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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#121

Post by jmbwell »

uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

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…

macOS is slightly more consistent among apps that use system controls, but the more custom the app, or the more React Native or Electron it is, the less predictable it is

Infuriatingly, some apps try to be smart — only one line, return submits; more than one line, return is a new line, and command-return submits; but command-return on just one line beeps an error.

Years of muscle memory are useless, so now I’m reaching for the mouse when I need to be clear about my intent

So much is solved when developers just use the provided UI controls, so much well-studied and carefully implemented behavior comes for free

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#123

Post by layer8 »

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…

Conventions already existed in DOS (CUA) and MacOS. The point is, every operating system had its user interface conventions, and there was a strong move from at least the mid-1980s to roughly the mid-2000s that applications should conform to the respective OS conventions. The cross-platform aspect of the web and then of mobile destroyed that.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#124

Post by Thorrez »

>using GMail is nothing like using GSuites is nothing like using Google Docs

G Suite (no s) was the old name for Google Workspace. Google Workspace includes GMail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, etc., so it doesn't really make sense to say that Google Workspace has a different UX than Google Docs, if Google Docs is part of Google Workspace.

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not one of the listed products.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#125

Post by irishcoffee »

layer8 wrote: post #97
uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

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…

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…

Carriage return and line feed go way back. Tty stands for teletype. A computer was the job description of a person.

It’s turtles all the way down.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#126

Post by alentred »

At some point UX became a synonym of manipulating users into doing things, and I wonder if it can ever go back.

It might have started in an innocent way, all those A/B tests about call-to-action button color, etc. But it became a full scale race between products and product managers (Whose landing page is best at converting users?, etc.) and somewhere in this race we just lost the sense of why UX exists. Product success is measured in conversion rates, net promoter score, bounce rates, etc. (all pretty much short-term metrics, by the way), and are optimized with disregard to the end-user experience. I mean, what was originally meant by UX. It is now completely turned on its head.

Like I said, I wonder if there is way back of if we are stuck in the rat race. The question is how to quit it.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#127

Post by mbesto »

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…

This is reductionist and myopic. I've personally been through building forms online and it's hell to try to find consensus on perhaps the most common forms used online.

Let's take a credit card form:

- Do I let the user copy and paste values in?

- Do I let them use IE6?

- Do I need to test for the user using an esotoric browser (Brave) with an esoteric password manager (KeePassXC)?

- Do I make it accessible for someone's OpenClaw bot to use it?

- Do I make it inaccessible to a nefarious actor who uses OpenClaw to use it?

I could go on...

Balancing accessibility and usability is hard.[0]

[0] Steve Yegge's platform rant - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#130

Post by jmbwell »

mike_hearn wrote: post #78
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, and worse, Windows was itself a hive of inconsistency. The most obvious example of UI consistency failing as an idea was that Microsoft's own teams didn't care about it at all. People my age always have rose tinted glasses about this. Even the screenshot of Word the author chose is telling because Office rolled its own widget toolkit. No other Windows apps had menus that looked like that, with the stripe down t…

“Brand” and “branding” is arguably the most important thing -not- mentioned in the article. The commercial incentives to differentiate are powerful enough to kick a lot of UX out of the way.

Now that all we do is “experience” a “journey,” it’s more about the user doing what the app wants instead of the other way around

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