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Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

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Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#111

Post by pavlov »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57
dpark wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designers must understand the media they work in. Design involves tradeoffs and accommodations for practical limits. A designer who doesn't understand the capabilities of the systems they design for is destined to produce bad designs. You can't understand the limits of CSS unless you can work with it. Imagine if Apple hardware designers depended on their manufacturers to tell them what's achievable with aluminum and…

Yes. But this is far far far away from "designers must code." Except for a few unicorns, this just leads to people who are mediocre at both design and code. A designer who is bogged down in code will also produce bad designs, especially when they let their inability to think of how something will be coded (because they aren't advanced coders) limit them! Designers have their own tool chain to prototype UIs and user i…

I'm not advocating that designers should code -- far from it. I wish they had better tools for modeling user experiences.

You mention that designers have their own toolchains for prototyping, but these has nothing to do with UI dev tools. I've often wondered why this would have to be so.

Look at other advanced design fields like architecture and industrial design. It would be unthinkable today that professional architects would just draw a facade and not use CAD to actually model the structure. Similarly, it would be very unusual for an industrial designer to model a product using a toolchain that is entirely separate from manufacturing. The assumption today is that CAD and CAM work together, not separately.

Why can't we have the same in software? For my part, I've been trying to work on a solution in the form of apps like React Studio [1]. It's not there yet, but I'm convinced that proper software modeling tools will happen eventually.

[1] https://reactstudio.com

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#112

Post by zer0tonin »

hacker_9 wrote: post #8

To be honest UI dev tools just plain suck, making everything move more slowly that it needs to. If I'm on the web it's the HTML + CSS clusterfuck, If I'm in C# I'm writing color converters for WPF, if it's Java I have to use the outdated looking Swing, if it's C++ it's QT which I need to doll out cash for. Additionally every smart phone OS has it's own groundbreaking GUI layout concepts and ideas too. Then you get th…

>if it's Java I have to use the outdated looking Swing

Swing has been deprecated in favor of javaFx for a while now.

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#113

Post by Razengan »

kagamine wrote: post #98
capkutay wrote: post #7

I see a couple challenges with the future of UX design. One being that everyone has an opinion as to how something should work. Unless someone has years of widely-recognized, valid experience/expertise in design, who's to say if one person's instincts are better than another's? The other issue I see is process taking over creativity. Soundcloud's iconic design was driven largely by the intuition of the designers and…

I think you don't understand the design process. Not being bitchy, so let me explain. Instinct should be 1% of design if anything. Design isn't about colors and pretty, it's about a detailed process that includes data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior and removing all instinct and subjectivity from the process of design. It should include a minimum of guesswork wherever possible. It always am…

> it's about a detailed process that includes data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior and removing all instinct and subjectivity from the process of design.

Ugh no. Please, no.

Don't do this. I'm saying – pleading – this as a user.

Apple didn't do it (but maybe now they do, and it's starting to show in some of their products as a sort of creeping clinical sterility). Steve Jobs didn't do it [0]. And yet the UX set by them has been admired, imitated and aspired-to for over 30 years.

Plenty of other examples can be seen in the UI of Japanese games versus Western games.

I'm sorry but relying on "data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior" means you suck at UX design – like reading books on how to be socially adept – and the best you're going to achieve is a functional but sterile, neutral, gray block of clinical equipment, devoid of personality and soul and color and warmth ...if you sneered at these words, then I for sure wouldn't want to be stuck using your products.

In any case, if data structures, mapping processes, and analysis of user behavior are your primary skills then you'll be replaced by AI within a decade anyway. :)

[0] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/steve-jobs-technolog...

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#115

Post by deevolution »

whytaka wrote: post #64
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really underestimate the amount of time it takes to practice and do adequate UX design; unless you spend 10,000 hours doing design, you are going to suck at it, and most of the jack of all trades designers devs I met have really been mediocre at both. "Designers should code" is as fallacious as "accountants should be lawyers". Specialization has been the direction of human civilization ever since the neolithic re…

I have spent 10000+ hours doing design and I've got to say that my leap into code (especially backend) has been incredibly eye-opening. I've realized how so much of design is ego-driven, how design studios design for design awards, and what a crime it is that so many technical minds are steered to work on problems more related to fashion than accessibility or productivity. Designers should definitely code. Too much o…

Ive spent maybe 1000 hours designing and now 1000 hours coding and i can say actually developing something certainly feels alot more wholesome than designing the layout of an interface.

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#116

Post by pavlov »

whytaka wrote: post #60
pavlov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designs have to be implemented in something. Currently UX designers are often like chefs who work by drawing pictures of food and writing down conceptual recipes. When they've created a beautiful menu this way, they're surprised to find out that their recipes can't actually be made using the cooking equipment available, and some of the ingredients don't even exist. You're not going to run a Michelin-rated restaurant…

Do you think it's really worth it to have a menu that's so "beautiful" it's difficult to implement without more tooling? Does it enhance accessibility? Elucidate the IA? Or is it just more whiz-bang?

I'm actually advocating exactly the opposite of "beautiful menus" that are hard to implement.

The current state of tools doesn't allow designers to think in terms of actual UI components and navigation structures. Instead, they are forced to draw pictures and make animated slideshows. This leads designers down a path of tweaking aesthetics because that's what their tools are designed for. (In this regard, newer apps like Sketch and Principle are not fundamentally different from Illustrator or After Effects.)

We should have tools that allow designers to think in terms of higher-level UX components with the confidence that the designs can always translate into code.

I worked on two products that came from this school of thinking, Neonto's Native Studio [1] and React Studio [2] (they're both variations of the same codebase really). I know someone will bridge this gap eventually...

[1] https://neonto.com/nativestudio [2] https://reactstudio.com

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#117

Post by kagamine »

flukus wrote: post #53
maxerickson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, what if someone has years of widely recognized, valid experience and is also wrong? If that seems preposterous, I'd point to things like Helicobacter pylori causing ulcers. Decades of dogmatic thinking.

> Even worse, what if someone has years of widely recognized, valid experience and is also wrong? A more practical one might be the skeuomorphic phase apple went through.

That's actually a great example. Skeuomorphic design has it's place and can be good design, but my Calendar app doesn't need to look like a leather diary in as it did in 2014.

A good example is DJ software that looks like set of decks and mixer.

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#118

Post by taneq »

flukus wrote: post #55
k__ wrote: post #5

The problem I see with UX today is that there is a split. One the one hand are the people who just want to make good products people love to use. On the other hand are the corps who want to use this as a tool to direct people in a way that they spent more money for nothing gained.

> One the one hand are the people who just want to make good products people love to use. I don't want to "love to use" any product, the product is just a means to an end and just needs to let me do what I need to do and stay out of my way otherwise.

Good UI is invisible. You don't even notice it's there.

Sadly people seem to have taken this to mean "good UI is literally not visible and you have to try every obscure swipe and tap combo in the hope of discovering new commands."

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#119

Post by kagamine »

Razengan wrote: post #113
kagamine wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't understand the design process. Not being bitchy, so let me explain. Instinct should be 1% of design if anything. Design isn't about colors and pretty, it's about a detailed process that includes data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior and removing all instinct and subjectivity from the process of design. It should include a minimum of guesswork wherever possible. It always am…

> it's about a detailed process that includes data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior and removing all instinct and subjectivity from the process of design. Ugh no. Please, no. Don't do this. I'm saying – pleading – this as a user. Apple didn't do it (but maybe now they do, and it's starting to show in some of their products as a sort of creeping clinical sterility). Steve Jobs didn't do it [0…

I think you are mixing up visual design, graphic design, with UX and interaction design.

Re: Where will UX Design be in 5 years?

#120

Post by dwaltrip »

kagamine wrote: post #98
capkutay wrote: post #7

I see a couple challenges with the future of UX design. One being that everyone has an opinion as to how something should work. Unless someone has years of widely-recognized, valid experience/expertise in design, who's to say if one person's instincts are better than another's? The other issue I see is process taking over creativity. Soundcloud's iconic design was driven largely by the intuition of the designers and…

I think you don't understand the design process. Not being bitchy, so let me explain. Instinct should be 1% of design if anything. Design isn't about colors and pretty, it's about a detailed process that includes data structures, mapping processes, analysis of users' behavior and removing all instinct and subjectivity from the process of design. It should include a minimum of guesswork wherever possible. It always am…

Intuition is going away anytime soon. The data that one can collect today cannot compete head to head with the intuition and rich mental models of someone who deeply understands some domain and how that domain connects to other aspects of the human experience. It's no contest.

Data should be used as a powerful supplement, assumptions should be validated, and due diligence must be carried out.

But if there isn't a vision behind the project, it will be likely be mediocre at best.

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