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Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

cs.umd.edu

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Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#151

Post by hannofcart »

pugworthy wrote: post #77

I inherited an app from someone a few years ago at work, and for whatever reason, the developer loved a gray themed UI. Gray buttons. Gray text entry. You never knew what was disabled and just gray for fun. Needless to say that changed...

Am certainly not the dev you inherited the project from but I used to prefer an all gray palette too on projects that didn't afford me any design help.

This was because I'm colour blind (red green) and find it near impossible to keep track of what signal I may be sending using one of the other colours while I am likely oblivious to that colour even being used.

So I used to use an all gray palette as a placeholder till real designers who could properly see colours and understood significance of each could come in and "colour in" the UI.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#152

Post by yshklarov »

jetrink wrote: post #131
nyreed wrote: post #130

One golden rule that I learned is that interface elements should not move unexpectedly after the interface has been drawn. Google is particularly bad for buttons which move between you lifting your thumb and pressing the screen, but they're not alone.

I wish this would be addressed at the OS level. If a target popped into existence less than ~0.25 seconds before it was touched, a touch event shouldn't be generated. Humans reaction times aren't fast enough to hit a button that quickly anyway.

One problem with this: People often learn to touch multiple targets quickly in sequence, because one touch event predictably pops up the target for the next event.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#154

Post by jpc0 »

eviks wrote: post #98
graypegg wrote: post #7

A designer I worked with years ago had a great explanation for why consistency is important. It’s not about a limited colour palette or a careful selection of fonts no one will ever notice. Chasing the specifics makes horrible software. Some people equate less diversity in their UI to more consistency. It’s about letting someone become an expert in your software. Microsoft office was always his example. People pride…

How can MS Office be this example when shortcut modification is awful there, as well as Ribbon customization??? People pride themselves on all the nonsense they've invested a huge deal of time into, that's not an indication of any quality or UI excellence Vim is another prime example of extremely user unfriendly UI design, breaking most of the principles from the linked article (but similarly, with folks who've inves…

> Vim is another prime example of extremely user unfriendly UI design

I know it's going to come off the wrong way but as an editor, I would take plain vim over VSCode/VS/IntelliJ etc any day. Give me neovim as an option and I would be even happier.

I don't spend "a few metric tons of effort into fixing it", there's nothing wrong with a modal editor with key chords as the primary interface. It's not something you can "open and just use with 0 experience" but neither is your car or any other useful complex tool.

The fact that Vim & Emacs design hasn't really changed in decades yet they still have a very vast userbase should indicate something.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#155

Post by eviks »

jpc0 wrote: post #154
eviks wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can MS Office be this example when shortcut modification is awful there, as well as Ribbon customization??? People pride themselves on all the nonsense they've invested a huge deal of time into, that's not an indication of any quality or UI excellence Vim is another prime example of extremely user unfriendly UI design, breaking most of the principles from the linked article (but similarly, with folks who've inves…

> Vim is another prime example of extremely user unfriendly UI design I know it's going to come off the wrong way but as an editor, I would take plain vim over VSCode/VS/IntelliJ etc any day. Give me neovim as an option and I would be even happier. I don't spend "a few metric tons of effort into fixing it", there's nothing wrong with a modal editor with key chords as the primary interface. It's not something you can…

> Give me neovim as an option and I would be even happier.

That's fine, the issue here isn't someone's personal happiness, but good design (my 2nd sentence already covers this apparent contradiction)

> there's nothing wrong with a modal editor with key chords as the primary interface.

There is this whole list of UI design principles that tells you what's wrong

> It's not something you can "open and just use with 0 experience" but neither is your car or any other useful complex tool.

Yeah, that's not the issue, >0 experience doesn't require bad interface. Like, a car doesn't require pressing 6 buttons with no feedback to turn left, instead you have a wheel with immediate feedback (still requires experience to get the feel for the connect at different speeds)

> The fact that Vim & Emacs design hasn't really changed in decades yet they still have a very vast userbase should indicate something.

It doesn't indicate what you imply it does. But to answer in kind: the fact that both have multiple (in total) close to complete rewrites of the whole interface (full set of key bindings, commands, tabs, plugin languages, etc.) should indicate something, and not something positive about those interfaces

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#156

Post by graypegg »

eviks wrote: post #155
jpc0 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vim is another prime example of extremely user unfriendly UI design I know it's going to come off the wrong way but as an editor, I would take plain vim over VSCode/VS/IntelliJ etc any day. Give me neovim as an option and I would be even happier. I don't spend "a few metric tons of effort into fixing it", there's nothing wrong with a modal editor with key chords as the primary interface. It's not something you can…

> Give me neovim as an option and I would be even happier. That's fine, the issue here isn't someone's personal happiness, but good design (my 2nd sentence already covers this apparent contradiction) > there's nothing wrong with a modal editor with key chords as the primary interface. There is this whole list of UI design principles that tells you what's wrong > It's not something you can "open and just use with 0 ex…

The conversation we’re having is about consistency only. That’s why I said “they aren’t examples of exceptional UI”.

They just respect the fact that people have become experts in using their tools.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#157

Post by lxe »

These rules were already breaking apart even in 2013. We lost consistency with the advent of CSS-based UI, where design had free reign. This devolved into every site and app doing its own thing for UX. Now we have interfaces with zero visual affordances and you have to basically discover by trial end error what each swipe/long-press/drag/click does.

Funny enough, with flash gaining traction in the early 2000s, there was a huge barrage of "mystery meat navigation" which was criticized heavily by the UX community, and it ended up falling out of favor for some time. Yet, we're back to "mystery meat navigation" yet again.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#158

Post by [deleted] »

98789992165 wrote: post #129
bheadmaster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4chan for example has its mostly-unchanged now old-school interface, with its own quote/reply system, which some call an IQ barrier I doubt it would be an IQ barrier, considering the apparent intelligence of many of the posters there. I would rather call it a "normie filter" - the UI is so old-school ("ugly") that "normies", who usually dwell on fancy UI sites like Facebook, Reddit, etc., will consider it lame and…

4chan - smart people acting dumb HN - dumb people acting smart

[deleted]

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#159

Post by btbuildem »

lcuff wrote: post #127
andsoitis wrote: post #124

Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics for user interface design gives a good north star: 1. Visibility of system status 2. Match between system and the real world 3. User control and freedom 4. Consistency and standards 5. Error prevention 6. Recognition rather than recall 7. Flexibility and efficiency of use 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design 9. Recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors 10. Help and documentation htt…

The contrast between this Nielsen-Norman (NN) page and the OP page is marked. The NN page is much easier to absorb the information. More succinct, way better page layout. Both articles have information/direction worth heeding, but there is irony in the fact that the OP page adopts same-text size and paragraphing conventions of yesteryear that the NN page does away with. It's also frustrating that Hacker News doesn't…

Are we looking at the same thing?

The NN pages are cluttered with navigation to other areas, links for "more this and that", related courses, etc. Everything is in six different font sizes, there are variously-coloured illustrations that pull at strenuous off-topic metaphors... it's a mess.

In contrast, the OP page is clear, simple, sticks to the topic at hand. Easy to read typography, eight paragraphs for the eight rules.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#160

Post by munificent »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #38
bithive123 wrote: post #31

Although not really part of a UI's "design", performance is often overlooked as well. A poorly performing UI violates every single one of these design rules. My sony android smart TV looks amazing but the UI is so slow as to be unusable. An unstable UI that is always changing also violates most of these principles. Smart TVs seem to be exceptionally bad in this area too, with the home screen layout and app icons freq…

Ever since Snapchat exploded in popularity I’ve decided bad UI is a gen z feature. They flock to difficult to use interfaces that become an insider feature for young folks to keep their parents out.

Or more likely explanation for this phenomenon is that for Gen Z people:

1. Snapchat has relatively more people that they want to interact with.

2. The cost of learning a difficult UI is relatively low since they have more spare mental bandwidth since they aren't working full time, raising kids, etc.

So for a younger person, it's worth it to fight a bad UI to get to the social network, but for an older person the trade-off may not be worth it.

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