product UI, because in the free software world, there is a huge variety of selections for desktop (and phone) UI choices. C) The big question I continue to come back to in HN comments: why does any technically astute person continue to run these monopolistic, and therefore beige, boring, bland, corporate UIs? You can have free software with free choice, or you can have whatever goggle tells you...
- virtualbluesky 10mo ago
  Do you have suggestions for those less informed about projects that are pushing the envelope on desktop UX?
- krieger_857 10mo ago
  because of perception and personal preference. To some it may be bland and boring, to others, the opposite; But many, I'd say the majority, are indifferent to some degree. The classic computer experience hasn't changed much fundamentally and most users are content as long as their most used programs are pinned to the taskbar/dock
gherkinnn 10mo ago
What an excellent talk, thank you. Most refreshing of all, it is about UX where the X stands for eXperience, rather than eXploitation.
SoftTalker 10mo ago
The keyboard and screen UX was established in the 1970s. I've been using a keyboard and screen to work with computers since the 1980s. I am quite sure I'll be using a keyboard and screen until I retire. And probably 50 years from now, we'll still be using keyboards and screens. Some things just work. Touch screens, voice commands, and other specialized interfaces have and will continue to make sense for some use cases. But for sitting down and working, same as it ever was.
- sounds 10mo ago
  100% this. Wikipedia article on qwerty: "The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878... "The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s." There's always a few oddball variations. But desk work will probably use a qwerty keyboard in the year 2100
bgbntty2 10mo ago
This is a (very) rambling comment since I added things to it as I watched the video. I think the state of the current Desktop UX is great. Maybe it's a local maximum we've reached, but I love it. I mostly use XFCE and there are just a few small things I'd like changed or fixed. Nothing that I even notice frequently. I've used tiling window managers before and they were fine, but it was a bit of a hassle to get used to them. And I didn't feel they gave me something I couldn't do with a stacking window manager. I can arrange windows to the sides or corners of the monitor easily with the mouse or the keyboard. On XFCE holding down alt before moving a window lets me select any part of the window, not just the title bar, so it's just "hold down ALT, point somewhere inside the window and flick the window into a corner or a side with the mouse". If I really needed to view 10 windows at the same time, I'd consider a tiling window manager, but virtual desktops on XFCE are enough for me. I have a desktop for my mails, shopping, several for various browsers, several for work, for media, and so on. And I instantly go to the ones I want either with Meta+<number> (for example, Meta+3 for emails), or by scrolling with my middle mouse on the far right on my taskbar where I see a visual representation of my virtual desktops - just white outlines of the windows relative to the monitors. Another thing I've noticed about desktop UX is that application UX seems follow the trends of website UX where the UX is so dumbed down, even a drunken caveman who's never seen a computer can use it. Tools and options are hidden behind menus. Even the menus are hidden behind a hamburger icon. There's a lot of unnecessary white space everywhere. Sometimes there's even a linear progression through a set of steps, one step at a time, instead of having everything in view all the time - similar to how some registration forms work where you first enter your e-mail, then you click next to enter a password, then click next again, and so on. I always use "compact view" or "details view" where it's possible and hide thumbnails unless I need them. I wish more sites and apps were more like HN in design. If you're looking to convert (into money or into long-term users) as many people as possible, then it might make sense to target the technological toddlers, but then you might lose, or at least annoy, your power users. At the beginning of the video I thought we'll likely only see foundational changes when we stop interacting with the computer mainly via monitors, keyboards and mice. Maybe when we start plugging USB ports into our heads directly, or something like that. Just like I don't expect any foundational changes or improvements on static books like paper or PDF. Sure, interactive tutorials are fundamentally different in UX, but they're also a fundamentally different medium. But at 28:00, his example of a combination of window manager + file manager + clipboard made me rethink my position. I have used clipboard visualizers long ago, but the integration between apps and being able to drag and otherwise interact with it would be really interesting. Some more thoughts I jotted down while watching the video: ~~~~ 01:33 This UX of dragging files between windows is new to me. I just grab a file and ALT+TAB to wherever I want to drop it if I can't see it. I think this behavior, to raise windows only on mouse up, will annoy me. What if I have a split view of my file manager in one window, and other window above it? I want to drag a file from the left side of the split-view window to the right one, but the mouse-down wont be enough to show me the right side if the window that was above it covers it. Or if, in the lower window, I want to drag the file into a folder that's also in the lower window, but obscured by the upper window? It may be a specific scenario, but ~~~~ 05:15 I'd forgotten the "What's a computer?" ad. It really grinds my gears when people don't understand that mobile "devices" are computers. I've had non-techies look surprised when I mention it, usually in a sentence like "Well, smartphones are really just computers, so, of course, it should be possible to do X with them.". It's such a basic category. Similarly, I remember Apple not using the word "tablet" to describe their iPad years ago. Not sure if that has changed. Even many third-party online stores had a separate section for the iPad. I guess it's good marketing to make people think your product is so unique and different than others. That's why many people reference their iPhone as "my iPhone" instead of "my phone" or "my smartphone". People usually don't say "my Samsung" or "my $brand" for other brands, unless they want to specify it for clarity. Great marketing to make people do this. ~~~~ 24:50 I'm a bit surprised that someone acknowledges that the UX for typing and editing on mobile is awful. But I think that no matter how many improvements happen, using a keyboard will always be much, much faster and pleasant. It's interesting to me that even programmers or other people who've used desktop professionally for years don't know basic things like SHIFT+left_arrow or SHIFT+right_arrow to select, or CTRL+left_arrow or CTRL+right_arrow to move between words, or combining them to select words - CTRL+SHIFT+left_arrow or CTRL+SHIFT+right_arrow. Or that they can hold their mouse button after double clicking on a word and move it around to select several words. Watching them try to select some text in a normal app (such as HN's comment field or a standard notepad app) using only arrow keys without modifiers or tapping the backspace 30 times (not even holding it down) or trying to precisely select the word boundary with a mouse... it's like watching someone right-click and then select "Paste" instead of CTRL+V. I guess some users just don't learn. Maybe they don't care or are preoccupied with more important things, but it's weird to me. But, on the other hand, I never learned vi/vim or Emacs to the point where it would make me X times more productive. So maybe what those users above look to me is what I look to someone well-versed in either of those tools. ~~~~ Forgot the timestamp, it was near the end, but the projects Ink & Switch make seem interesting. Looking at their site now.
Findecanor 10mo ago
I would say that it is the term "UX" that is the confusing part of "UX/UI". By Don Norman's original definition [0], it is not merely another term for "UI" but specifically when you do have a wider scope and not working with a user interface specifically. So, the term "UX/UI" would refer to being able to both work with the wider scope, and to go deeper to work with user interface design. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdtGjoIN4E&t=10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdtGjoIN4E&t=10s
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throwaboat 10mo ago
I'd like to point to tabs in browsers as a problem area. Ctrl + T is a problem. I'll set the scene that I think most of us have experienced: you're working on a project. You start down the rabbit hole of research to find a solution to something. Maybe you find it quickly somehow. But this case, you don't. The problem is too big for an easy answer and instead requires synthesis and reflection. Eventually, after opening 50 tabs and only closing the immediately useless stuff, you find that you need to circle back up the problem solving chain. The problem is that you have 45 tabs open and no method to the madness that is clearly visible. This further compounds if you're trying to solve a new problem with an existing set of tabs that haven't been cleaned out from the last problem. Nowhere in this process is the UX leading you to solving a problem. My half-baked solution is to allow for the user to enter "research mode". When a new tab is opened, the browser halts the user and prompts for what they found on the last tab that led them to opening this new tab. When the user leaves research mode, any leafs left should also prompt for a summary or omitted as irrelevant. Then, once all the tabs have been accounted for, a report can be generated which shows all the URLs and the user's notes. Bonus points if allows generation of MLA / APA citations automagically. Further bonus points if I can highlight sections of text / images while in research mode to fill my new tab questionnaire as I go.
- gausswho 10mo ago
  You may like Zen browser. It''s best just to ignore tabs anyway. After reopening a window they'll be inactive until you open them.
  - throwaboat 10mo ago
    I checked Zen out today. Seems pretty neat. I like the spaces idea.
chrsw 10mo ago
Some of favorite desktop environments: NeXTSTEP BeOS/Haiku ChromeOS Raspberry PI macOS CDE I like uniformity, simplicity and consistency, stability, few surprises, little guessing. I want to use the computer. I don't need to become an expert in computer interfaces. Like cars. I just want to drive the car. I don't want to have to build or customize my own automobile ergonomics. Much of my time is spent on the command line anyway, but when I have to use the GUI, please make it very simple.
porise 10mo ago
I didn't watch the 45 min video but does he mention tiling environments? They have solved every complaint I had before. I can immediately swap to the exact windows I want without tabbing, I can rebind everything to pull up whatever application I want, and I can even switch a window to floating.
- deleted 10mo ago
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reirob 10mo ago
Maybe might be appropriate in this discussion: https://arcan-fe.com/ https://arcan-fe.com/ I hope this project will produce some usable new UX at some point.
rustcleaner 10mo ago
IMO a good interface should behave like it gives priority to the universe of workflows, that it respects the universality of Universal Machines and doesn't just merely resemble an appliance. Siemens NX, MSOffice/LibreOffice, Adobe CS6 Master Collection, and KDE 3.5 (Konqueror > Dolphin) are all examples off the top of my head of applications which, in varyng amounts, respected this universality principle in UI/UX design. They were fields to put your workflows together on, like ComfyUI is in image generation. Gnome has been the antithesis of this. Any kind of "simplified design" just seems to me like an artist has control and not an engineer-mathematician. Great UI/UX will foster emergence in habits and workflows, AND AVOID BREAKING MUSCLE MEMORY AT ALMOST ANY COST! Terrible UI/UX will create hard but beautiful chutes to push cattle through and into the money fleecing machine.

186 points by joelkesler 10mo ago

I've given dozens of talks, but this one seems to have struck a chord, as it's my most popular video in quite a while. It's got over 14k views in less than a day. I'm excited so many people are interested in desktop UX!

az09mugen 10mo ago
Thanks for that nice talk, it felt like a breeze of fresh air with basic & simple yet powerful but alas "forgotten" concepts of UX. Will look into your other talks.
- deleted 10mo ago
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calmbonsai 10mo ago
I concur though per my earlier post I do feel "desktop stagnation" is inevitable and we're already there. You were channeling Don Norman https://jnd.org/ https://jnd.org/ in the best of ways.
pjmlp 10mo ago
It was quite interesting.
NetOpWibby 10mo ago
Fantastic talk, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot. In my research on next-generation desktop interfaces, I was referred to Ink & Switch as well and man, I sure wish they were hiring. I missed out on the Xerox and Bell Labs eras. I'm also reading this book, "Inventing the Future" by John Buck that details early Apple (there's no reason the Jonathan Computer wouldn't sell like hotcakes today, IMHO). In my downtime I'm working on my future computing concept[1]. The direction I'm going for the UI is context awareness and the desktop being more of an endless canvas. I need to flesh out my ideas into code one of these days. P.S. Just learned we're on the same Mastodon server, that's dope. --- [1]: https://systemsoft.works https://systemsoft.works
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ChuckMcM 10mo ago
I think you did a great job of bringing fairly nuanced problems into perspective for a lot of people who take their interactions with their phone/computer/tablet for granted. That is a great skill! I think an fertile area for investigation would also be 'task specific' interactions. In XDE[1], the thing that got Steve Jobs all excited, the interaction models are different if you're writing code, debugging code, or running an application. There are key things that always work the same way (cut/paste for example) but other things that change based on context. And echoing some of the sentiment I've read here as well, consistency is a bigger win for the end user than form. By that I mean even a crappy UX is okay if it is consistent in how its crappy. Heard a great talk about Nintendo's design of the 'Mario world' games and how the secret sauce was that Mario physics are consistent, so as a game player if you knew how to use the game mechanics to do one thing, you can guess how to use them to do another thing you've not yet done. Similarly with UX, if the mechanics are consistent then they give you a stepping off point for doing a new thing you haven't done but using mechanics you are already familiar with. [1] Xerox Development Environment -- This was the environment everyone at Xerox Business Systems used when working on the Xerox Star desktop publishing workstation.
agumonkey 10mo ago
where can we find advanced ux labs ? i'm tired of the figma trend
averynicepen 10mo ago
This was a really fantastic talk and kept me riveted for 40 minutes. Where can I find more?
- scottjenson 10mo ago
  I post nearly everyone on my blog jenson.org
p_ing 10mo ago
This was a great talk! I'm interested to hear what you believe the desktop UX ('human interface') issues to actually be, today. Rightly your talk was not about specific issues or specific solutions, but as a desktop user (macOS primarily, Windows secondary but historically, and KDE a distant third), beyond the mishmash of different UIs, i.e. Windows 11 presenting Windows 3.x or just outright dumb decisions such as transparent everything, what is it that you want to solve for people on the desktop space to make them more /productive/ than they currently are? Especially now that our primary vehicle to information creation and sharing is not the desktop, but the web browser alone?
wiether 10mo ago
I'm not into UX much, but listening to someone with such experience and knowledge in their craft, giving a well structured and coherent talk, without shouting or trying to sell anything felt... peaceful? It's only in the end that I realized I just spent 40 minutes watching the video. Thanks for sharing it with us!

joelkesler 10mo ago

Great talk about the future of desktop user-interfaces. “…Scott Jenson gives examples of how focusing on UX -- instead of UI -- frees us to think bigger. This is especially true for the desktop, where the user experience has so much potential to grow well beyond its current interaction models. The desktop UX is certainly not dead, and this talk suggests some future directions we could take.” “Scott Jenson has been a leader in UX design and strategic planning for over 35 years. He was the first member of Apple’s Human Interface group in the late '80s, and has since held key roles at several major tech companies. He served as Director of Product Design for Symbian in London, managed Mobile UX design at Google, and was Creative Director at frog design in San Francisco. He returned to Google to do UX research for Android and is now a UX strategist in the open-source community for Mastodon and Home Assistant.”

rolph 10mo ago

problem is with pushing a UX at users and enforcing that model when the user changes it to something comfortable when you should be looking at what the users are throwing away, and what they are replacing it with. MS is a prime example, dont do what MS has been doing, remember whos hardware it actually is, remain aware that what a developer, and a board room understands as improvement, is not experienced in the same way by average retail consumers.

fortyseven 10mo ago

You know, sometimes things just work. They get whittled way at until we end up with a very refined endpoint. Just look at cell phones. Black rectangles as far as the eye can see. For good reason. I'm not saying don't explore new avenues ( foldables, etc. ), but it's perfectly fine to come to settle into a metaphor that just works.

7thaccount 10mo ago
The Windows 95-XP taskbar is good. Everything else has been downhill.
- pdonis 10mo ago
  I use Trinity Desktop on Linux because it's basically the same as the Windows 95-XP taskbar interface, and has no plans to change.
  - array_key_first 10mo ago
    To be fair, modern KDE has more-or-less the same taskbar. And the taskbar is also not optimal. Having text next to the icons is great, but it means you can only really have, like, 4 or 5 applications open and see all their titles and stuff. Which is why modern windows switched to just icons - which is much worse, because now you can't tell which app window is which! The optimal taskbar, imo, is a vertical one. I basically take the KDE panel and just make it vertical. I can easily have 20+ apps open and read all their titles. Also, I generally think vertical space is more valuable for applications, and you get more of it this way. It also allows me to ungroup apps. So that each window is it's own entry in the taskbar, so one less click. And it works because I can read the window title.
    - pdonis 10mo ago
      > modern KDE has more-or-less the same taskbar. More or less, yes; Trinity Desktop is basically KDE 3. But KDE has added on a lot of other cruft since then that has no value to me. > Having text next to the icons is great, but it means you can only really have, like, 4 or 5 applications open and see all their titles and stuff. That's what multiple virtual desktops are for. My usual desktop configuration has 8. Each one has only a few apps open in it. > The optimal taskbar, imo, is a vertical one. I do this for toolbars in applications like LibreOffice; on an HD aspect ratio screen it makes a lot more sense to have all that stuff off to the side, where there's more than enough screen real estate anyway, than taking up precious vertical space at the top. But for my overall desktop taskbar, I've tried vertical and it doesn't work well for me--because to show titles it would have to be way too wide for me. The horizontal taskbar does take up some vertical space at the bottom of the screen, but I can make that pretty small by downsizing it to either "Small" or "Tiny".

analogpixel 10mo ago

Why didn't Star Trek ever tackle the big issues, like them constantly updating the LCARS interface every few episodes to make it better, or having Geordi La Forge re-writing the warp core controllers in Rust?

AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
Because it’s a fantasy space opera show that has nothing to do with reality
thaumaturgy 10mo ago
Because, something that a lot of tech-obsessed Trek fans never seem to really come to terms with, is that Trek didn't fetishize technology. In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI updates because they would have advanced, culturally, to a point where they recognized that continuous UI updates are frustrating for users. They would have invested the time and research effort required to better understand the right kind of interface for the given devices, and then... just built that. And, sure, it probably would get updates from time to time, but nothing like the way we do things now. Because the way we do things now is immature. It's driven often by individual developers' needs to leave their fingerprints on something, to be able to say, "this project is now MY project", to be able to use it as a portfolio item that helps them get a bigger paycheck in the future. Likewise, Geordi was regularly shown to be making constant improvements to the ship's systems. If I remember right, some of his designs were picked up by Starfleet and integrated into other ships. He took risks, too, like experimental propulsion upgrades. But, each time, it was an upgrade in service of better meeting some present or future mission objective. Geordi might have rewritten some software modules in whatever counted as a "language" in that universe at some point, but if he had done so, he would have done extensive testing and tried very hard to do it in a way that wouldn't've disrupted ship operations, and he would only do so if it gained some kind of improvement that directly impacted the success or safety of the whole ship. Really cool technology is a key component of the Trek universe, but Trek isn't about technology. It's about people. Technology is just a thing that's in the background, and, sometimes, becomes a part of the story -- when it impacts some people in the story.
- 10mo ago

ares623 10mo ago

Are we stuck with the same toothbrush UX forever?

LeFantome 10mo ago
I feel like toothbrush UX has improved quite a bit.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
  Toothbrush UX is the same today as it was when we were hunter gatherers: use an abrasive tool to ablate plaque from the teeth and gums without removing enamel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg The variety of form factors offered are the only difference
  - jrowen 10mo ago
    Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same experience as using an electric toothbrush. Or those weird mouthguard things they have now. I don't think most people would find this degree of reduction helpful.
    - AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
      > Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same experience as using an electric toothbrush Correct? I agree with this precisely but assume you’re writing it sarcastically From the point of view of the starting state of the mouth to the end state of the mouth the USER EXPERIENCE is the same: clean teeth The FORM FACTOR is different: Electric version means ONLY that I don’t move my arm “Most people” can’t do multiplication in their head so I’m not looking to them to understand
      - echoangle 10mo ago
        That’s just not what user experience means, two products having the same start and end state doesn’t mean the user experience is the same. Imagine two tools, one a CLI and one a GUI, which both let you do the same thing. Would you say that they by definition have the same user experience?

AndrewKemendo 10mo ago

The computer form factor hasn’t changed since the mainframe: look into a screen for where to give input, select visual icons via a pointer, type text via keyboard into a text entry box, hit an action button, recieve result, repeat it’s just all gotten miniaturized Humans have outright rejected all other possible computer form factors presented to them to date including: Purely NLP with no screen head worn augmented reality contact lenses, head worn virtual reality implanted touch sensors etc… Every other possible form factor gets shit on, on this website and in every other technology newspaper. This is despite almost a century of a attempts at doing all those and making zero progress in sustained consumer penetration. Had people liked those form factors they would’ve been invested in them early on, such that they would develop the same way the laptops and iPads and iPhones and desktops have evolved. However nobody’s even interested at any type of scale in the early days of AR for example. I have a litany of augmented and virtual reality devices scattered around my home and work that are incredibly compelling technology - but are totally seen as straight up dogshit from the consumer perspective. Like everything it’s not a machine problem, it’s a human people in society problem

nkrisc 10mo ago
> Purely NLP with no screen Cumbersome and slow with horrible failure recovery. Great if it works, huge pain in the ass if it doesn't. Useless for any visual task. > head worn augmented reality Completely useless if what you're doing doesn't involve "augmenting reality" (editing a text document), which probably describes most tasks that the average person is using a computer for. > contact lenses Effectively impossible to use for some portion of the population. > head worn virtual reality Completely isolates you from your surroundings (most people don't like that) and difficult to use for people who wear glasses. Nevermind that currently they're heavy, expensive, and not particularly portable. > implanted sensors That's going to be a very hard sell for the vast majority of people. Also pretty useless for what most people want to do with computers. The reason these different form factors haven't caught on is because they're pretty shit right now and not even useful to most people. The standard desktop environment isn't perfect, but it's good and versatile enough for what most people need to do with a computer.
- 10mo ago

calmbonsai 10mo ago

For desktops, basically, yes. And that's OK. Take any other praxis that's reached the 'appliance' stage that you use in your daily life from washing machines, ovens, coffee makers, cars, smartphones, flip-phones, televisions, toilets, vacuums, microwaves, refrigerators, ranges, etc. It takes ~30 years to optimize the UX to make it "appliance-worthy" and then everything afterwards consists of edge-case features, personalization, or regulatory compliance. Desktop Computers are no exception.

Hammershaft 10mo ago
All of the other examples you gave are products constrained by physical reality with a small set of countable use-cases. I don't think computer operating systems are simply mature appliance-like products that have been optimized down their current design. I think there is a lot of potential that hasn't been realized because the very few players in the operating system space have been been hill-climbing towards a local maxima set by path dependence 40 years ago.
- calmbonsai 10mo ago
  To be precise, we're talking about "Desktop Computers" and not the more generic "information appliances". For example, we're not remotely close to having a standardized "watch form-factor" appliance interface. Physical reality is always a constraint. In this case, keyboard+display+speaker+mouse+arms-length-proximity+stationary. If you add/remove/alter _any_ of those 6 constraints, then there's plenty of room for innovation, but those constraints _define_ a desktop computer.
  - pegasus 10mo ago
    That's just the thing, desktops computers have always been in an important way the antithesis of a specialized appliance, a materialization of Turing's dream of the Universal Machine. It's only in recent years that this universality has come under threat, in the name of safety.
    - 10mo ago

sprash 10mo ago

Unpopular take: Windows 95 was the peak of Desktop UX. GUI elements were easily distinguishable from content and there was 100% consistency down to the last little detail (e.g. right click always gave you a meaningful context menu). The innovations after that are tiny in comparison and more opinionated (things like macos making the taskbar obsolete with the introduction of Exposé).

fragmede 10mo ago
Heh, the number of points you've probably gotten for that comment, I don't think that it's that unpopular. Win 98 was my jam but it looks hella dated today, but as you said, buttons were clearly marked, but also menus were navigatible via keyboard, soms support for themes and custom coloring, UIs were designable via a GUI builder in VB or Visual Studio using MFC which was very resource friendly compared to using Electron today. Because smartphones and tablets, but even the wide variety of screen sizes also didn't exist so it was a simpler time. I can't believe how much of a step back Electron is for UI creation compared to MFC, but that wasn't cross-platform and usually elements were absolute positioned instead of the relative resizable layout that's required today.
- kvemkon 10mo ago
  > buttons were clearly marked Recently some UI ignored my action by clicking an entry in a list from drop down button. It turned out, this drop down button was additionally a normal button if you press it in the center. Awful. > UI creation compared to MFC Here I'd prefer Borland with (Pascal) Delphi / C++ Builder. > relative resizable layout that's required today. While it should be beneficial, the reality is awful. E.g. why is the URL input field on [1] so narrow? But if you shrinks the browser window width the text field becomes wide eventually! That's completely against expectations. [1] https://web.archive.org/save https://web.archive.org/save
SoftTalker 10mo ago
I would say Windows 2000 Pro, but that really wasn't too different from Windows 95. The OS was much better though, being based on NT.

mattkevan 10mo ago

Really interesting. Going to have to watch in detail. I’m in the process of designing an os interface that tries to move beyond the current desktop metaphor or the mobile grid of apps. Instead it’s going to use ‘frames’ of content that are acted on by capabilities that provide functionality. Very much inspired by Newton OS, HyperCard and the early, pre-Web thinking around hypermedia. A newton-like content soup combined with a persistent LLM intelligence layer, RAG and knowledge graphs could provide a powerful way to create, connect and manage content that breaks out of the standard document model.

__d 10mo ago
Is there anything you can share yet? It sounds interesting
compressedgas 10mo ago
Reminds me of Yuzuru Tanaka's Meme Media and Meme Market Architectures (2003) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/047172307X https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/047172307X

linguae 10mo ago

I enjoyed this talk, and I want to learn more about the concept of “learning loops” for interface design. Personally, I wish there were a champion of desktop usability like how Apple was in the 1980s and 1990s. I feel that Microsoft, Apple, and Google lost the plot in the 2010s due to two factors: (1) the rise of mobile and Web computing, and (2) the realization that software platforms are excellent platforms for milking users for cash via pushing ads and services upon a captive audience. To elaborate on the first point, UI elements from mobile and Web computing have been applied to desktops even when they are not effective, probably to save development costs, and probably since mobile and Web UI elements are seen as “modern” compared to an “old-fashioned” desktop. The result is a degraded desktop experience in 2025 compared to 2009 when Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were released. It’s hamburger windows, title bars becoming toolbars (making it harder to identify areas to drag windows), hidden scroll bars, and memory-hungry Electron apps galore, plus pushy notifications, nag screens, and ads for services. I don’t foresee any innovation from Microsoft, Apple, or Google in desktop computing that doesn’t have strings attached for monetization purposes. The open-source world is better positioned to make productive desktops, but without coordinated efforts, it seems like herding cats, and it seems that one must cobble together a system instead of having a system that works as coherently as the Mac or Windows. With that said, I won’t be too negative. KDE and GNOME are consistent when sticking to Qt/GTK applications, respectively, and there are good desktop Linux distributions out there.

gtowey 10mo ago
It's because companies are no longer run by engineers. The MBAs and accountants are in charge and they could care less about making good products. At Microsoft, Satya Nadella has an engineering background, but it seems like he didn't spend much time as an engineer before getting an MBA and playing the management advancement game. Our industry isn't what it used to be and I'm not sure it ever could.
- Normal_gaussian 10mo ago
  It's great to hear from someone who thinks these people still care! It has rarely been my experience, but I haven't been everywhere yet.

deleted 10mo ago

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eek2121 10mo ago

For the same reason we don't reinvent the wheel. Or perhaps, the same reason we don't constantly change things like a vehicle. It works well, and introducing something new means a learning curve that 99% of folks won't want to deal with, so at that point, you are designing something new for the other 1% of folks willing to tackle it. Unless it's an amazing concept, it won't take off.

ErroneousBosh 10mo ago
> Or perhaps, the same reason we don't constantly change things like a vehicle. Are we stuck with the same brake pedal UX forever?

whatever1 10mo ago

Desktop is dead. Gamers will move to consoles and Valve-like platforms. Rest of productivity is done on a single window browser anyway. Llms will accelerate this Coders are the only ones who still should be interested in desktop UX, but even in that segment many just need a terminal window.

snovv_crash 10mo ago
For content consumption sure. For content creation though, desktop still rules.
- immibis 10mo ago
  Sounds like a dead market. Nobody needs to create content any more now that we have AI.
linguae 10mo ago
Is it dead because people don’t want the desktop, or is it dead because Big Tech won’t invest in the desktop beyond what’s necessary for their business? Whether intentional or not, it seems like the trend is increasingly locked-down devices running locked-down software, and I’m also disturbed by the prospect of Big Tech gobbling up hardware (see the RAM shortage, for example), making it unaffordable for regular people, and then renting this hardware back to us in the form of cloud services. It’s disturbing and I wish we could stop this.
- xnx 10mo ago
  Desktop is all about collaboration and interaction with other apps. The ideal of every contemporary SaaS is that you can never download your "files" so you stay locked in.
  - vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago
    Exactly. Interoperability is not cool anymore. You need to lock users in
- 10mo ago

migueldeicaza 10mo ago

Scrubbed the talk, saw “M$” in a slide, flipped the bozo bit

immibis 10mo ago

I don't want to see what any of today's companies would come up with to replace the desktop. Microsoft has tried a few times and they all sucked.

xnx 10mo ago

I felt rage baited when he crossed out Jakob Nielsen and promoted Ed Zitron (https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQt=1852 https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQt=1852). Bad AI is not good UI, but objecting based on AI being "not ethically trained" and "burning the planet" aren't great reasons.

GaryBluto 10mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ&t=1852s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ&t=1852s You're missing the ampersand. It's really strange how he spins off on this mini-rant about AI ethics towards the end. I clicked on a video about UI design.
- xnx 10mo ago
  Same. AI is absolutely the future of human computer interaction (exactly the article from Jakob Nielsen that he crossed out). Even the father of WIMP, Douglas Engelbart, thought it was flawed: ""Here's the language they're proposing: You point to something and grunt". AI finally gives us the chance to instruct computers as humans.
array_key_first 10mo ago
From an economic standpoint those are both very good reasons, because: 1. Burning the planet on your servers is expensive, offloading it to a client-side LLM is not. 2. Ethics means risk means you won't be SOC compliant, your legal department will be mad, your users will be mad, etc. The current status-quo of a few giant LLMs on supercomputers operated by OpenAI and Google is basically destined to fail, in my eyes. At least from a business standpoint. Consumer stuff might be different.
deleted 10mo ago
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jhhh 10mo ago

I understand the desire to want to fix user pain points. There are plenty to choose from. I think the problem is that most of the UI changes don't seem to fix any particular issue I have. They are just different, and when some changes do create even more problems there's never any configuration to disable them. You're trying to create a perfect, coherent system for everyone absent the ability to configure it to our liking. He even mentioned how unpopular making things configurable is in the UI community. A perfect pain point example was mentioned in the video: Text selection on mobile is trash. But each app seems to have different solutions, even from the same developer. Google Messages doesn't allow any text selection of content below an entire message. Some other apps have opted in to a 'smart' text select which when you select text will guess and randomly group select adjacent words. And lastly, some apps will only ever select a single word when you double tap which seemed to be the standard on mobile for a long time. All of this is inconsistent and often I'll want to do something like look up a word and realize oh I can't select the word at all (G message), or the system 'smartly' selected 4 words instead, or that it did what I want and actually just picked one word. Each application designer decided they wanted to make their own change and made the whole system fragmented and worse overall.

porkbrain 10mo ago
Text selection used to be frustrating on mobile for me too until Google fixed it with OCR. I get to just hold a button briefly and then can immediately select an area of the screen to scan text from, with a consistent UX. Like a screenshot but for text.
- supportengineer 10mo ago
  That’s how I do it on the iPhone as well. I take a screen shot first. You can count on it, it is reliable, it always works.
  - throwaway894345 10mo ago
    Unless you need to select more text than fits on the screen

DonHopkins 10mo ago

Golan Levin quotes Joy Mountford in his "TED Talk, 2009: Art that looks back at you": >A lot of my work is about trying to get away from this. This a photograph of the desktop of a student of mine. And when I say desktop, I don't just mean the actual desk where his mouse has worn away the surface of the desk. If you look carefully, you can even see a hint of the Apple menu, up here in the upper left, where the virtual world has literally punched through to the physical. So this is, as Joy Mountford once said, "The mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try to suck all of human expression through." (Laughter) https://flong.com/archive/texts/lectures/lecture_ted_09/index.html https://flong.com/archive/texts/lectures/lecture_ted_09/inde... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Levin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Levin https://www.flong.com/ https://www.flong.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Mountford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Mountford https://www.joymountford.com/ https://www.joymountford.com/

christophilus 10mo ago

No, we’re not. Niri + Dank Material Shell is a different and mostly excellent approach.

johnea 10mo ago

A) I'm not going to watch the video because it's hosted by goggle, and I'm not interested in being goggled. B) However, even without watching the video, it must be describing corporate product UI, because in the free software world, there is a huge variety of selections for desktop (and phone) UI choices. C) The big question I continue to come back to in HN comments: why does any technically astute person continue to run these monopolistic, and therefore beige, boring, bland, corporate UIs? You can have free software with free choice, or you can have whatever goggle tells you...

virtualbluesky 10mo ago
Do you have suggestions for those less informed about projects that are pushing the envelope on desktop UX?
krieger_857 10mo ago
because of perception and personal preference. To some it may be bland and boring, to others, the opposite; But many, I'd say the majority, are indifferent to some degree. The classic computer experience hasn't changed much fundamentally and most users are content as long as their most used programs are pinned to the taskbar/dock

gherkinnn 10mo ago

What an excellent talk, thank you. Most refreshing of all, it is about UX where the X stands for eXperience, rather than eXploitation.

SoftTalker 10mo ago

The keyboard and screen UX was established in the 1970s. I've been using a keyboard and screen to work with computers since the 1980s. I am quite sure I'll be using a keyboard and screen until I retire. And probably 50 years from now, we'll still be using keyboards and screens. Some things just work. Touch screens, voice commands, and other specialized interfaces have and will continue to make sense for some use cases. But for sitting down and working, same as it ever was.

sounds 10mo ago
100% this. Wikipedia article on qwerty: "The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878... "The 0 key was added and standardized in its modern position early in the history of the typewriter, but the 1 and exclamation point were left off some typewriter keyboards into the 1970s." There's always a few oddball variations. But desk work will probably use a qwerty keyboard in the year 2100

bgbntty2 10mo ago

This is a (very) rambling comment since I added things to it as I watched the video. I think the state of the current Desktop UX is great. Maybe it's a local maximum we've reached, but I love it. I mostly use XFCE and there are just a few small things I'd like changed or fixed. Nothing that I even notice frequently. I've used tiling window managers before and they were fine, but it was a bit of a hassle to get used to them. And I didn't feel they gave me something I couldn't do with a stacking window manager. I can arrange windows to the sides or corners of the monitor easily with the mouse or the keyboard. On XFCE holding down alt before moving a window lets me select any part of the window, not just the title bar, so it's just "hold down ALT, point somewhere inside the window and flick the window into a corner or a side with the mouse". If I really needed to view 10 windows at the same time, I'd consider a tiling window manager, but virtual desktops on XFCE are enough for me. I have a desktop for my mails, shopping, several for various browsers, several for work, for media, and so on. And I instantly go to the ones I want either with Meta+<number> (for example, Meta+3 for emails), or by scrolling with my middle mouse on the far right on my taskbar where I see a visual representation of my virtual desktops - just white outlines of the windows relative to the monitors. Another thing I've noticed about desktop UX is that application UX seems follow the trends of website UX where the UX is so dumbed down, even a drunken caveman who's never seen a computer can use it. Tools and options are hidden behind menus. Even the menus are hidden behind a hamburger icon. There's a lot of unnecessary white space everywhere. Sometimes there's even a linear progression through a set of steps, one step at a time, instead of having everything in view all the time - similar to how some registration forms work where you first enter your e-mail, then you click next to enter a password, then click next again, and so on. I always use "compact view" or "details view" where it's possible and hide thumbnails unless I need them. I wish more sites and apps were more like HN in design. If you're looking to convert (into money or into long-term users) as many people as possible, then it might make sense to target the technological toddlers, but then you might lose, or at least annoy, your power users. At the beginning of the video I thought we'll likely only see foundational changes when we stop interacting with the computer mainly via monitors, keyboards and mice. Maybe when we start plugging USB ports into our heads directly, or something like that. Just like I don't expect any foundational changes or improvements on static books like paper or PDF. Sure, interactive tutorials are fundamentally different in UX, but they're also a fundamentally different medium. But at 28:00, his example of a combination of window manager + file manager + clipboard made me rethink my position. I have used clipboard visualizers long ago, but the integration between apps and being able to drag and otherwise interact with it would be really interesting. Some more thoughts I jotted down while watching the video: ~~~~ 01:33 This UX of dragging files between windows is new to me. I just grab a file and ALT+TAB to wherever I want to drop it if I can't see it. I think this behavior, to raise windows only on mouse up, will annoy me. What if I have a split view of my file manager in one window, and other window above it? I want to drag a file from the left side of the split-view window to the right one, but the mouse-down wont be enough to show me the right side if the window that was above it covers it. Or if, in the lower window, I want to drag the file into a folder that's also in the lower window, but obscured by the upper window? It may be a specific scenario, but ~~~~ 05:15 I'd forgotten the "What's a computer?" ad. It really grinds my gears when people don't understand that mobile "devices" are computers. I've had non-techies look surprised when I mention it, usually in a sentence like "Well, smartphones are really just computers, so, of course, it should be possible to do X with them.". It's such a basic category. Similarly, I remember Apple not using the word "tablet" to describe their iPad years ago. Not sure if that has changed. Even many third-party online stores had a separate section for the iPad. I guess it's good marketing to make people think your product is so unique and different than others. That's why many people reference their iPhone as "my iPhone" instead of "my phone" or "my smartphone". People usually don't say "my Samsung" or "my $brand" for other brands, unless they want to specify it for clarity. Great marketing to make people do this. ~~~~ 24:50 I'm a bit surprised that someone acknowledges that the UX for typing and editing on mobile is awful. But I think that no matter how many improvements happen, using a keyboard will always be much, much faster and pleasant. It's interesting to me that even programmers or other people who've used desktop professionally for years don't know basic things like SHIFT+left_arrow or SHIFT+right_arrow to select, or CTRL+left_arrow or CTRL+right_arrow to move between words, or combining them to select words - CTRL+SHIFT+left_arrow or CTRL+SHIFT+right_arrow. Or that they can hold their mouse button after double clicking on a word and move it around to select several words. Watching them try to select some text in a normal app (such as HN's comment field or a standard notepad app) using only arrow keys without modifiers or tapping the backspace 30 times (not even holding it down) or trying to precisely select the word boundary with a mouse... it's like watching someone right-click and then select "Paste" instead of CTRL+V. I guess some users just don't learn. Maybe they don't care or are preoccupied with more important things, but it's weird to me. But, on the other hand, I never learned vi/vim or Emacs to the point where it would make me X times more productive. So maybe what those users above look to me is what I look to someone well-versed in either of those tools. ~~~~ Forgot the timestamp, it was near the end, but the projects Ink & Switch make seem interesting. Looking at their site now.

Findecanor 10mo ago

I would say that it is the term "UX" that is the confusing part of "UX/UI". By Don Norman's original definition [0], it is not merely another term for "UI" but specifically when you do have a wider scope and not working with a user interface specifically. So, the term "UX/UI" would refer to being able to both work with the wider scope, and to go deeper to work with user interface design. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdtGjoIN4E&t=10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdtGjoIN4E&t=10s

deleted 10mo ago

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throwaboat 10mo ago

I'd like to point to tabs in browsers as a problem area. Ctrl + T is a problem. I'll set the scene that I think most of us have experienced: you're working on a project. You start down the rabbit hole of research to find a solution to something. Maybe you find it quickly somehow. But this case, you don't. The problem is too big for an easy answer and instead requires synthesis and reflection. Eventually, after opening 50 tabs and only closing the immediately useless stuff, you find that you need to circle back up the problem solving chain. The problem is that you have 45 tabs open and no method to the madness that is clearly visible. This further compounds if you're trying to solve a new problem with an existing set of tabs that haven't been cleaned out from the last problem. Nowhere in this process is the UX leading you to solving a problem. My half-baked solution is to allow for the user to enter "research mode". When a new tab is opened, the browser halts the user and prompts for what they found on the last tab that led them to opening this new tab. When the user leaves research mode, any leafs left should also prompt for a summary or omitted as irrelevant. Then, once all the tabs have been accounted for, a report can be generated which shows all the URLs and the user's notes. Bonus points if allows generation of MLA / APA citations automagically. Further bonus points if I can highlight sections of text / images while in research mode to fill my new tab questionnaire as I go.

gausswho 10mo ago
You may like Zen browser. It''s best just to ignore tabs anyway. After reopening a window they'll be inactive until you open them.
- throwaboat 10mo ago
  I checked Zen out today. Seems pretty neat. I like the spaces idea.

chrsw 10mo ago

Some of favorite desktop environments: NeXTSTEP BeOS/Haiku ChromeOS Raspberry PI macOS CDE I like uniformity, simplicity and consistency, stability, few surprises, little guessing. I want to use the computer. I don't need to become an expert in computer interfaces. Like cars. I just want to drive the car. I don't want to have to build or customize my own automobile ergonomics. Much of my time is spent on the command line anyway, but when I have to use the GUI, please make it very simple.

porise 10mo ago

I didn't watch the 45 min video but does he mention tiling environments? They have solved every complaint I had before. I can immediately swap to the exact windows I want without tabbing, I can rebind everything to pull up whatever application I want, and I can even switch a window to floating.

deleted 10mo ago
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reirob 10mo ago

Maybe might be appropriate in this discussion: https://arcan-fe.com/ https://arcan-fe.com/ I hope this project will produce some usable new UX at some point.

rustcleaner 10mo ago

IMO a good interface should behave like it gives priority to the universe of workflows, that it respects the universality of Universal Machines and doesn't just merely resemble an appliance. Siemens NX, MSOffice/LibreOffice, Adobe CS6 Master Collection, and KDE 3.5 (Konqueror > Dolphin) are all examples off the top of my head of applications which, in varyng amounts, respected this universality principle in UI/UX design. They were fields to put your workflows together on, like ComfyUI is in image generation. Gnome has been the antithesis of this. Any kind of "simplified design" just seems to me like an artist has control and not an engineer-mathematician. Great UI/UX will foster emergence in habits and workflows, AND AVOID BREAKING MUSCLE MEMORY AT ALMOST ANY COST! Terrible UI/UX will create hard but beautiful chutes to push cattle through and into the money fleecing machine.