21–27 of 27 posts
> We’ve been taught that UX is not only about function, but about delight, whimsy, wit, and beauty. Is this real? If this is really the case, it would explain why my observations of UX feel delightfully negative. There's too much focus on themselves and not on the user.
It's good that the author is questioning how to make accessible content in ways that make the experience of using a site better for everyone, but it's incredibly disappointing that they scattered the article with points saying (I'm paraphrasing) "I'm not visually impaired so I can't know what this is like!" You can know. Just talk to people who use assistive tech. Don't guess at how to improve what you build. Hire a…
I can sympathize with the author. I try to learn about accessibility in my free time, so I cannot "hire a diverse team/consultants". I also don't want to annoy random people I meet with questions about their disabilities. So instead I read a lot. And when I write something, I am transparent about the fact that I do not have first hand experience (at least not to the point that I was unable to complete a task due to a…
But in my experience, accessibility is the 100th bullet point on the to do list and most everyone agree that it's the right place. It's so true that in Europe, there's now a law that force everybody to have accessibility.
> We’ve been taught that UX is not only about function, but about delight, whimsy, wit, and beauty. Is this real? If this is really the case, it would explain why my observations of UX feel delightfully negative. There's too much focus on themselves and not on the user.
I haven't been taught that by programming blogs at least. They all seem to say(although I ignore them) that the ideal UI is the command line.
Animations may look like fun, until you're in some slow remote desktop. I don't want to be mesmerized by the way some dots move in response to the pointer; I want to know whether that bill got paid or whatever, or check the status of some application.
Bad accessibility is bad for everyone, not just people who are visually impaired.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't been taught that by programming blogs at least. They all seem to say(although I ignore them) that the ideal UI is the command line.
Are they wrong though? Maybe a tui sometimes, but most of the time anything beyond the command line is wasted effort for a worse experience
GUIs are discoverable and you can add a lot more features without needing to justify learning them all or Googling every time.
Which means they are are very well suited to true premade software, wheras CLI always seems to imply a more build it yourself approach with simpler primitives, which can take time.
GUIs also don't have to be consistent, CLIs do if they want to be easily scriptable, so you can have a lot more context sensitive stuff, confirmation prompts, etc, which increases safety.
CLIs always seem like they're pretty much digital versions or passive tools, they don't really do anything, the user does.
The usual CLI workflow seems to be "Take an input, do this thing I already thought of in my head to it, and nake this output", wheras GUIs seem to better lend themselves(for better or worse) to actually being the stage on which the thinking happens, the same way you can use a CAD even if you can't see the whole thing you want to make in your head.
Which makes GUIs amazing for occasional tasks, that one might otherwise not want to learn a whole program for, and forget by the time they need it again. I suspect that is key for allowing computers to take over as many tasks as they do.
I almost think that CLI fans seem to not do as many random assorted things on computers, and are more likely to use dedicated devices or analog/mechanical. CLI seems very well suited if a lot of your computer use is real computing, taking an input and making an output.