The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over • Hacker News Board

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#11

Post by euske » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:40 AM UTC

collinglass wrote: post #3

was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs

I tend to rely on the Apple's UI guidelines. They have many hints that are applicable even for non-Apple apps. I remember Apple had a similar thing already back in 80s, which I found amazing.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserEx...

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#12

Post by gameboy24 » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:40 AM UTC

1971genocide wrote: post #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

Material design is great but I see apps that don't need it implement it a lot. Not every app needs a FAB, or a card ui.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#13

Post by RoboErectus » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:43 AM UTC

I always thought "Don't make me think" was a bit of a UI reference that everyone should read.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#14

Post by icebraining » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

mmatants wrote: post #7

If 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…

Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century.

A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#15

Post by Jach » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:46 AM UTC

1971genocide wrote: post #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

Material Design is just like Apple's guidelines. It's great for helping to create something that looks uniformly designed and not a hodge podge of UI gimmicks, helping design-ignorant coders create something that looks nice, and as you say it's easy to get management buy in, but is it actually good? Will following it actually reduce your count of UI mistakes? Personally I don't like it at all, and I've had many complaints, both functional and from personal preference, with Google's design changes over the last few years.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#16

Post by Nutmog » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:48 AM UTC

I think everyone knows that non-modal dialogs, live previews and obvious icons are better, but they're also harder to do.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#17

Post by euske » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

I tend to think that making a good UI is like writing a good technical document or good presentation slides. We should think UI as a kind of natural language. There could be some subjective guidelines, but I don't think there will ever be a definitive standard.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#18

Post by teyc » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

Does anyone have enough experience with Tk and REBOL why these should be exemplar as far as UI and layout is concerned?

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#19

Post by dman » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

Request to all designers - please stop building nested scroll and drag interactions. Common pet peeve for me recently is embedded map widgets in web pages. A user scrolling the page will find at some point that their mouse has come over a map which is now eating the scroll events and they are now scrolling the map instead. Only choice at that point is to move the mouse over and start scrolling over. Bonus annoyance - In many cases it is non trivial to reset the map to its default setting before the unwanted scroll interacted with it. Hovering over an item is a very weak commitment from the user that they want to interact with the element. Please do not use the hover to infer that the user means to interact with the element, at the very least put in some kind of timer and enable the interaction only on sustained hovers.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#20

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

peter303 wrote: post #2

Mobile offered a bit hope. First, the screens were to small to clutter with complicated GUIs. Second, you could substitute some visual controls with touch.

I recently tried to get my mobile provider to set up data roaming while I was away from home. (You can't set up data roaming from home, for reasons that remain mysterious and unexplained.)

The fact I was using a mobile device didn't stop my provider's site from asking three times if I wanted to take part in a survey, or from displaying a floating "Would you like to chat?" dialog that was so big it literally covered a quarter of the mobile screen - and which moved to the same position whenever I try to scroll it out of the way.

It also didn't help my provider provide the right links to the right content.

Eventually I gave up. My gf already had data working, so we used her phone for everything.

The experience was impressively terrible.

Unfortunately if you don't have UI clue, mobile is just another way to get stuff wrong.