5 ms·
Many of these are blatantly obvious. Most bad design isn't because people don't know better; it's due to laziness.
by shogun21 11y ago
Many of these are blatantly obvious. Most bad design isn't because people don't know better; it's due to laziness.
- vogt 11y agoAgreed completely. This is all Design 101. I'd worry about someone who was employed as a UI Designer who did not already understand all this inherently.
- plorkyeran 11y agoA large portion of the apps on the app store did not have someone employed as a UI Designer involved at any point.
- vogt 11y agoWell, of course not.
- emsy 11y agoI agree that most of them are obvious. I don't agree that bad design is because of laziness. There are many reasons for bad design and most of the time I'll only find one or two of the "dont's" in a given app, but this will ruin my experience. Case in point: I can't even count the number of HN readers I deleted because they didn't display the content without vertical and horizontal scrollbars or had really small text. Everything else was fine though.
- shogun21 11y agoGood design is hard. It takes research and effort, and often has to go through many iterations. I say it's due to laziness because if the developers had the time, they would adjust the text and scrollbars for a better experience.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThere's such a thing as just-in-time design, where you only put as much effort (money) into it as it deserved. All rom-upgrade utilities look like suck, because, well, you only use them once and they're free. And so on.
- rwallace 11y agoI don't think the reason is any need for research. There have been quite a few occasions when I've made suggestions regarding how to fix obvious, major flaws. I've stopped bothering, because the response in all cases has been - not "sorry, we don't have time to implement the fix," which would be entirely forgivable, but some polite variant of "no, this is our product not yours, so we'll do things the way we want, not the way you want, so get lost." On the bright side, that means if you are willing to set ego aside, you gain an immediate and substantial advantage over the competition.
- oldmanjay 11y agoEverything is obvious once some entity has spent 30 years collecting and refining the practices.
- on_and_off 11y agoMost of the stupidly bad design decisions I have seen come from somebody high in the hierarchy (product manager, CEO or founder) demanding a change, even if both designers and developers rally on how awful it would be. I have not yet found a solution to this problem.
- vogt 11y agoThe book Articulating Design Decisions (O'Reilly) deals specifically with this. It's always an uphill battle, and the book's overall lesson is "empathize as much as possible", but it's a great read. It has definitely helped me in dealing with more difficult management types who don't understand the design or technical side of product building.
- on_and_off 11y agoThanks, I have added it to my reading list.
- moschel 11y agoGreat read. Tom is a master when it comes to clear communication.
- tomgreever 11y agoHey there, I wrote Articulating Design Decisions. Convincing stakeholders of your decisions is critical to the success of every project for sure... I've been there many times. You can watch my talk from MidwestUX last year that gives some practical tips too: https://vimeo.com/110260257 https://vimeo.com/110260257 The early release eBook is available now. The print version will be available in August.
- jamesdelaneyie 11y agowould A/B testing, in some capacity, the decision in some form or another, help with this?
- 11y ago
- johanbrook 11y agoMost design sessions during WWDC last week was pretty much "Apple-stating-the-obvious-for-40-minutes". I don't know what the target audience was.
- frandroid 11y agoThe D in WWDC doesn't stand for Designers...
- LoSboccacc 11y agoWhile tips are blatantly obvios, the very article that lists them is on a non responsive website that is paginate like shit on chrome/ios. Go figure.
- ffn 11y agoWell, good design is obvious once you know it. But before you know it, it's as opaque and obtuse as anything else. It's just that design has this strange property with us humans in that, when done right, it feels so natural and emergent to us to the point we automatically take it for granted the instant we "get it". In the realm of modern-day web-design, most bad design is because the website was built before a lot of these good design principles and conventions were invented (e.g. responsive grids, tons of padding, flex-direction(column), etc.). Next followed by prideful "designers" who steadfastly refuse to use a design framework because the site they're building must be a special snowflake. Next followed by the missing-the-point-followers of RMS (that is, they're not following RMS for the free software philosophy) who plainly look down on CSS and design as something that is beneath them. Finally, I'll give you laziness.
- megablast 11y ago> laziness Or more likely time constraints.
- kayman 11y agoWithout being there at the time the decisions are made, a lot of it appears to be laziness to someone looking from the outside. It could be laziness, but a lot of times, I found that it was time constraints to deliver and fix it later, but later never comes or it's not important enough to revisit and change.
- prawn 11y agoOften due to client decisions or pressure in my experience.
- rwallace 11y agoI'd find it more forgivable if it was laziness, but I've seen too many cases where designers put in extra effort to make things worse to believe that. I think it's ego. Good design is about doing what the users want rather than what the designer wants; bad design is the reverse.
- AgentME 11y agoThis list helps people realize where they've been lazy.