31–40 of 241 posts
He's right about Gnome for sure. I used to use Ubuntu 14.04-16.04 from 2014 to 2019 along with macOS all these years. Although macOS has a lot of problems, I returned to Ubuntu (22.04) since July in a new workplace, and it is horrible. This weird empty horizontal top panel and menus behind the hamburger button are just madness.
I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious before the onslaught of hidden scrollbars. The trouble is that having my pointer over the navigation pane--practically a guaranteed position--causes the scrollbar on the other pane to be hidden. Without the visual cue of a scrollbar there was no reason to move my pointer over to the other pane to discover there's more. Hell you might not even know it's a separate pane now that we've gotten rid of every defining border. I shared a screenshot with the developer, assured them that I was using the current version, only to have him say "scroll down." No doubt, I'm the fucking idiot (/s).
Just like on mobile, you're supposed randomly interact with every UI element in hopes of discovering how it works only to have that learned skill be unique to one fucking app. Tap it, slow tap it, slow tap it for a different amount of time, tap it faster, spam it... "google it"... oh, this time you're supposed to drag it to something that doesn't even look like a UI element. Stupid grandpas!
"Is the checkbox checked?" was never as ambiguous as "is the slider switch on?" Also, the checkbox uses less screen space! I'd argue that they optimized for neither screen space or user friendliness. It's optimized for a look and you can even make it worse by making it flatter. Go ahead make it look like two squares! Is the darker area the switch part? Who cares! It looks so clean and distraction free! I was so distracted by knowing what state the switch was in.
Sorry, time for my meds. I usually make it half way through the day.
Why have desktop UI’s gotten so bad lately? My theory is that before we had UX experts, they had to hire, like, actual graphics designers.
To me, Discord's UI - especially on mobile - exemplifies this perfectly. They change the image upload process every few months, alternating between various levels of decent and terrible design.
First it used to be one tap, then they put it in a submenu, now it's back to one tap but uploaded images get grouped together requiring tapping on them to scroll through, so we're forced to upload them one by one to have them show in the more convenient old way, making it still strictly a step back.
Add in the managers who think that not having large UI changes every few years is a sign of stagnation regardless of reason.
En contraire. The more usability professionals you hire, the worse your usability gets. It seems every dev team nowadays has at least a part-time designer. They come up with new, fresh ideas all the time and, of course, want to see it implemented.
If it were only the Devs, you'd just use Google Material or "read the docs" for whatever it is you were building. As it is though, people think that you need "brand recognition across platforms", which basically means that you do whatever the hell you want and the more guidelines you break, the better. It has the added advantage that you really only need to design once and ship to all platforms. Who cares if iOS/Windows/Mac/Android are different? Just implement your own pop-up dialog!
I for one miss the 3-D buttons of the Windows 95 era. It was obvious what could be clicked and what could not.
It was so good that Google incorporated this idea in Material Design
My first smartphone ran KitKat and IMO it was Google's best work to date, design-wise.
> Despite being endlessly fawned over by an army of professionals, Usability, or as it used to be called, "User Friendliness", is steadily declining. En contraire. The more usability professionals you hire, the worse your usability gets. It seems every dev team nowadays has at least a part-time designer. They come up with new, fresh ideas all the time and, of course, want to see it implemented. If it were only the De…
Which is all well and good until Google replaces the Material Design team with designers with no UX training... Sorry, I just can't complain enough about M3.
The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…
When you can't discover things yourself, that annoying AI voice-assistant might become needed.
Why have desktop UI’s gotten so bad lately? My theory is that before we had UX experts, they had to hire, like, actual graphics designers.
There's also the perverse incentive created by having dedicated UX people. At some point the UI is at a good point and doesn't need significant improvement, but the UX person needs to justify their existence, so changes happen just for the sake of making changes. To me, Discord's UI - especially on mobile - exemplifies this perfectly. They change the image upload process every few months, alternating between various…
This explains a lot of user-unfriendly changes in other areas, too. I worked for a prominent travel web company and the army of people in marketing were constantly looking for new sources of "incremental revenue" to justify their work. This led to pop-unders and pages packed with more ads than content.
He's right about Gnome for sure. I used to use Ubuntu 14.04-16.04 from 2014 to 2019 along with macOS all these years. Although macOS has a lot of problems, I returned to Ubuntu (22.04) since July in a new workplace, and it is horrible. This weird empty horizontal top panel and menus behind the hamburger button are just madness.