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Sanding UI

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Sanding UI

#101

Post by fhdsgbbcaA »

meowface wrote: post #88
DustinBrett wrote: post #44

I've been "sanding" my personal website ( https://dustinbrett.com ) for nearly 4 years now, and it feels like it could go on forever. Luckily I enjoy working on it.

This is cool and very polished, but my advice (which may not resonate with you) is that you should channel this attitude into some user-facing app instead of letting it basically go to waste on a personal website most people won't see or won't use for more than a second or two.

It may surprise you, but some people like to program computers for reason other than money.

Makes no sense right? Weirdos, all of them!

Re: Sanding UI

#102

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #98
xyst wrote: post #80

I wonder what’s the most polished or “sanded” UI out there? You would think FAANG would have a half decent UI and UX with the amount of money they have. But anybody that has used Amazon.com or AWS, GCP, or even Azure would beg to differ. Personally, off the top of my head. The most polished UI/UX has to be “mcmaster.com”. I can find anything I need in what seems like a couple minutes. Compare this to big box stores l…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Sanding UI

#103

Post by [deleted] »

blovescoffee wrote: post #97
xyst wrote: post #80

I wonder what’s the most polished or “sanded” UI out there? You would think FAANG would have a half decent UI and UX with the amount of money they have. But anybody that has used Amazon.com or AWS, GCP, or even Azure would beg to differ. Personally, off the top of my head. The most polished UI/UX has to be “mcmaster.com”. I can find anything I need in what seems like a couple minutes. Compare this to big box stores l…

mcmaster is the most polished ui/ux you know? To each their own but this is a very hackernews comment - it's very much a site for engineers but I can't agree it's a polished UI or UX. To me: Sense of hierarchy is off, accessibility is meh, there's an enormity of information per page, there's poor use of color and spacing... it could be worse but I can imagine this site giving my designer friends a seizure.

[deleted]

Re: Sanding UI

#104

Post by waterproof »

donatj wrote: post #93
xyst wrote: post #80

I wonder what’s the most polished or “sanded” UI out there? You would think FAANG would have a half decent UI and UX with the amount of money they have. But anybody that has used Amazon.com or AWS, GCP, or even Azure would beg to differ. Personally, off the top of my head. The most polished UI/UX has to be “mcmaster.com”. I can find anything I need in what seems like a couple minutes. Compare this to big box stores l…

I can name multiple Facebook features that have been broken for months. Temporary profile pictures most annoyingly of all. They stopped working close to a year ago. They simply never change back. No one's sanding anything there.

The incentive structure doesn’t encourage it. Nobody gets a promotion for going back and fixing issues; it’s all about new initiatives and boosting metrics with new ideas.

Re: Sanding UI

#105

Post by voidfunc »

chii wrote: post #74
voidfunc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of care from the product managers filters down through engineering. Product managers only care if a feature is shipped, not it it is polished. More shit shipping means more personal gain.

but then why not keep going down the line, and say that the customers also doesnt care?

The problem is real the customer isn't the business that buys the software, it's the end user that is frustrated and tired of the shitty UI but is powerless to effect any kind of change because their management chain and execs don't give a fuck either.

Re: Sanding UI

#106

Post by throwaway14356 »

i always wrap the labels around the radio buttons and checkboxes. the animation also shows nicely that the label should not be selectable text. if one wants to further polish it a hover highlight might look nice at times.

Drawing a box around the radio buttons is perhaps not modern but it may make the form more usable.

The title or description of the element should not be the same as the options.

The 4 times might belong in two or more groups. This is something to dwell on, make a few mockups then most likely it shouldn't be used. If it doesn't jump out as amazingly useful restore normality.

consider lining up the time so that the :'s sit in a line. Try put the PM in a collum too. Maybe there should be AM as well.

Keep doing useless experiments until you strike gold. It should be really hard to beat default form elements (unless it is iphone)

Your truly fantastic 1000 line text input should most likely be deleted.

the example animation probably has insufficient line height. The user shouldn't have to aim that much.

Re: Sanding UI

#107

Post by michaelbarton »

timzaman wrote: post #82

Decent analogy. I wonder how many techies have ever used a belt sander. Or have one. I think very, very few.

I have not used a belt sander! I prefer to start with a planer, then use an orbital sander! Generally work from 60 grit up to 220 depending on the surface. Popping the grain and covering the whole surface in pencil marks in between each!

For anyone seriously interested in how to get a great finishing with sanding here’s the guide I follow:

https://www.blacktailstudio.com/blog/how-to-sand-wood-proper...

Re: Sanding UI

#108

Post by tikhonj »

xyst wrote: post #80

I wonder what’s the most polished or “sanded” UI out there? You would think FAANG would have a half decent UI and UX with the amount of money they have. But anybody that has used Amazon.com or AWS, GCP, or even Azure would beg to differ. Personally, off the top of my head. The most polished UI/UX has to be “mcmaster.com”. I can find anything I need in what seems like a couple minutes. Compare this to big box stores l…

I've listened through some of the developer commentary on Half Life 2 and Half Life Alyx and the amount of user testing coupled with attention to detail really impressed me. The same can't be said for Steam though :/

Re: Sanding UI

#109

Post by invaliduser »

Anecdata, but I found the very same issue (the bermuda triangle gap between radioboxes, but also checkboxes, and their labels) in a project a few months ago.

It seemed a pretty big deal to me, specially because I always clicked on the gap, and got frustrated and angry at this. So I reported it to the UX team managing the design system, and to the developers implementing the design system, and nobody really cared. Some people even tried to convince me this behaviour was OK (because other design systems worked that way too, or because they were planning to refactor this on the far future so they didn't want to spend time on this).

I think the industry is now filled with people that just don't care, specially on big companies where, if it's not in a ticket, and if the ticket is not prioritized as critical, nobody cares. All they care about are metrics (test coverage, line count of a function, whatever). Pretty sad actually.

Re: Sanding UI

#110

Post by two_handfuls »

selimco wrote: post #95
two_handfuls wrote: post #94

Meanwhile, some other UI uses square boxes for radio buttons. Or have a highlighted button but the enter key doesn't activate it. Or there are three different menus all behind a different symbol (ellipsis, hamburger, kebab). There is a lot of variance in quality. Those of you who polish your UI: you are appreciated. Truly.

I think space is usually the key that performs a click on focused buttons, not enter.

I was talking about the default button (typically blue, activated with enter), not the currently focused button (outlined, space).
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