The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
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The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
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Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#2Mobile offered a bit hope. First, the screens were to small to clutter with complicated GUIs. Second, you could substitute some visual controls with touch.
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#3was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#4was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs
Ditto. Sadly, this got posted three times to HN already and hit my twitter feed without seeing anyone say "you're wrong, there's a book everyone should read!"
At this point, my hopes are low.
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#5Mobile offered a bit hope. First, the screens were to small to clutter with complicated GUIs. Second, you could substitute some visual controls with touch.
The piece by Maciej (http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm) on page weight points out that a lot of sites have responded by developing desktop sites as if people are using them with touchscreens. I'm not sure that's a good idea.
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#6was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs
Ditto. Sadly, this got posted three times to HN already and hit my twitter feed without seeing anyone say "you're wrong, there's a book everyone should read!" At this point, my hopes are low.
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#7If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD.
Let's apply this metaphor to programmers working on UIs: a huge chunk of practitioners right now get by via simply having learned a bit of CAD (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS). And also, yeah, they have walked over a bridge once/seen a panoramic postcard, so there's that. Very ad-hoc, very disorganized, full of gaps.
Of course the impact of mistakes is magnitudes different between designing bridges and building UIs. Except for when that UI drives medical automation. Or finance (one of my faves is an anecdote about how a bad input form field cost a fund management company literally in the 8 digits of money).
Our industry is of course very young, and so I think this education gap is simply a temporary issue. I am looking forward to (and am personally investing into) a day when there will be a more systematic and comprehensive education on how what a good UI looks, behaves and feels like, not just how to code buttons and boxes on a screen.
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#8was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs
Check out "About Face" by Alan Cooper et al.
A well respected interaction designer was so kind to give me her 1st edition many years ago and I still find myself coming back to it regularly.
New and updated 4th edition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781118766...
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#9"Set of Standard Resources"
Check out Material Design by google - its been a lifesaver to me who is from a very technical background. Best part is with very little work you can really impress your bosses !
Good Luck
Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over
#10If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD. Let's apply this met…
I work in product development for things that have mechanical and electronic bits, etc. There are disciplined processes for designing things, typically applied to life support systems such as bridges and jet planes. Or, hi-reliability components like hard drives.
But outside of life support products, I would guess that the majority of product development is only as disciplined as it needs to be, for what's being made. A lot of stuff is designed by seat-of-pants, by people sitting at CAD stations who mostly have engineering degrees but don't engage in engineering and have forgotten all of their math and theory.
The level of organization and discipline needed to do things like design airplanes is done by the segment of engineers who enjoy that discipline and gravitate towards those industries. People who prefer to do seat-of-pants design find their own niche as well. At my workplace, I can't count the number of times I've heard: "But we don't design airplanes here." Our stuff works when it gets to the customer, but if you scrutinize our designs the way we've all been trained to scrutinize UI's, you'd be horrified.