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Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

cs.umd.edu

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Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#161

Post by munificent »

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…

I'm a programming language designer, so I think about this stuff all day every day.

I believe you're right that expertise has something to do with it, but I don't think your comment quite connects why consistency leads to expertise.

Consistency is about taking what users already know about a system and compounding that expertise across other parts of the system. When a system is consistent, once I spend the effort to learn X and Y, then I also know Z and W because they'll behave the same way. In an inconsistent system, I can't extract as much value from my existing learning investment.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#162

Post by iambateman »

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.

Allow me to introduce you to literally all of the enterprise software I’ve ever seen from previous generations.

Gen Z definitely didn’t invent confusing UI.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#163

Post by lencastre »

iambateman wrote: post #162
godzillabrennus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Allow me to introduce you to literally all of the enterprise software I’ve ever seen from previous generations. Gen Z definitely didn’t invent confusing UI.

I had a German boss who said that Germans who designed the DB interface often had meetings to discuss where users were most likely to click onscreen to perform whatever action, and then move that button to the opposite side and if possible under 3 layers of menus.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#164

Post by jpc0 »

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…

Not to discredit, really I am actually interested and may even agree with you.

Give me an example of a text editor that you concider to have good UI design.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#165

Post by 9dev »

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…

> the home screen layout and app icons frequently changing positions for no apparent reason.

Spotify does this, too. Every morning I listen to the same two news podcasts. And every bloody morning the suggestions in the app shuffle around for no apparent reason. To add insult to injury though, when the app starts, it still shows the layout from yesterday, hangs for a second while it loads, then reorders stuff - and every time I’ll tap on something that moves somewhere else in that exact moment. It’s extremely frustrating.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#166

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

troupo wrote: post #115
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the importance of consistency, but disagree with "Office and (Neo)Vim aren’t exceptional examples of UI, but they are uniquely stable." Office is not stable, at least over the long term. The hated "ribbon" marked a sad departure from the "stable" and efficient Word UI, and Microsoft's clueless regressions across the Windows platform have compounded the problem. For example, the deletion of the menu bar f…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925695

Thanks. I'm going to watch that MS video and see if I'm still as pissy about the ribbon afterward.

Ribbon aside, there are still lots of regressions in Word. The handling of styles, for example, which used to be excellent. Now Microsoft has stuffed the style list with dozens of asinine canned styles (most of which consist of different-colored underlines) that you can't get rid of. So instead of being able to format your document efficiently by selecting styles, you must now wade through a giant list of shit, looking for your own styles every goddamned time you want to apply one.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#167

Post by hypercube33 »

saratogacx wrote: post #135
troupo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ribbons for Word used to have actual research behind them. Since then it's just cargo culting. Sadly, many images are broken, but the blog series "Why The New UI" survives on web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...

There's an old MIX08 video where some guys from MS actually talk through the design process and everything that went into it with a lot of depth as well as looking at alternative ideas and why they didn't work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk

I think I've seen a video where they take the metrics they ask to collect (and everyone I've seen opts out) where the more buttons were clicked in office the bigger and further to the left they moved.

I find it weird based on my comment that windows and office is built around people who choose not to opt out either by ignoring the dialogs or by knowing what it's used for and hoping their metrics make some difference. Unfortunately I think it's mostly just people wanting to be a part of the product who really participate in user voice a lot of the time so we get weird design choices sticking like the mystery meat cut copy paste in windows 11

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#168

Post by hypercube33 »

munificent wrote: post #161
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…

I'm a programming language designer, so I think about this stuff all day every day. I believe you're right that expertise has something to do with it, but I don't think your comment quite connects why consistency leads to expertise. Consistency is about taking what users already know about a system and compounding that expertise across other parts of the system. When a system is consistent, once I spend the effort to…

I fully agree. it's also how the user takes what they know and making it work for them.

Windows 95 had years of user testing behind it. They'd sit people down who were used to DOS or Windows 3.11 and give them tasks and see where they struggled or where it worked and iterated on it and the talks by the ux teams really stuck with me. every color and design choice was important even the awful but good real background wallpaper colors

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#169

Post by hypercube33 »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #166
troupo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925695

Thanks. I'm going to watch that MS video and see if I'm still as pissy about the ribbon afterward. Ribbon aside, there are still lots of regressions in Word. The handling of styles, for example, which used to be excellent. Now Microsoft has stuffed the style list with dozens of asinine canned styles (most of which consist of different-colored underlines) that you can't get rid of. So instead of being able to format y…

Just wait until the default template gets hacked up by some fluke in word and it's permanently stuck to weird formatting. you can revert it back but it's weirdly hidden and took me a Google to do it instead of just finding and clicking a "default word style format" theme thing.

This crap really drives me to use markdown and pandoc to crap out word files when I'm done. I also really hate how word deals with document formatting and images.

Re: Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)

#170

Post by hypercube33 »

cyberax wrote: post #90
joeblubaugh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any work about how to combine pie menus and keyboard usage? Mousing is very uncomfortable for me, but if a pie menu could be used with a keyboard-attached joystick, it might be a really quick way to work.

Basically, you use cursor keys to select the direction. So you can just memorize the paths to the correct items. Modern console games use the same idea for communication wheels, that are usable from game controllers.

Great for game controllers and keyboard use but I find them horrible for mouse use, personally. moving a bound mouse cursor around a donut is really awkward when you're using to x or y movement
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