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In the last few years, we seemed to have completely thrown away everything we're learned about UX and essentially made the same mistakes all over again. I don'
by steven2012 12y ago
In the last few years, we seemed to have completely thrown away everything we're learned about UX and essentially made the same mistakes all over again. I don't know what started this trend but it's frustrating.
For example, something as simple as the Google PDF viewer: it took me forever to figure out how to save the file. There are no visual cues whatsoever to tell you how to save the PDF. Maybe it's "cooler" but this is something that you need to figure out to mouse over the bottom right corner and these buttons magically appear. I thought we were done with stupid UX decisions like this back in the 90s.
The same goes for Windows 8. I've been using Windows since 3.1, and I tried using Windows 8 for a good hour, before I gave up. There are too many things that are completely nonsensical and need explanation. It's enough to make me switch away from Windows entirely. How this atrocity could have gone through the entire Microsoft org without getting canned before launch is a testament to how broken that company is.
The opposite is iOS. I really don't like using Mac OS (I wiped off Mac OS from my company Mac laptop and installed Windows 7 on it to be more productive), but iOS can be learned by an infant, I've seen it with my own eyes. That's a testament to great design, because it's so intuitive that someone who wasn't alive 18 months ago can figure out how to use it.
- daigoba66 12y agoWindows 8 is interesting. After reading the engineering blogs it's pretty clear they designed the UI changes based on telemetry data and not listening to real user feedback.
- marknutter 12y agoIt sounds a bit like you don't like learning new interfaces. That's not the same thing as dealing with bad design.
- toddmorey 12y agoI think his point is comparing how easy / intuitive each interface is to learn. Besides, UI is supposed to be an aid not a puzzle.
- nightski 12y agoIntuitive/easy to learn does not imply useful. Some times the most useful things are the ones that have a high learning curve. It seems the tech industry has decided that making things easy is more important than making them useful.
- brazzy 12y agoThat's because it is when you want mass-market adoption. And UX design is only about making things easy to use. If they're not,the design is an utter 100% failure.
- weego 12y agoThe point is that unless you are in a specific domain where complexity is an unavoidable necessity (let's take 3D modelling as an example for arguments sake) learning a UI, especially when it is a upgrade of a familiar product, should be a simple task of augmenting existing knowledge with a relatively small amount of discovery. I would argue the ribbon menu largely achieved this, Win8 in my opinion absolutely does not. So much so companies are preinstalling 3rd party addons just to get it to a state where people know how to achieve the simplest of goals.
- normloman 12y agoSometimes it is bad design. When you replace a perfectly good interface -- one users have grown accustomed to for decades -- and replace it with something different that offers no additional benefits, you're a bad designer. See: Windows 8, Gnome 3, Ubuntu Unity.
- greggman 12y agoI think iOS used to be as simple as you make it but the new flat design is not. There's plenty of example now of places in apps where one flat thing is not clickable and the flat thing right next to it is. How is that intuitive and discoverable? Go to Notes. Everything is clickable. Click back to Accounts. Now everything except "Accounts" is clickable. Why? How are you supposed to know? Go to the Phone App, pick a contact, The name shows up with the contact's info. Everything on the screen is clickable except the contact's name? Why? How am I supposed to make the distinction? I know there are better examples but I just clicked the first 2 built in apps I saw.