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People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

andrewcoyle.com

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Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#31

Post by nickserv »

mrob wrote: post #21

I trust software more if it's ugly. Desktop software interfaces were pretty much solved by the late 90s. The majority of changes since then have been aimed at either dumbing down the software to better appeal to people who are easily manipulated and exploited, or just change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. And I choose to avoid mobile devices because every one of them is slow and frustrati…

These are business decisions, not design choices.

> dumbing down the software

"The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

> change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs.

"We've decided to rebrand to focus on XYZ market."

> mobile devices because every one of them is slow

"If we can run the website on the user's device we'll save on developer time."

> Ugly software is a good sign because tells me no designer was there to ruin it.

It just means they don't have the money to hire a good designer. Meaning no marketing department. For whatever reason designers don't do open source. Looking at you GIMP. Blender finally bit the bullet.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#32

Post by karmakaze »

> “If they couldn’t be bothered to align the text, what else did they overlook?” But a clean, coherent layout creates harmony. It shows someone cared. And that care is contagious. It makes the user care too.

It may only show that they cared enough to fool you into thinking the product is good. Good design can be hijacked to be a fake proxy for a good product. It's basically fruits and vegetables that look good to sell and taste bland.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#33

Post by jeroenhd »

mrob wrote: post #21

I trust software more if it's ugly. Desktop software interfaces were pretty much solved by the late 90s. The majority of changes since then have been aimed at either dumbing down the software to better appeal to people who are easily manipulated and exploited, or just change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. And I choose to avoid mobile devices because every one of them is slow and frustrati…

Following 90s design is how you get the atrocious GIMP 2 floating window mess. Furthermore, the standards in the late 90s and early 00s were so low because of the lack of available software packages that programs crashing your kernel was just part of the normal work week. Memory corruption wasn't treated as a problem unless it corrupted data on disk, because it was considered normal that a program couldn't run more than a few hours before committing memory corruption suicide.

UI controls were standardized and programs stuck to them because they didn't have the CPU cycles to waste on styles, but that didn't prevent programs from using text areas as listboxes, abusing picture elements to stylize checkboxes, and picking whatever cursor the dev decided fit most (despite its name and intended use) when hovering over controls. The control schemes for anything 2D or 3D graphics were also designed by dice roll. Programs also regularly didn't fit on your screen unless you adjusted your resolution, because people often ran on lower resolutions to be able to use more colours. "This website works best in 1024x768" didn't just apply to websites.

The 90s software that stuck around until today is good because it survived decades of competition and reinvention or because people who don't want to learn new software just refused to try something else. The thousands upon thousands of expensive software packages that looked just like it found their deserved deaths years ago.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#34

Post by CamperBob2 »

Animats wrote: post #11

Oh, inevitably for a blog, this is about web site design. Confidence in manufactured physical objects is more interesting. Discuss. Raymond Loewy on a good day - The Honeywell Round.[1] The standard little round thermostat. It's still manufactured.[1] Raymond Loewy on a bad day - the first attempt to make a steam locomotive look streamlined by adding a sheet metal body.[3] This bad idea caught on in the UK, for some…

Needs a "Danger: Rabbit Hole" warning. (Although the article says someone else designed the Honeywell thermostat, if I'm reading correctly.)

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#35

Post by Animats »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #34
Animats wrote: post #11

Oh, inevitably for a blog, this is about web site design. Confidence in manufactured physical objects is more interesting. Discuss. Raymond Loewy on a good day - The Honeywell Round.[1] The standard little round thermostat. It's still manufactured.[1] Raymond Loewy on a bad day - the first attempt to make a steam locomotive look streamlined by adding a sheet metal body.[3] This bad idea caught on in the UK, for some…

Needs a "Danger: Rabbit Hole" warning. (Although the article says someone else designed the Honeywell thermostat, if I'm reading correctly.)

Oh, you're right. The Honeywell Round was by Henry Dreyfuss.

A small number of designers who created the iconic objects of midcentury modern. Who do we have today? Johnathan Ive?

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#36

Post by brudgers »

nickserv wrote: post #31
mrob wrote: post #21

I trust software more if it's ugly. Desktop software interfaces were pretty much solved by the late 90s. The majority of changes since then have been aimed at either dumbing down the software to better appeal to people who are easily manipulated and exploited, or just change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. And I choose to avoid mobile devices because every one of them is slow and frustrati…

These are business decisions, not design choices. > dumbing down the software "The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic". > change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. "We've decided to rebrand to focus on XYZ market." > mobile devices because every one of them is slow "If we can run the website on the user's device we'll save on developer time." > Ugly software is a goo…

"The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic".

Non-experts is always a larger group than experts.

A design prioritizing non-experts does not benefit experts.

Moreover, experts know they are trying to solve hard problems and benefit from tools that recognize the nature of solving hard problems entails doing hard things.

Or to put it another way, though there is a large market of people who don't play the violin, a ukulele is not a violin.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#37

Post by nickserv »

brudgers wrote: post #36
nickserv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are business decisions, not design choices. > dumbing down the software "The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic". > change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. "We've decided to rebrand to focus on XYZ market." > mobile devices because every one of them is slow "If we can run the website on the user's device we'll save on developer time." > Ugly software is a goo…

"The growth marketing team has identified an untapped demographic". Non-experts is always a larger group than experts. A design prioritizing non-experts does not benefit experts. Moreover, experts know they are trying to solve hard problems and benefit from tools that recognize the nature of solving hard problems entails doing hard things. Or to put it another way, though there is a large market of people who don't p…

Exactly. There is pressure to sell to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. This leads to "simplifying" the UI.

Generally this means power users now have to click 3 times instead of 1.

Of course there are alternatives, like having an advanced mode or keyboard shortcuts. But that takes time and effort for a typically smaller set of users.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#38

Post by ratmeadow »

mrob wrote: post #21

I trust software more if it's ugly. Desktop software interfaces were pretty much solved by the late 90s. The majority of changes since then have been aimed at either dumbing down the software to better appeal to people who are easily manipulated and exploited, or just change for the sake of change so designers can justify their jobs. And I choose to avoid mobile devices because every one of them is slow and frustrati…

> I trust software more if it's ugly

Interesting point and I was thinking if I believe the same, but I can't completely agree. Reason is there's a decent chunk of software outside of the "mainstream" app space where the UI is ugly and also broken, likely because the author isn't a great developer. I'm thinking engineering and research type apps. They have the kind of bugs where clicks do nothing, user feedback is faulty, wrong sequence of clicks causes a crash, and it makes me instantly distrust the entire product.

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#39

Post by Animats »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #34
Animats wrote: post #11

Oh, inevitably for a blog, this is about web site design. Confidence in manufactured physical objects is more interesting. Discuss. Raymond Loewy on a good day - The Honeywell Round.[1] The standard little round thermostat. It's still manufactured.[1] Raymond Loewy on a bad day - the first attempt to make a steam locomotive look streamlined by adding a sheet metal body.[3] This bad idea caught on in the UK, for some…

Needs a "Danger: Rabbit Hole" warning. (Although the article says someone else designed the Honeywell thermostat, if I'm reading correctly.)

For a good sense of how to think about industrial design, here's Lowey's autobiography, "Never Leave Well Enough Alone".[1] Look for the before and after pictures of common objects he redesigned. In most cases, sales went up.

As a bad example, see "Design for Dreaming", a 1956 General Motors promotion around the time the auto industry was reaching peak chrome and peak tailfin. This also introduced the first self-driving car, the Firebird 2.[2] (The self-driving didn't actually work in the Firebird 2. It did work in the Firebird 3, on a test track equipped with a guide wire.)

[1] https://archive.org/details/neverleavewellen0000raym/page/38...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG_KxSM6bTI

[3] https://youtu.be/tG_KxSM6bTI?t=427

Re: People instantly decide whether to trust a product based on design

#40

Post by meelford »

It’s the same with articles: I tend to prefer those from scientific magazines, where decoration is minimal and the authors focus on conveying meaning, rather than those that are perfectly designed on Medium or LinkedIn but, in reality, are very shallow and often outdated. Most deliberately decorated products also look over-processed.
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