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.
UX replaced HCI. Graphic design replaced science.
The Decline of Usability (2020)
131–140 of 241 posts
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#132Ok so where are the good examples, anyone doing anything of note to address this?
The good examples are the software they replaced.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#133It has taken me a least a year to learn the right gesture combination to close apps on iPhone 13. Many operations are very subtle. However, I seem to be far less bothered by modern usability than some others. My brain is hard wired for novelty it seems. I would not want to use Windows 2000 for example.
That sounds like a good thing. Apps should almost never be killed. The OS automatically kills suspended apps when it needs more ram
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Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of it is the other way around: graphics design driven by branding rather than UX. I also think the death of native development has a lot to do with it. The web is now the UI layer of desktop, but that means there is no consistent design language across the system.
This is very similar to what Grudin suggests in his HCI history "From tool to partner": Apple used to be very usability and research focussed in the 80s and early 90s, but turned away from it with Jobs and went more look-driven — and had great success with it. Other companies followed. (Which does not mean that companies ignored graphic design before, but it was the more utilitarian parts of graphic design that were…
True but I don’t think this gets it quite right.
The big problem with classic Mac was the cooperative multitasking weird OS and the unstylish and clunky hardware. The UI needed polish and modernization but was not fundamentally bad.
The complete loss of OS coherence has a lot more to do with the web than anything else.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#135There is a misconception that consistency == usability. It's an important part of usability but there is a lot more to it. Tunnel vision on consistency (or anything really) doesn't lead to good outcomes. The big picture is what matters: can someone do what they need to do? Articles like these also have lots of opinions, no research and stats, nor have decent explanations of how much impact these "problems" actually h…
These things were studied in decades past. Did you demand research and stats when Microsoft made it impossible to tell which window is focused? What benefits were claimed?
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
>are not a UI/UX problem Never said UI, but they are absolute usability & user experience problems. Arguably the most important ones! This is exactly what I mean by missing the big picture. What do you think has more impact on completing a task and the experience of completing that task? A working maybe slightly inconsistent toolbar, or the thing crashing and loosing your work? > The article actually says the same th…
> This is exactly what I mean by missing the big picture. The point you are making is a different one than the one that the OP is making. Just because you are making a specific (different) point, doesn't make the OP's point invalid. > Great example of something that you couldn't do and now can, times are truly great right now. Again a different point. Of course we now have a proliferation of different and powerful so…
The article states that usability is declining, the arguments to back that up are: things are somewhat inconsistent and I don't like [some UI patterns].
My point is that the claim is wrong, and the arguments don't support it and have little to do with usability.
This follows from a misconception that usability, UI, and user experience are the same thing, which is really showing a lack of understanding of what they actually are.
I write my comments in the hope that people will actually look into these topics more deeply as they are quite interesting and often require setting aside the preferences, gut instinct, and pet peeves this article is filled with.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#137The past decade or so, I've found myself in a constant battle with UI/UX team members. A big part of the battle seems to be a shift from power/tool user to consumer design paradigms. 20 years ago, most software was tools for professionals, now most software (on a usage level at least) is consumer software (literally consumers of video, social media etc.) Designers can't seem to switch modes and keep trying to apply "…
The best is that if you (junior or senior) bring this up, you're either shut down by management because you don't have the right expertise (how dare you, especially if you like me are mostly working in backend) or by the UX guy saying 1) it's a best practice, and 2) if they ran a research/survey, they found that it makes "almost no difference" - the major points are xyz (which is something really worse that requires immediate work).
At a certain point just accept the way it is, and wait until the better way of doing things becomes the new best practice...
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#138All true. It goes even farther: hiding the file structure, and even the concept of files. Ask a nontechnical Windows or Mac user where their files are stored - they have no idea. Ask if they are in the cloud - no idea. Worse - just as with UIs - there is no consistency where different apps store their data. We also shouldn't forget the idiocy of hiding file-extensions. To add insult to injury Windows lies to non-Engl…
It’s all about files. That we have a photos app with a custom database is an obvious failure of the OS file system. Why didn’t the BeOS approach work?
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#139It has taken me a least a year to learn the right gesture combination to close apps on iPhone 13. Many operations are very subtle. However, I seem to be far less bothered by modern usability than some others. My brain is hard wired for novelty it seems. I would not want to use Windows 2000 for example.
That sounds like a good thing. Apps should almost never be killed. The OS automatically kills suspended apps when it needs more ram
That would be true if it were not for state.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft in particular seems hellbent on putting touchscreens in everything. They REALLY want to make it happen but seemingly no one is having it. There's ONE person I know who owns a touchscreen laptop and genuinely touches its screen on purpose. On your scrolling complaint — well, there's this desktop-specific thing that OP doesn't mention but that becomes very apparent once you start looking for it in old-school…
I've had touchscreen laptops for about 7years now. The only time that the touchscreen gets used is when somebody is showing me something, doesn't realize it's a touchscreen, and accidentally borks whatever we were looking at. It's strange - I love to optimize my flow, but I just haven't yet hit a situation where my hands leaving keyboard and touching the screen is faster. (I'm a die-hard and proficient track point us…
Reaching for the screen all the time also sounds like a shoulder RSI just waiting to happen.