Idiomatic design will never come back. The reason being companies believe (correctly) that they design language is part of their brand. The uniqueness is, basically, the point.
Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
31–40 of 385 posts
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#32Lately I've occasionally been running into round check boxes that look like radio buttons. Why????
iOS decided square checkboxes were ugly, and design patterns are flowing from mobile->desktop these days.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#33> There are hundreds of ways that different websites ask you to pick dates Ugh, date pickers. So many of these violently throw up when I try to do the obvious thing: type in the damn date. Instead they force me to click through their inane menu, as if the designer wanted to force me into a showcase of their work. Let your power users type. Just call your user’s attention back to the field if they accidentally typed 0…
Is 03/04/2026 March 4th or the 3rd of April? If you have an international audience that’s going to mess someone up. Better yet require YYYY-MM-DD.
This has a solved problem for a long time
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#34> Prefer words to icons. Use only icons that are universally understood. Underrated. Except for dyslexic people, and the most obvious icon forms, I am pretty sure most people are just better and faster at recognising single words at a glance than icons.
I am pretty sure icons are easier and faster to recognize, except when you make them (too) small. In particular, they probably are easier in the long run, as long as they don't change position. But in a context where things change or you need a lot of buttons, words probably win.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#35This is a really huge and a fundamental flaw in AI-driven design. AI-driven design is completely inconsistent. If you re-ran an AI generated layout, even with the same prompt, the output for a user interface will look completely different between two runs.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#36Lately I've occasionally been running into round check boxes that look like radio buttons. Why????
Squircles[1].
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#37This is a really huge and a fundamental flaw in AI-driven design. AI-driven design is completely inconsistent. If you re-ran an AI generated layout, even with the same prompt, the output for a user interface will look completely different between two runs.
You can steer it towards reusable components, though.
Find a run you like, and build off that.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#38Yall remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation? Back in 2004-ish era, there was an explosion of very creative interaction methods due to flash and browser performance improvements, and general hardware improvements which led to "mystery meat navigation" and the community's pushback.
Since then, the "idiomatic design" seems to have been completely lost.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#39As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations.
The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time.
Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win32 to rot)
macOS has AppKit, which enforces a ton. You can't change the height of a native button, for example.
iOS has UIKit, similar deal.
The web has nothing. You gotta roll your own, and it'll be half-baked at best. And since building for modern desktop platforms is horrible, the framework-less web is being used there too.
Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think HIG means "Human Interface Guidelines" here. Seems to be an Apple thing. I wish more people would avoid or at least introduce abbreviations that may be unfamiliar to the audience.
Microsoft had one too: WIG! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475521
There are quite a number of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines#Exa...>