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Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

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Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#131

Post by PunchyHamster »

linguae wrote: post #50
whatever1 wrote: post #48

Desktop is dead. Gamers will move to consoles and Valve-like platforms. Rest of productivity is done on a single window browser anyway. Llms will accelerate this Coders are the only ones who still should be interested in desktop UX, but even in that segment many just need a terminal window.

Is it dead because people don’t want the desktop, or is it dead because Big Tech won’t invest in the desktop beyond what’s necessary for their business? Whether intentional or not, it seems like the trend is increasingly locked-down devices running locked-down software, and I’m also disturbed by the prospect of Big Tech gobbling up hardware (see the RAM shortage, for example), making it unaffordable for regular peopl…

MS invests in actively making desktop experience.

But outside of that I doubt there will be many users actually doing stuff (as opposed to just ingesting content) that will abandon desktop, and other ones like Mac UI isn't getting worse

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#132

Post by __d »

mattkevan wrote: post #23

Really interesting. Going to have to watch in detail. I’m in the process of designing an os interface that tries to move beyond the current desktop metaphor or the mobile grid of apps. Instead it’s going to use ‘frames’ of content that are acted on by capabilities that provide functionality. Very much inspired by Newton OS, HyperCard and the early, pre-Web thinking around hypermedia. A newton-like content soup combin…

Is there anything you can share yet? It sounds interesting

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#133

Post by lo_zamoyski »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #15
analogpixel wrote: post #8

Why didn't Star Trek ever tackle the big issues, like them constantly updating the LCARS interface every few episodes to make it better, or having Geordi La Forge re-writing the warp core controllers in Rust?

Because, something that a lot of tech-obsessed Trek fans never seem to really come to terms with, is that Trek didn't fetishize technology. In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI updates because they would have advanced, culturally, to a point where they recognized that continuous UI updates are frustrating for users. They would have invested the time and research effort required to better understan…

> continuous UI updates are frustrating for users […] It's driven often by individual developers' needs to leave their fingerprints on something, to be able to say, "this project is now MY project", to be able to use it as a portfolio item that helps them get a bigger paycheck in the future.

Yes, although users also judge updates by what is apparent. Imagine if OS UIs didn’t change and you had to pay for new versions. So I’m sure UI updates are also partly motivated by a desire to signal improvements.

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#134

Post by andrekandre »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #92
jack_tripper wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The tech industry became less about making the world a better place through technology When the hell was even that?

In the 80s and 90s there was much more idealism than now. There were also more low hanging fruit to develop software that makes people’s lives better. There was also less investor money floating around so it was more important to appeal to end users. To me it seems tech has devolved into a big money making scheme with only the minimum necessary actual technology and innovation.

  > In the 80s and 90s there was much more idealism than now.
that idealism was already fading by then, which had started much earlier in the preceding decades (see, memex/hypertext etc)

  > tech has devolved into a big money making scheme with only the minimum necessary actual technology and innovation
in the end, they are businesses, so it could be assumed that such orientation would take over in the end eventually though, no?

its the system of incentives we all live under (make more money or die)

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#135

Post by lo_zamoyski »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #129
RedNifre wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the LCARS GUI is only for simple recurring tasks, so it's easy to find an optimal interface. Complex tasks are done vibe coding style, like La Forge vibe video editing a recording to find an alien: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Faiu360W7Q I do wonder if conversational interfaces will put an end to our GUI churn eventually...

Conversational interfaces are slow and will still be slow even if AI latency will be zero. It might be nice way for making complex, one off tasks by personnel unfamiliar with all the features of the system, but for fast day to day stuff, button per function will always be a king.

Keyboard button even. TUIs are faster for many cases.

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#136

Post by clearleaf »

porkbrain wrote: post #95
jhhh wrote: post #72

I understand the desire to want to fix user pain points. There are plenty to choose from. I think the problem is that most of the UI changes don't seem to fix any particular issue I have. They are just different, and when some changes do create even more problems there's never any configuration to disable them. You're trying to create a perfect, coherent system for everyone absent the ability to configure it to our l…

Text selection used to be frustrating on mobile for me too until Google fixed it with OCR. I get to just hold a button briefly and then can immediately select an area of the screen to scan text from, with a consistent UX. Like a screenshot but for text.

This is such an indictment of modern technology. No offense is meant to you for doing what works for you, but it is buck wild that this is the "fix" they've come up with. As somebody learning about this for the first time it sounds equivalent to a world where screenshotting became really hard so people started taking photos of their screen so they could screenshot the photo. How could such a fundamental aspect of using a computer become so ridiculous? It's like satire.

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#137

Post by ryandrake »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #123
jhhh wrote: post #72

I understand the desire to want to fix user pain points. There are plenty to choose from. I think the problem is that most of the UI changes don't seem to fix any particular issue I have. They are just different, and when some changes do create even more problems there's never any configuration to disable them. You're trying to create a perfect, coherent system for everyone absent the ability to configure it to our l…

> He even mentioned how unpopular making things configurable is in the UI community. Inability to imagine someone might have different idea about what's useful is general plague of UI/UX industry. And there seem to be zero care given to usage by user that have to use the app longer than 30 seconds a day. Productivity vs learning time curve is basically flat, and low, with exception being pretty much "the tools made b…

Back in the 90s, you had a setting for everything! It was glorious. This trend of deliberately not making things configurable is the worst, and we can’t seem to escape it because artists are in charge of the UI rather than human interaction professionals.

App designers need to understand that their opinions on how the app should look and work are just that: opinions. Opinions they should keep to themselves.

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#138

Post by ryandrake »

andrekandre wrote: post #134
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 80s and 90s there was much more idealism than now. There were also more low hanging fruit to develop software that makes people’s lives better. There was also less investor money floating around so it was more important to appeal to end users. To me it seems tech has devolved into a big money making scheme with only the minimum necessary actual technology and innovation.

> In the 80s and 90s there was much more idealism than now. that idealism was already fading by then, which had started much earlier in the preceding decades (see, memex/hypertext etc) > tech has devolved into a big money making scheme with only the minimum necessary actual technology and innovation in the end, they are businesses, so it could be assumed that such orientation would take over in the end eventually tho…

> make more money or die

This is not true for the vast majority of people making these things. At some point, most businesses go from “make money or die” to financial security: “make line go up forever for no reason”.

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#139

Post by ryandrake »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #90
gtowey wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because companies are no longer run by engineers. The MBAs and accountants are in charge and they could care less about making good products. At Microsoft, Satya Nadella has an engineering background, but it seems like he didn't spend much time as an engineer before getting an MBA and playing the management advancement game. Our industry isn't what it used to be and I'm not sure it ever could.

I have heard a big factor is that a lot of the newer devs don’t really use desktop OS outside of work. So for them developing a desktop OS is more of an abstract project like for me developing software for medical devices which I never use myself.

I’ve never understood the idea of a software developer who doesn’t use a computer outside of development. Who are these people?

Re: Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

#140

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jrowen wrote: post #111
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drew both brushing processes as a UML diagram the variance would be trivial Now compare that variance to the variance options given with machine and computing UX options you’ll see clearly that one (toothbrushing) is less than one stdev different in steps and components for the median use case and one (computing) is nearly infinite variance (no stable stdev) between median use case steps and components. The fa…

I would almost define "experience" as that which can't be described by UML. Ask any person to go and find a stick and use it to brush their teeth, and then ask if that "experience" was the same as using their toothbrush. Invoking UML is absurd.

You know some of us old timers still remember a time before people just totally abandoned the concept of having functional definitions and iso standards and things like that.

Funny how we haven’t done anything on the scale of Hoover Dam, Three Gorges, ISS etc…since those got thrown away

User Experience also means something specific in information theory and UX and UML is designed to model that explicitly:

https://www.pst.ifi.lmu.de/~kochn/pUML2001-Hen-Koch.pdf

Good luck vibe architecting

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