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We use too many damn modals (2018)

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Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#111

Post by ozaark »

gindely wrote: post #99
ozaark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can’t teach this stuff There is literally a field of science called Human-Computer Interaction that teaches this stuff.

Yes but have you seen software - almost anything that's been developed since the growth of mobile platforms has basically done the exact opposite of what that field of science teaches. This seems to confirm the op's point.

That fault lies solely with the designers and developers of those software.

"Yeah but they didn't know what they were doing and didn't want to learn" is a more appropriate take.

You can think of it this way: your neighbor nextdoor made a soapbox car. Does that qualify them to be your mechanic? Probably not.

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#112

Post by ktpsns »

aylmao wrote: post #9

I remember reading somewhere that most (modal) dialogs are just lazy design. It's easier to have a dialog component and throw whatever notice or controls in there. It's a predictable and flexible canvas. Your password is incorrect? Error dialog. Easier to design and build that a warning state on the text-boxes and a message close to the login button. Writing a post? Editor dialog. It's easier to design and build than…

Especially blocking modals (which both stop your code and the user) are a damned easy way to interact with the user in most programming languages. Nothing is easier then to write alert("foo") or if(confirm("are you sure?")) do_sth();

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#113

Post by mrgreenfur »

prox wrote: post #86
bedatadriven wrote: post #27

I was just about to share this our designer, who is always talking me down from modals, when I reached the bottom and discovered that our designer is in fact the author. I seriously can't say enough for this message. Adrian helped us redesign our app 2 years ago, dispatching many many modals in the process, and delivering a huge increase in usability that our customers and users very much do care about.

I implore everyone to read the fundamental book : about face This book argues about a lot of UI topics, and with a lot of detail. It’s the bible of UI design imo.

What's the book title? "About Face"?

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#114

Post by hpen »

Kaze404 wrote: post #72

This is only tangentially related, but one thing I'm absolutely sick of is rounded corners. I don't know why, and I don't know if it makes any sense, but opening a page and seeing literally everything with border-radius makes my blood boil. It feels like they're trying to protect me from sharp corners, as if they're dangerous. Come on, we're all adults here. We can take a few 90 degree angles.

This just feels really picky to me. I mean it's a rounded corner for Christ sake.

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#115

Post by prox »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #113
prox wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I implore everyone to read the fundamental book : about face This book argues about a lot of UI topics, and with a lot of detail. It’s the bible of UI design imo.

What's the book title? "About Face"?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/289062.About_Face_3

This is a link, you can also search “about face interaction design”

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#116

Post by yowlingcat »

grumple wrote: post #109
yowlingcat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that may be, if you are not uncovering this during your interview process, do you think it's possible there's room for improvement in how you conduct your end of the due diligence process?

Unfortunately, the CTO that hired me left the company two weeks after I started which caused a significant cultural shift. I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting.

> I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting.

> Unfortunately, you never really find out until you work somewhere.

If you invest in a stock that you tried to research and it drops to a value of zero and you say "well you never really know until you try it", am I gaslighting you if I tell you that there's room for improvement in your due diligence process?

A CTO hiring you and then leaving the company 2 weeks after you started is a major red flag. This is not a common occurrence in anything but a dysfunctional org. Now, there is of course only so far you can predict into the future, and surprises do happen. But whose decision was it to accept the offer? And who is ultimately on the hook for it, whether it's in your control or not? To protect yourself, you need to own the responsibility for that decision, even if you have no control over it happening inside the company.

There are companies you can accept offers from where the chances of this happening are one in several thousand, and companies where the chances are closer to one in fifty. To what extent are you confident in your ability to accurately predict and gauge a range and confidence interval about that?

I used to say the same things you did, and I kept getting the same results. Eventually, I just got tired of it and I realized I'd do quite a lot to prevent it from happening in the future -- or at least, if it happened again, I didn't want it to be a surprise. I'm thankful to say that I'm significantly closer to that point now, although it took many years of trial and error. And surely, I have even more room to improve, and I look forward to honing my technique even further as I gain more experience!

If what you're trying isn't working for you, it may be worthwhile to try to reconsider your process and see if you can improve it. If you don't even try to improve it and you're unhappy with your results, why do you think that would ever change?

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#117

Post by Kaze404 »

hpen wrote: post #114
Kaze404 wrote: post #72

This is only tangentially related, but one thing I'm absolutely sick of is rounded corners. I don't know why, and I don't know if it makes any sense, but opening a page and seeing literally everything with border-radius makes my blood boil. It feels like they're trying to protect me from sharp corners, as if they're dangerous. Come on, we're all adults here. We can take a few 90 degree angles.

This just feels really picky to me. I mean it's a rounded corner for Christ sake.

Don't get me wrong, it absolutely is completely nitpicky. I just had to get it off my chest :p

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#118

Post by grumple »

yowlingcat wrote: post #116
grumple wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the CTO that hired me left the company two weeks after I started which caused a significant cultural shift. I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting.

> I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting. > Unfortunately, you never really find out until you work somewhere. If you invest in a stock that you tried to research and it drops to a value of zero and you say "well you never really know until you try it", am I gaslighting you if I tell you that there's room for improvement in your due diligence process? A CTO hiring you and then leaving the company…

You are truly insufferable and making incorrect assumptions. This happened once, in my current role.

> This is not a common occurrence in anything but a dysfunctional org.

This happens all the time in orgs all over the planet. Hiring managers and executives get new jobs and things change. Time from offer acceptance to starting work is always nonzero in big companies (measured in weeks to months in most of the fortune 500, I'd bet - my current company is Fortune 10[1], so there's that - cto in this case means of the particular division of this company, not the parent).

Now, please... do us both a favor and stop talking out of your ass.

1. https://fortune.com/fortune500/

Re: We use too many damn modals (2018)

#120

Post by yowlingcat »

grumple wrote: post #118
yowlingcat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting. > Unfortunately, you never really find out until you work somewhere. If you invest in a stock that you tried to research and it drops to a value of zero and you say "well you never really know until you try it", am I gaslighting you if I tell you that there's room for improvement in your due diligence process? A CTO hiring you and then leaving the company…

You are truly insufferable and making incorrect assumptions. This happened once, in my current role. > This is not a common occurrence in anything but a dysfunctional org. This happens all the time in orgs all over the planet. Hiring managers and executives get new jobs and things change. Time from offer acceptance to starting work is always nonzero in big companies (measured in weeks to months in most of the fortune…

> This happens all the time in orgs all over the planet.

> You are truly insufferable and making incorrect assumptions. This happened once, in my current role.

> Now, please... do us both a favor and stop talking out of your ass.

I'm going to be blunt here. If it's anything like this to work with you (which I don't know, only your colleagues can say), then I think you have a lot to work on:

- You freely admit that you don't have a track record of working at orgs that insist on the highest standards for design

- You seem to harbor unchecked presumptions and lack the curiosity to seek them out

- You lash out at others who suggest that maybe these things are not universal

- You take little responsibility or ownership for the situation you're in

If I was a hiring manager for a team that cared about good design of any kind, why would I hire you? It would be like oil and water. It's one thing to end up in an org practicing your craft in a way where quality just isn't appreciated. And I imagine many of us have been there (I certainly have). But, it is another thing entirely to extrapolate it to a universal circumstance, or into something unavoidable.

Figuring out how to adequately communicate and tradeoff the short term and long term value of good design to other stakeholders in the company is one of the /bare minimums/ to being a competent designer. Why would I trust you to visually communicate something to a customer if I cannot even trust you to verbally communicate properly with your team? I have very rarely worked with designers unable to do that with a variety of stakeholders. And honestly, if you cannot do that successfully, I think you need to go back and work on your fundamentals.

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