Ok so where are the good examples, anyone doing anything of note to address this?
Trinity Desktop Environment is a somewhat maintained fork of KDE3 with the same functional and understandable GUI.
The Decline of Usability (2020)
191–200 of 241 posts
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#192I read someone say it here and I really liked the way of framing it, UI elements are the API to interface with the human and changes should be regarded as breaking changes.
Beyond that, I think there is a lot of disdain for users these days and a lot of design that doesn't think about the user, and goes for form over function, and even a lot of deliberate gimping to manipulate the user. UX in the modern day is a complete disaster, and it's not just software, it's everything. Cars, furniture, light switches, light bulbs, stoves, washing machines, you name it the UX is being destroyed. Bad UX used to be in the almost exclusive realm of government services, not anymore. It's like everyone just forgot what the point of all this is.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just a front end problem. As a customer of facebook, netflix, hbo,prime, disney+ etc., it continually amazes that these expensive devs can't make the backend remember what I watched and not. Combined with an "engaging" front end that hides what I'm interested in and shifts the interface randomly, the experience is pretty low.
i think they do it on purpose just to give you the feeling of having a lot of content. Hate it, too.
Yup, it's another great example of the sort of "late stage" problems you run into with capitalism, professionalization of business management (MBA degrees), and fundamentally just about any system w/ rules and "(semi-)autonomous agents" trying to maximize (or at least perform well [enough]) the value of some metric / function. Here, profit &/ even staying in business.
Capitalism and other features of the system currently used in many of the most developed countries is great during development of markets. The performance is excellent, which makes perfect sense.* You run into problems when markets reach saturation. And, markets have never been remotely as saturated as now. Now, you're literally talking about how finely you can slice the sum total of ATTENTION, period. Think "TikTok".
Basically, you see a lot more "zero sum" behavior at such points. I.e., it's much more just Darwinian** ... some winning, some losing.
One example of this type of strategy that I find distasteful is the "retail reset". Every 6 months or so, the retail reset dairy visits the supermarket I shop at most frequently, forcing me to re-find at least some of what I want to buy. It rarely causes me to buy anything unusual or new to me, but, I understand why they do it. It's not "terrible", but there's a feel to it of a certain ... lack of morals / ethics... feeds into a pervasiveness to that feel ... I believe it to be subtly but moderately bad for societies overall...
Couldn't find a more authoritative source / less markety site quickly, but here's at least some of the description:
https://canadasbeststorefixtures.com/why-a-store-reset-boost...
Of course, this kind of thinking is taught and exchanged among the business-oriented. Makes "the disease" worse (more pervasive) ...
* "Command economy" makes very little if you actually care about overall performance. It's the problem anyone faces when trying to model [e.g., "data assimilation" techniques, very powerful but enough data is essential] - not enough data! Of course, in today's world, it might be increasingly possible to make a more "command" style work, from the data side ... and, if you want to go for that "panopticon look" ... China has headed back that way ... again, in some sense. But, it's really still not good ... you're up against all sorts of other human factors, even if you HAD the data.
** Edit: or noticeably Darwinian (in a more common usage sense). This behavior of systems regarding "niches" and competition applies at all times. It's when the "empty space(s)" or "low density space(s)" are occupied that the more directly / actively competitive behavior w/ more clear negatives for various 'participants' tends to emerge.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
This thread correctly identifies "discoverability", perhaps aka "progressive disclosure", or "some form of incrementalism" as the measure by which good user interfaces are evaluated. Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity, and multiple modules, not all of which are necessarily in use by the users at any given time. Therefore, the problem of GUI design becomes one…
>Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity. Operating systems should be modular, allowing the user to reduce as much bloating complexity as possible and needed. I do not need unstoppable “gamed” and “studentd” services on my computer. The sealed system implemented by Apple has actually meant the overthrow of the root user by the corporation. Now I can’t reduce compl…
If the sealed system makes performance or security problems, it's a bad design, I'd rather it be optimized rather than modularized.
Modular systems have more possibilities, which means some of those possibilities might not work, and then you might find yourself unable to use an app without reconfiguring in a way that breaks some other app.
They are great for tinkerers and specialized applications, but for people who want things to Just Work, every time, no matter what, even at the cost of zero hacker friendliness, Android's model seems to completely blow Linux away.
We should still have root(I think lack of that might be part of why Android hasn't started taking over other markets), but there should be obvious and standard ways to do common things.
The commercial OSes aren't perfect, but they are popular with consumers for a reason.
I think NixOS or similar is Linux's only hope of matching that without doing containers for everything, which would likely have many of it's own problems.
Either that or we just stop using dynamic linking, which would probably make most of Linux's problems go away instantly.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#195The 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 "…
I think what happened was that a lot of UIs were really bad in the 90s. A bunch of books were research and written pointing out the problems, people made an effort to fix them, and UX became a skillset.
But it seemed like the trends that were intended to fix the original problems just kept getting followed and amplified with nobody really noticing they had overshot. Or based on some comments here, new designers without the context of the old UIs just reapplying them to already fixed UIs?
Instead of the pendulum coming back - it kinda reached escape velocity.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#196All 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…
Seems like it would be easy enough to have first class translations at the file system API levels, so you could make a FileSystemInterface class and choose if you wanted to have standard or translated names, or stay compatible with both.
Or you could have Benutzer be a symlink to Users(which could then be hidden), so that it is still "real" and fully compatible all the time.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#197UX designer here who has done nothing but design web, mobile and related UI since about 2000, mostly working for or at large consumer brands (and now thinking of retiring). I'd definitely agree with the idea that change for change's sake is responsible for a lot of usability problems. But a bigger problem is the near extinction of any professional discussion or capable analysis of design by the people who are doing i…
As a frontend dev, what are good resources to learn about principles and heuristics that I can apply in my work? I have some knowledge, albeit very primitive, that I picked up from an HCI introduction and some good designers, but nothing too technical / formal yet.
The Design of Everyday Things,
by Don Norman is a good place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you have a printer that supports it. Otherwise you have to do it by hand https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/how-to-print-dou...
If the hardware itself doesn't support it, how would the software?
Windows approach: Print even pages first, ask the user to move the printed pages back to the printer and then print the odd pages later. The result is ready to be read.
In Mac you need to print first one side, move the pages manually, print the other side. But you have to remember to add an extra page if the page count is odd, have caution if an app tries to be intelligent and sort the pages in a different way...
In Windows all those calculations are done by the system. It is easy! Just print and follow instructions. In Mac is painful.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#199UX designer here who has done nothing but design web, mobile and related UI since about 2000, mostly working for or at large consumer brands (and now thinking of retiring). I'd definitely agree with the idea that change for change's sake is responsible for a lot of usability problems. But a bigger problem is the near extinction of any professional discussion or capable analysis of design by the people who are doing i…
>the near extinction of any professional discussion or capable analysis of design by the people who are doing it.
People don't think through the designs then launch a poorly designed test that can't produce meaningful results. Copy the competition, latest designs, or hope the customer can do it. It's easier to do and defend. Put in the minimal amount of mental labor required to get paid.
Not assigning blame here. These folks all work in an oversubscribed field subject to the whims and opinions of execs focused more on delivering visual appeal or feelings than usability.
It's marketing. It doesn't really matter how usable your product is if people don't want to use it. Many industries make very usable things. Notably the military. They're just ugly.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recently I bought a MBP and I'm surprised by how hard to use it is. Printing by both sides? Not supported, you must do it by hand. And some apps print the pages in reverse order, so you end up having to sort the pages. Use numberpad . as . instead of ,? You have to download an app to use a sane default. Alt+. in terminal? No luck if you aren't using an English keyboard. Run a downloaded app? Run it, accept failure, s…
The blocked app shit really gets me. Installing compilers by hand is always a fight and a half.
It always reminds me of the shade Apple threw at Windows Vista. Chickens came home to roost. https://youtu.be/8CwoluNRSSc