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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#51

Post by bfbf »

JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

It’s amazing how many blank stares I get when I, as mobile engineer, tell stakeholders that we shouldn’t just implement some random interface idea they thought up in the shower and we instead need design input!

“But why can’t you just do it?” Because I recognise the importance of consistent UX and an IA that can actually be followed.

Just like developers, (proper) designers solve problems, an we need to stop asking them for faster bikes.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#52

Post by RobotToaster »

nkrisc wrote: post #17
teeray wrote: post #12

> 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.

is automatically formatted based on the user's locale.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#53

Post by davemp »

kennywinker wrote: post #28

> You don’t want to have to remember to use CTRL + Shift + C in certain circumstances or right-click → copy in others, that’d be annoying. laughs in linux wouldn’t that be nice.

I’m a decade+ linux power user and I still do insane things like pipe outputs into vim so I can copy paste without having to remember tmux copy paste modes when I have vertical panes open.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#54

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As 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 win…

The author may have identified that "the idioms come from the use of system frameworks", but they absolutely got wrong just about everything about why apps are not consistent on the web (e.g. I was baffled by their reasons listed under "this lack of homogeneity is for two reasons" section).

First, what he calls "the desktop era" wasn't so much a desktop era as a Windows era - Windows ran the vast majority of desktops (and furthermore, there were plenty of inconsistencies between Windows and Mac). So, as you point out regarding the Win32 API, developers had essentially one way to do things, or at least the far easiest way to do things. Developers weren't so much "following design idioms" as "doing what is easy to do on Windows".

The web started out as a document sharing system, and it only gradually and organically turned over to an app system. There was simply no single default, "easiest" way to do things (and despite that, I remember when it seemed like the web converged all at once onto Bootstrap, because it became the easiest and most "standard" way to do things).

In other words, I totally agree with you. You can have all the "standard idioms" that you want, but unless you have a single company providing and writing easy to use, default frameworks, you'll always have lots of different ways of doing things.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#55

Post by kevincox »

tgv wrote: post #34
finghin wrote: post #4

> 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.

This is why you need both. Icons are faster to recognize, but words tell you what the icons need. So you need the words at first to discover the icons, then the icons serve as valuable tools for scanning and quickly locating the click target that you are looking for.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#56

Post by jfengel »

carlosjobim wrote: post #26
jfengel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to avoid customizing apps. I want to be able to sit down at a fresh install (or someone else's) and not spend time learning their preferences. When someone asks me for a checkbox so they can have my app work their way instead and everyone else can do theirs, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. The check boxes are hard to discover unless you put them front and center, in which case they remain there fo…

I think most non-Linux users haven't made a fresh install in 5-10 years. Preferences files and apps get transferred when you buy a new computer or update your os.

I was pleased how much was passed over from my last phone. I got the same brand so it's not surprising, but wow it is so much better than The Good Old Days (tm).

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#57

Post by postepowanieadm »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As 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 win…

Bootstrap was nice.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#58

Post by uhoh-itsmaciek »

In text boxes in some applications, enter submits the entered text, and ctrl-enter forces a newline (not at my computer, but I think Slack does this). In others, it's the other way around (pretty sure GitHub does this for comments).

I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to fix it, but "bring back idiomatic design" doesn't help when we don't have enough idioms. I'm not even sure if those two behaviors are wrong to be inconsistent: you're probably more likely to want fancier formatting in a PR review comment than a chat message. But as a user, it's frustrating to have to keep track of which is which.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#59

Post by skydhash »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As 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 win…

The web was designed for interactive documents,not desktop applications. The layout engine was inspired by typesetting (floating, block) and lot of components only make sense for text (, , ,...). There's also no allowance for dynamic data (virtualization of lists) and custom components (canvas and svgs are not great in that regard).

> building for modern desktop platforms is horrible, the framework-less web is being used there too.

I think it's more related to PM wanting to "brand" their product and developers optimizing things for themselves (in the short term), not for their users.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#60

Post by strongpigeon »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #31

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.

That was one of the problem with the original Material framework: every app looked too similar making it hard to distinguish one from another. Google was concerned about people associating bad third party app with itself.

They added more customizability in Material 2 (or was it 3?), but yeah at that point some of the damage was done.

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