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Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

refactoringui.com

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Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#141

Post by wizofaus »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #89
wizofaus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, when I first clicked that second link it opened a page that was virtually unreadable on a mobile device (Android Chrome) - the text literally curved off the left hand edge of the screen. Which made the first sentence "The following principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces[...]for[...]mobile devices..." suggest there was little point reading on. But on reloading in anoth…

https://www.nytimes.com/1888/07/06/archives/easier-to-give-a...

Well yes, and worse, after opening it on a desktop browser, it still looks pretty average, and the way the background brightens as you scroll down is very distracting.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#142

Post by Rodeoclash »

kungfufrog wrote: post #136

I must be a philistine because with the primary example used on the landing page I actually prefer the bordered version. It seems clearer/cleaner to me. Maybe it's a vestige of growing up in the 90's writing Access applications on the side for dosh when I was a teenager?

I thought the same thing. As ugly as all those "WinForms"-esque 90s applications were, they presented dense amounts of information in a usable way, provided you had time to learn the application.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#143

Post by canadianfella »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #49

Design is how it works, not how it looks. This article seems to mainly be talking about the "polish" of a design. There are more important principles which don't have anything to do with polish, such as not putting the Cancel button next to the Ok button. More like this: https://lawsofux.com https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles I recommend prototyping the flow/feel…

[dead]

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#144

Post by iudqnolq »

throwway120385 wrote: post #11
clumsysmurf wrote: post #7

Often the bad designs come from the designers themselves. Just as software developers often fall prey to "NIH", many designers feel the established design systems like Material are insufficient for some reason. That is OK, if you know the rules you can break them, but often they don't know the rules either (grid system, typography, color for accessibility) and want to make "their own mark" with some new creation that…

I don't have any strategies, but I've had designers also want to add unnecessary steps to a gui-driven process. One designer kept arguing about the cognitive load of having a user simply insert their credit card into the reader to signal intent to pay. They wanted a flow where the user would touch the UI to indicate whether they wanted to tap or insert or scan a coupon. There was no reason to do it that way. I don't…

I hate that specific issue.

Do not ask me if I want to tap a contactless card or insert my card. I'll do one or the other and then you'll know what I want.

I call this dropdown-driven-design. "Our UI builder tool had this option, so we have to use it".

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#145

Post by JusticeJuice »

gspencley wrote: post #52
JusticeJuice wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design is a field where there's no clear 'correct' answer, in a vast sea of opinions. Honestly UI design is surprsingly tame compared to other areas of design (interior, architecture, typography etc). If there's a uni near you, try go to a design critique where work is presented and discussed - it's intense. Debating work is a big part of being a designer. Strategies to deal with disagreements, frankly a big part of…

One of my pet peeves in software development is not doing enough upfront R&D into feature and product design. User feedback is often only collected after the feature has shipped, landed and users are forced to deal with the "upgrade." It's hard to take subjective matters, such as UI preferences, and draw objective conclusions from them ... but it can at least be done in the aggregate. Before "SaaS" took over software…

Hard agree. I've worked with specialised user researchers before and holy shit they're good. I've never ever once thought doing research was a waste of time. It's so worth the money.

It's just really easy to get trapped in your own biases - often the bias of "This isn't that complicated, I understand it so the customer can too", and the "I know what they want" one. So in the face of 'we need to deliver fast', a lot of people won't take the time to invest in it.

If anyones interested in research methods, highly reccomend this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Methods-Design-Innovative-E...

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#146

Post by [deleted] »

actionfromafar wrote: post #135
threatofrain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also note that despite Jakob Nielsen's prominence nobody designs like he suggests. We should be open to the idea that beauty and delight may be more important than usability or features.

It was a long time I looked in that book but I hated it. Not because it was ugly, I like ugly. But the advice didn’t make sense. It’s been years sincy I thought of Nielsen, maybe I should give at a peek again.

[deleted]

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#147

Post by pedalpete »

falcolas wrote: post #131
threatofrain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also note that despite Jakob Nielsen's prominence nobody designs like he suggests. We should be open to the idea that beauty and delight may be more important than usability or features.

Respectfully, fuck that. Beauty matters the first time you use it, whereas functionality matters every single time. Or, in business terms, beauty has terrible ROI.

Where do you get the idea beauty has terrible ROI?

Look at almost any premium product and the premium that is being paid for is in the beauty. Rarely is it in the actual quality of the product.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#148

Post by albertop »

falcolas wrote: post #131
threatofrain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also note that despite Jakob Nielsen's prominence nobody designs like he suggests. We should be open to the idea that beauty and delight may be more important than usability or features.

Respectfully, fuck that. Beauty matters the first time you use it, whereas functionality matters every single time. Or, in business terms, beauty has terrible ROI.

Tell it to Apple.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#149

Post by paulryanrogers »

falcolas wrote: post #131
threatofrain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also note that despite Jakob Nielsen's prominence nobody designs like he suggests. We should be open to the idea that beauty and delight may be more important than usability or features.

Respectfully, fuck that. Beauty matters the first time you use it, whereas functionality matters every single time. Or, in business terms, beauty has terrible ROI.

This reminds me of expert systems where use is so intense that discoverability is trumped by speed of input. Old DOS/ASCII based retail systems were often optimized for speed.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#150

Post by paulryanrogers »

pedalpete wrote: post #147
falcolas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, fuck that. Beauty matters the first time you use it, whereas functionality matters every single time. Or, in business terms, beauty has terrible ROI.

Where do you get the idea beauty has terrible ROI? Look at almost any premium product and the premium that is being paid for is in the beauty. Rarely is it in the actual quality of the product.

In B2C aesthetics are important. In B2B it's usually ease and speed of operation that's more important
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