191–200 of 445 posts
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Yes exactly. CL is probably my favorite website on the internet, for the sheer reason that they have virtually not changed at all since they first launched over 10 years ago. It's fairly incredible. I can't think of another website that has done that.
CL is only ten years old? I always figured it was from the 90s — maybe a bias originating from the design.
A great example of a really nice information dense app is the Bloomberg terminal. Maybe it’s ugly (a lot of people say this, but I personally don’t think so), but all the right design choices have been made. High Contrast, monospaced fonts, extensive keybindings, absolutely no wasted space. And, most essential, it’s not a web app. I used to work at a portfolio analytics company who’s explicit goal was: to have all of…
This is how I feel about computing in general. GUIs in general were a mistake. Vim is fucking awesome, and there's no replacing a shell and the myriad CLI utilities you have at your disposal. The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. GUIs generally represent the sacrifice of power and automation for approachability by the lowest common denominator.
The GUI eliminated the busy work of setting up your environment to make your workflows easy. It instead provides an environment where a wide variety of workflows are easy by default, although maybe not as easy as they could be with specific configuration like setting up customized keybindings, etc.
Yes, what about the ridiculous amount of space taken by the header and footer on that page.
Re: Everyone agreed it needed modernization—it looked like it was from the early 2000s, after all! My goodness, Flintones even. The fashion chase is becoming obsessive and wasteful. As I've ranted about many times on HN, UI faddism is a huge time and resource drain and the industry should just say no or see a therapist. It sounds strange, but desktop UI's around 2000 pretty much reached the pinnacle of business UI's.…
I’m convinced this happens everywhere, at almost every software company. As a developer, the most demotivating part of my job was the endless redesigns-for-the-sake-of-redesigns that kept happening. It’s ultimately what drove me away from being an individual contributor software engineer. And it’s always for goofy vague reasons: “It looks dated!” “It needs more pop!” “It’s not fresh enough!” (What are we making? Soft…
One point: >Are there things my users really don’t need to see right now? If you don’t know, ask! ASK! ASK! ASK! For the love of god please ask your users. I worked for a company with a big clunky enterprise app. It got redesigned numerous times and rolled out with big fanfare. Nobody who used for any significant amount of time was involved in any of the redesigns. It was horrible every time with numerous changes jus…
A great example of a really nice information dense app is the Bloomberg terminal. Maybe it’s ugly (a lot of people say this, but I personally don’t think so), but all the right design choices have been made. High Contrast, monospaced fonts, extensive keybindings, absolutely no wasted space. And, most essential, it’s not a web app. I used to work at a portfolio analytics company who’s explicit goal was: to have all of…
This is how I feel about computing in general. GUIs in general were a mistake. Vim is fucking awesome, and there's no replacing a shell and the myriad CLI utilities you have at your disposal. The computer is there to automate repetitive tasks, not create virtual busywork. GUIs generally represent the sacrifice of power and automation for approachability by the lowest common denominator.
The most powerful form of computing is having the command line for input but also allowing a UI for the display of information.
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I think the better analogy would be installing a whole new bathroom (it’s a redesign after all). In that case the plumber could and should ask where the sink is going, even if he was only told to move the toilet. Why? Because maybe the sewage line is over there and about to be covered over with concrete and they’ll have to tear up all of that to move it in two weeks, but the sink hadn’t arrived yet so no one told him…
> you can’t just ask a user “how could this screen work better” Why would you ask that anyway? You've already assumed the problem and solution at that point. You ask how it's going, very generally and let the conversation lead you to their pain points. You don't ask about the UI, which they are not an authority on. You ask about their subjective experience, which they are.
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Craigslist is _the_ case study on how an ugly UI can survive over a long timeline. There are many techies and UI designers that are just disgusted at the UI of craigslist. For some, aesthetic is more important than usability. Luckily, for most, it's not.
Not to forget amazon.com. I am actually in awe of their boldness in completely ignoring UI design trends.
A champion of data density who has a lot of thought provoking words on design is Edward Tufte: https://www.edwardtufte.com Worth a look if you aren't familiar.
"What’s the lesson here?", asks the article. It seems to me the lesson is don't hire UX designers that are ignorant of basic seminal work in UX.