Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Software Developers Suck at UX

cakewalklabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#51

Post by bichiliad »

masswerk wrote: post #21
bichiliad wrote: post #7

This article is close, but misses the mark. Talking about how UX researchers must grow up having more empathy sounds like an assumption that's pretty hard to back up, considering I can point to plenty of software engineers that got into the profession because they want to build a better world for others. I have a double degree in something that's effectively user experience. The one thing I heard in school over and o…

I'd argue, good (let's say) usability is about communicating the/a mental model via your interface. Is your interface up to it? Is the model stringent and concise enough to be communicated just by the arrangement of elements? It's a bit like world building. (That's what Apple used to be particularly good at, once. I'd also argue, software has become quite bad at this, recently.)

Yup, I totally agree. If you can introduce enough of the mental model to your users for them to have success with your application, you've succeeded at interface design.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#53

Post by brundolf »

filoleg wrote: post #50
brundolf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the word "empathy" is an overloaded term and was the wrong one for the author's point. Some people take it to mean "the ability to care about others on a moral level", and others take it to mean "the emotional intelligence to detect and understand the nuances of another's thoughts and feelings". I believe the author was talking about the second, not the first. It's entirely possible to be an idealistic and go…

Thanks a ton for posting that second definition of "empathy". After battling with UX issues in the OP for a long time, I intuitively knew that there were 2 different meanings of that word (one very loaded and generic, another one way more specific and targeted), but I wasn't able to articulate the definition of the second one in my head (in a way that would make sense if I tried explaining it to another person) no ma…

Sure thing :)

For what it's worth I think the morally-neutral definition you used is more technically correct, it's just that it's gotten tied up with other cultural baggage. I'm also not sure I can think of another single word that does a better job of getting across the idea, unfortunately.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#55

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

l0b0 wrote: post #15

> I think great UX designers just grew up naturally having much more empathy towards others and having a much better ability to place themselves in others shoes and see the world from their eyes. If UX designers are so good at empathy, how is it that I, as a developer, keep having to point out that - making links show up as buttons and vice versa is bad UX, - mixing heading levels willy-nilly is bad UX, - bringing in…

> - bringing in a giant JS framework to make sure a single type of input field works the same for a single buggy browser + OS + device combination (Firefox on Android on Samsung S-something) as for the others is bad UX, and

This is a business solution, not a UX problem. You've got a billion users. 0.01% use the buggy browser with the bad input field. You're losing $X per hour. The input pays for itself.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#56

Post by unnouinceput »

Because they don't actually have time to test it themselves 1000 times. I bet any developer given that time to test his own UX would improve it ten folds when he starts to get frustrated with his own design.

Data entry UX? Suddenly instead of having everything overwhelming a user you'd get only most used and then have an "show advanced options" button where you get the rest.

Charts? Show only important features then rest get hidden behind "show advanced options" button.

Reports? Menus to show only most common used reports, rest must go into "Show advanced reports"

And so on and so forth. See VLC player options, I think that UI is beautiful, despite it's myriad of options there.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#57

Post by kodah »

> I think great UX designers just grew up naturally having much more empathy towards others and having a much better ability to place themselves in others shoes and see the world from their eyes.

This is nothing more than a trope.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#58

Post by CGamesPlay »

scrozier wrote: post #41
kodyo wrote: post #5

Why do design people like light gray text on white backgrounds?

Because it's lovely. Designers usually have a pretty refined aesthetic sense, and sometimes it wins out over usability.

Yes, with all of the typographical aesthetic of something etched into granite. Reminds me of a tombstone, frankly.

Re: Why Software Developers Suck at UX

#60

Post by chao- »

fmakunbound wrote: post #59

I don’t think they suck at it anymore than UX professionals suck at it, e.g. gray text on a white background for an article I just read.

It is not egregiously gray on all devices. It is #575757 but is exacerbated by the choice of a lighter-than-normal font weight, so in that context it an odd call. You get a lot more variation between across screen densities and devices than most people account for when they make their favorite body font more stylish by reducing the weight. To say nothing of monitor color accuracy. I keep a mid-tier monitor with crappy colors at home to test things once in a while, and remind myself not everyone has an expensive laptop with a beautiful color-calibrated screen.

Setting font weight to just 400 (up from 300) made it easier on my eyes on the two devices where it was a very faded gray (I checked on three).

I disagree with the article's premises, and think a more correct analysis is along the lines of pfraze's comment, mixed in with unnouinceput's comment regarding time. Lacking experience in, training in, or predilection for, UX you can often still iterate toward a well-designed experience over time (and thus gain experience for the next situation). Being shuffled from one feature to another, or not being given context about the user, or the opportunity to develop UX skills (even incidentally within a project), leads to what seems like a lack of empathy, but is not.

Post reply on HN