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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#141

Post by zahlman »

bfbf wrote: post #51
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 t…

> “But why can’t you just do it?”

The answer should be "because users will hate it and use a competing product that's better designed".

A shame that it isn't actually true any more.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#142

Post by hungryhobbit »

davemp wrote: post #63
hungryhobbit wrote: post #29

"Avoid JavaScript reimplementations of HTML basics, e.g. React Button components instead of styled elements." Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev ... 1. React is an irrelevant implementation detail. You can have a plain HTML button in a button component, or you can have an image or whatever else. React has nothing to do with the design choices. 2. React is also…

> Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev This Twitterism really bugs me. You took the time to write a really detailed response (much appreciated, you convinced me). There’s no need to explicitly dunk on the OP. Though if you really want to be a little mean (a little bit is fair imo), I think it should be closer to level of creativity of the rest of your comment. C…

I think that's a fair criticism.

It bugs me that the author is "dunking on" React without knowledge on the matter (React is the tool you use to enforce consistent UI on a site; it has almost nothing at all to do with a design decision to have inconsistent UI). So I guess I "dunked on him" in response.

But ... too wrongs don't make a right. I'd remove the un-needed smarminess, if it wasn't already too late to edit.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#143

Post by zahlman »

the__alchemist wrote: post #41
lxe wrote: post #38

Yall 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.

Is this what the hamburger button is made of?

I mean, your guess is as good as mine as to what options the corresponding menu will actually contain, so....

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#144

Post by zahlman »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
basilium wrote: post #98

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that "Keep me signed in" checkbox is for? I mean, I was a web developer for many years and I rarely encountered this checkbox in the wild, don't remember implementing it even once. I mean the choice itself is very ambiguous. It is supposed to mean that the login session will only live for the duration of the current browser session if I uncheck it. But for a user (and for me to…

I've never seen one that actually works. It seems like whether or not I check them, the next time I log into [every site] I have to re log in.

Really? I don't think I've ever seen one that doesn't work. What sites are you using where you encounter this? Have you checked your cookie settings?

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#145

Post by leoc »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54
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…

> 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).

That's overemphasising the differences considerably: on the whole Windows really did copy the Macintosh UI with great attention to detail and considerable faithfulness, the fact that MS had its own PARC people notwithstanding. MS was among other things an early, successful and enthusiastic Macintosh ISV, and it was led by people who were appropriately impressed by the Mac:

> This Mac influence would show up even when Gates expressed dissatisfaction at Windows’ early development. The Microsoft CEO would complain: “That’s not what a Mac does. I want Mac on the PC, I want a Mac on the PC”.

https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0184/ch6.x... It probably wouldn't be exaggerating all that wildly to say that '80s-'90s Microsoft was at the core of its mentality a Mac ISV, a good and quite orthodox Mac ISV, with a DOS cash-cow and big ambitions. (It's probably also not a coincidence that pre-8 Windows diverges more freely from the Mac model on the desktop and filesystem UI side than in regards to the application user interface.) And where Windows did diverge from the Mac those differences often ended up being integrated into the Macintosh side of the "desktop era": viz. the right-click context menu and (to a lesser extent) the old, 1990s Office toolbar. And MS wasn't the only important application-software house which came to Windows development with a Mac sensibility (or a Mac OS codebase).

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#146

Post by hermitcrab »

pkphilip wrote: post #6

UX has really gone downhill. This is particularly true of banking websites. Also, the trend of hiding scrollbars, huge wasted spaces, making buttons look really flat, confusing icons, confusing ways of using drop downs rather than using the select/option html controls etc have all made the whole experience far inferior to where desktop UI was even decades ago

Hiding scrollbars is a deeply annoying trend. I don't understand the rationale. Because someone thought it looks aesthetically cooler?

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#147

Post by JoshTriplett »

> Suppose you’re logging into a website, and it asks: “do you want to stay logged in?”

Then the website has made its first mistake, and should delete that checkbox entirely, because the correct answer is always "yes". If you don't want to be logged in, either hit the logout button, or use private browsing. It is not the responsibility of individual websites to deal with this.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#148

Post by jjcm »

Worked at Figma for 5 years. The author uses Figma as an example, but I think misses the point. They're so close though. Note these quotes:

> Both are very well-designed from first principles, but do not conform to what other interfaces the user might be familiar with

> The lack of homogeneous interfaces means that I spend most of my digital time not in a state of productive flow

There are generally two types of apps - general apps and professional tools. While I highly agree with the author that general apps should align with trends, from a pure time-spent PoV Figma is a professional tool. The design editor in particular is designed for users who are in it every day for multiple hours a day. In this scenario, small delays in common actions stack up significantly.

I'll use the Variables project in Figma as an example (mainly because that was my baby while I was there). Variables were used on the order of magnitude of billions. An increase in 1s in the time it took to pick a variable was a net loss of around 100 human years in aggregate. We could have used more standardized patterns for picking them (ie illustrator's palette approach), or unified patterns for picking them (making styles and variables the same thing), but in the end we picked slightly different behavior because at the end of the day it was faster.

In the end it's about minimizing friction of an experience. Sometimes minimizing friction for one audience impacts another - in the case of Figma minimizing it for pro users increased the friction for casual users, but that's the nature of pro tools. Blender shouldn't try and adopt idiomatic patterns - it doesn't make sense for it, as it would negatively impact their core audience despite lowering friction for casual users. You have to look at net friction as a whole.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#149

Post by poolnoodle »

el_benhameen wrote: post #45
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…

No no, I find that having to click back through almost 40 years’ worth of months to get to my birthday allows for a nice pause to consider the fleeting and ever-accelerating nature of life.

You can usually click the year and then pick that first. But the fact that so many people don't instantly get that shows how poorly designed it is.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#150

Post by m463 »

cratermoon wrote: post #131
layer8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decades ago, Return and Enter were two different keys for that reason: Return to insert a line break, Enter to submit your input. Given the reduction to a single key, the traditional GUI rule is that Enter in a multiline/multi-paragraph input doesn’t submit like it does in other contexts, but inserts a line break (or paragraph break), while Ctrl+Enter submits. Chat apps, where single-paragraph content is the typical…

don't get me started on backspace vs delete...

^H^H^H^H^?^?^?
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