Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Design is compromise

stephango.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 104 posts

Re: Design is compromise

#91

Post by socalgal2 »

Here’s an unpopular opinion. almost all ui customization should be buried in settings menus and not available as easy to do my mistake gestures.

The first time I want into this was when MS word would let you drag icons off the toolbar if you pressed slightly too long. suddenly your toolbar loses a feature because you accidentally dragged the icon off which was the gesture for removing the icon. Absolutely no one needed that shortcut gesture. People who wanted to customize, which is rare, could have dug into some customization setting. Instead, for every one person that wanted to edit their toolbar, 100 others got frustrated when their app stopped functioning

Unfortunately designed love these bad designs. Mac and iOS are full of them. I did some gesture just a few days ago that magically pulled the left shortcuts off the finder. Something I never wanted to do.

So many of my family member have lost the picture of their loved ones on their iPhone lock screen because of the stupid gesture to set it as it’s too easy to do by accident. Leaving as a settings option only would be much better.

Same with the charging clocks that appear and their stupid swipe to change. Several times a week, reaching for the phone when I wake up, the clock gets swapped even though I have a choice I want and then I have to go spend time putting it back. Worse, it’s not even intuitive because up/down change one thing and left/right change another. No user needs this shortcut. It probably exists so the clock designer can check all their designs. No fucks given what’s good for users. I’m sure they misinterpret their metrics as positive feedback

Re: Design is compromise

#93

Post by PeterStuer »

For me (non native speaker), compromise and tradeoff or not completely the same, and I would favor the latter for this article. Tradeoff conveys the coupling of the alternatives. Design for one goal trades away another. Compromise does not carry that coupling directly imho.

Re: Design is compromise

#94

Post by locknitpicker »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Absolutely spot-on. However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise). I learned, when I was a kid, that I can't always get what I want (I think that someone even sang about it, way back then). The art of compromise, is one of the most valuable skills I had, during my career, and I'm still at it. In fact, I was j…

> However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise).

I think you got it exactly backwards. I'll explain why.

Your bias (and the blogger's) rears its head by the way you chose words such as "compromise" to discuss design processes. Words reflect and shape thought processes, and by choosing words such as "compromise" or "concession" you are already framing the process as a battle of wills. Design instead works with affordances, patterns, constraints and tradeoffs. None of these require you to argue or disagree with others, or others with you. Your goal is to seek the best design given your tradeoffs, and there is no single optimal way to pull this off. Seeking consensus doesn't require battling out people's opinions.

So why do people choose to use conflict-driven words to describe the process? Do you carry a conflict-driven mindset when tackling a design problem? I mean, look at the way you frame the process: someone comes with feedback and opinions, and your gut response is that you feel compelled to fight them? That warrants some soul searching.

Re: Design is compromise

#96

Post by locknitpicker »

thesumofall wrote: post #21
card_zero wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compromise is a lose-lose. It originally meant a promise between two parties to follow the decision of an arbiter. Sometimes this is the best we can hope to do, and right and necessary in order to have nice things: see for instance the Wikipedia essay "The Wrong Version", https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version or the Northern Ireland peace process. However, a mutual preference is a win-win, and is a creati…

No, a compromise can also be a win-win. It balances potentially extreme positions, it adds further perspectives, it forces all parties to consider what is most important to them. If the only alternative to a compromise is no agreement, it may actually be the only way to win

> No, a compromise can also be a win-win.

Exactly.

This whole discussion is baffling. For the "compromise is lose-lose" mentality to even have a chance of being valid, you first must believe that your own personal opinions and incomplete information represents the optimal and ideal solution. This is clearly never true. Why do people believe they are infallible and hold perfect information?

Re: Design is compromise

#97

Post by locknitpicker »

card_zero wrote: post #44
RealityVoid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say... You have arrived at a compromise? Ba-dum-tshh!

Ohohoho. I'd say this is actually an example of a third thing, where it turns out that you didn't even disagree, except in choice of words.

> where it turns out that you didn't even disagree

It's really strange how some people unconsciously try to push the idea that the only possible and acceptable feedback comes from those that only reinforce your own personal opinions. Not even Jesus was this sure about himself.

Re: Design is compromise

#99

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Just FYI. I had a bit of a watershed, in my life, when I read Scott Jenson's The Simplicity Shift[0]

It was written in Ye Time Beefore Ye iffowne, so mobile UI was really limited.

It's all about compromise. How to prioritize, and how to develop UI that was usable and affordable, while still maintaining some design integrity. It also talks a lot about how to work with others, and come up with compromises that work well.

[0] https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf (Downloads a PDF -short read).

Re: Design is compromise

#100

Post by TonyStr »

locknitpicker wrote: post #94
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Absolutely spot-on. However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise). I learned, when I was a kid, that I can't always get what I want (I think that someone even sang about it, way back then). The art of compromise, is one of the most valuable skills I had, during my career, and I'm still at it. In fact, I was j…

> However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise). I think you got it exactly backwards. I'll explain why. Your bias (and the blogger's) rears its head by the way you chose words such as "compromise" to discuss design processes. Words reflect and shape thought processes, and by choosing words such as "compromis…

I don't think the blogger uses compromise to refer to conflicting personal opinions. Consider a complex UI like photoshop. If you have too many buttons available on the screen at all times, the UI becomes bloated and hard to navigate (cough, GIMP). If you cut out too many features, you'll loose users who rely on those tools. If you move items to sub menus, or sub sub menus, you make the UI cleaner, but risk users never finding those features, or you risk introducing too much friction for anyone to want to use them. So the compromise here is what features to present the user for quick access, and what features to hide behind indirection. This is a difficult problem, and requires deep understanding of your users and their needs/habits.
Post reply on HN