3 ms·

Homogenous might be awesome. I miss predictable UIs.

andai 7mo ago
Damn you just made me realize. We used to have everything having personality but being consistent as far as UX goes. Now everything looks like tax forms and the UX is all over the place.
- yangm97 7mo ago
  That’s because designers stopped caring about following each platform’s guidelines because they want to spread “brand recognition” or some shit like that.
  - b112 7mo ago
    This exudes everywhere. I've had cases of where some weirdo company changes their packaging on, say, soap... and now I literally can't find what I used to use. The logic is that some other company is cloning their look, so they want to "stand out" again, and thus change theirs. Sometimes, I'll manage to find the brand with the new colours and logo. But often even then, I can't find the specific product from that brand. They've changed it so much I can't tell which version I picked before. Which makes me look for something more like what I used to have. Good job "standing out" guys. I'd say literally maybe 1/3 of the time, I've just literally lost products. I don't know the name, just how it looks.
  - seanmcdirmid 7mo ago
    It’s not the designers pushing that, it’s the product managers and marketers. UXDs generally roll their eyes at pure branding stuff.
    - yangm97 7mo ago
      Guess it’s a bit of both. Whenever I said “this is a website, not an app” I would get confused looks from designers. UX people fight some of the BS, but “looking pretty” usually wins over “being useful”.
  - tpmoney 7mo ago
    This is kind of a revisionist view of software. I think most of the consistency we remember from software past is because skipping the OS tollboxes and doing your own custom UI was hard rather than because most software developers cared about consistency. Yes the OS vendors did, but one doesn't need to go far to find applications that very much did their own thing. "Bubbly" and "goopy" UIs of the sort "Kai's Power Tools" exemplified were all over in the 90's. Everyone's favorite Winamp was famously not using the standard UI toolkits and had a heavily customizable UI. To say nothing of the many software packages that used the standard toolkits only far enough to give you a window that was then filled with some sort of Macromedia or similar UI that was then completely proprietary to the application itself (think encyclopedia and other educational software of the day). Even the OS vendors couldn't help themselves sometimes (looking at you QuickTime 7) If older software was more consistent, it's only because the OS didn't provide nearly the same degree of customization options that HTML and CSS provide developers today. Not because of some pride in consistency.
    - swivelmaster 7mo ago
      At least in the goopy days it was VERY clear what was and was not a button.
theli0nheart 7mo ago
Good design is distinctive. No one wants a world where everything looks the same.
- jorl17 7mo ago
  Design is too broad a word for what is being discussed here and often in the world at large. Still, to me, good design is intuitive. I look at the thing, and I know how to use it. If it looks great and distinctive, even better. But most outlandishly distinctive design I've (consciously?) found is terrible. Obviously, these short sentences hide a lot: - To know how to use things, I must have prior experience. But different users have different prior experiences and acquired design patterns (i.e. interaction patterns) - My knowledge of the domain is also different from that of other users. - The way I interact with the system is affected by many factors (e.g. accessibility related concerns, zoom, etc.) - Intuition is not magic. It comes after training as well. Good design is discoverable. Extraordinary design reinforces its own patterns seamlessly, so that I learn it without even knowing I'm learning (see: hidden tutorials in game design). I also include here the incredible attributes of good design that far predate computer-related design (e.g. how an icon should be recognizable just by its silhouette, or how apps "invisibly" teach us what each color or even section of the screen means). - My incentive to learn (sometimes "tolerate") the design depends on many variables. Some of these include the design's "taste", yes. Others depend on how much my boss/client is paying me to "use this shit". I wouldn't say I want a world where everything looks the same, but I certainly want one where everything works the same, and some geniuses once in a while add something new to my list of known (and loved) design patterns. I am not anti-design-experiments, but I will take a predictable UI that looks like windows 98 everyday over some "distinctive" shit that breaks all manner of expected behaviors (from keyboard shortcuts, to colors, to button placement, to relative sizing, to........)
- Jensson 7mo ago
  I think its good that HN and reddit are basically the same, or that all old forums were basically the same but with different color schemes. Homogeneity is a blessing for UX.
  - 7mo ago
hbosch 7mo ago
Homogenous doesn't work when you're Google and your product comes out looking like Microsoft.

andai 7mo ago

Damn you just made me realize. We used to have everything having personality but being consistent as far as UX goes. Now everything looks like tax forms and the UX is all over the place.

yangm97 7mo ago
That’s because designers stopped caring about following each platform’s guidelines because they want to spread “brand recognition” or some shit like that.
- b112 7mo ago
  This exudes everywhere. I've had cases of where some weirdo company changes their packaging on, say, soap... and now I literally can't find what I used to use. The logic is that some other company is cloning their look, so they want to "stand out" again, and thus change theirs. Sometimes, I'll manage to find the brand with the new colours and logo. But often even then, I can't find the specific product from that brand. They've changed it so much I can't tell which version I picked before. Which makes me look for something more like what I used to have. Good job "standing out" guys. I'd say literally maybe 1/3 of the time, I've just literally lost products. I don't know the name, just how it looks.
- seanmcdirmid 7mo ago
  It’s not the designers pushing that, it’s the product managers and marketers. UXDs generally roll their eyes at pure branding stuff.
  - yangm97 7mo ago
    Guess it’s a bit of both. Whenever I said “this is a website, not an app” I would get confused looks from designers. UX people fight some of the BS, but “looking pretty” usually wins over “being useful”.
- tpmoney 7mo ago
  This is kind of a revisionist view of software. I think most of the consistency we remember from software past is because skipping the OS tollboxes and doing your own custom UI was hard rather than because most software developers cared about consistency. Yes the OS vendors did, but one doesn't need to go far to find applications that very much did their own thing. "Bubbly" and "goopy" UIs of the sort "Kai's Power Tools" exemplified were all over in the 90's. Everyone's favorite Winamp was famously not using the standard UI toolkits and had a heavily customizable UI. To say nothing of the many software packages that used the standard toolkits only far enough to give you a window that was then filled with some sort of Macromedia or similar UI that was then completely proprietary to the application itself (think encyclopedia and other educational software of the day). Even the OS vendors couldn't help themselves sometimes (looking at you QuickTime 7) If older software was more consistent, it's only because the OS didn't provide nearly the same degree of customization options that HTML and CSS provide developers today. Not because of some pride in consistency.
  - swivelmaster 7mo ago
    At least in the goopy days it was VERY clear what was and was not a button.

theli0nheart 7mo ago

Good design is distinctive. No one wants a world where everything looks the same.

jorl17 7mo ago
Design is too broad a word for what is being discussed here and often in the world at large. Still, to me, good design is intuitive. I look at the thing, and I know how to use it. If it looks great and distinctive, even better. But most outlandishly distinctive design I've (consciously?) found is terrible. Obviously, these short sentences hide a lot: - To know how to use things, I must have prior experience. But different users have different prior experiences and acquired design patterns (i.e. interaction patterns) - My knowledge of the domain is also different from that of other users. - The way I interact with the system is affected by many factors (e.g. accessibility related concerns, zoom, etc.) - Intuition is not magic. It comes after training as well. Good design is discoverable. Extraordinary design reinforces its own patterns seamlessly, so that I learn it without even knowing I'm learning (see: hidden tutorials in game design). I also include here the incredible attributes of good design that far predate computer-related design (e.g. how an icon should be recognizable just by its silhouette, or how apps "invisibly" teach us what each color or even section of the screen means). - My incentive to learn (sometimes "tolerate") the design depends on many variables. Some of these include the design's "taste", yes. Others depend on how much my boss/client is paying me to "use this shit". I wouldn't say I want a world where everything looks the same, but I certainly want one where everything works the same, and some geniuses once in a while add something new to my list of known (and loved) design patterns. I am not anti-design-experiments, but I will take a predictable UI that looks like windows 98 everyday over some "distinctive" shit that breaks all manner of expected behaviors (from keyboard shortcuts, to colors, to button placement, to relative sizing, to........)
Jensson 7mo ago
I think its good that HN and reddit are basically the same, or that all old forums were basically the same but with different color schemes. Homogeneity is a blessing for UX.
- 7mo ago

hbosch 7mo ago

Homogenous doesn't work when you're Google and your product comes out looking like Microsoft.