Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

lobste.rs

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 326 posts

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#21

Post by privong »

exelius wrote: post #8
TeeWEE wrote: post #2

I thinks this guy is missing the point. Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules. In the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use. The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.

Google sucks at UI. Period. They had one good UI: the original Google home page. Everything since then has not been about making their products more usable, it's been about finding ways to cram more advertising into their products. This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.

> This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.

I do not think that necessarily follows. Even if you are not the customer, they likely (think they) are designing it for you. Because they need you to keep giving them your data, they need you to find the UI easy to use and easy to hand over data.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#22

Post by acdha »

This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI.

One phrase I hear a lot is “The future is longer than the past”. It's relevant here as well – spending all of your time worrying about existing users have to spend a couple minutes getting used to a new keyboard design isn't a good reason not to make improvements which will benefit the millions of people who will never use the old one.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#24

Post by iaskwhy »

tomp wrote: post #15

If only every application was just a backend with a well-defined API and a default UI, then we could have independently sourced UIs that every person could choose (and customize) on demand!

Or Chrome with Stylebot. I love to see people reactions when they see how different their sites are on my screen.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#25

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

exelius wrote: post #8
TeeWEE wrote: post #2

I thinks this guy is missing the point. Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules. In the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use. The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.

Google sucks at UI. Period. They had one good UI: the original Google home page. Everything since then has not been about making their products more usable, it's been about finding ways to cram more advertising into their products. This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.

The underlying problem is dev time gets wasted on cosmetic updates while basic usability issues are ignored.

Whatever OS you pick, there are elements that are simply wrong.

I have a particular loathing of iTunes for its many persistent idiocies, but I could just as easily pick examples from Windows or Linux world.

Designing eye-candy is much easier than designing good application work-flow - and it's the latter that defines the UX.

It's baffling that this is either not understood or ignored by so many product managers.

Or maybe not - if you research app design books you'll find a huge amount written about coding conventions and ideas like MVC, and quite a lot about HI standards and graphic design, but (relatively) almost nothing about workflow design.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#26

Post by chuckcode »

I think it is just a fact of life, it's the same reason that I can't ever figure out how to really use a microwave. They have to make it different this year to "differentiate" the brand. I've learned to live with a lot of churn and reach to buy the products that were built with more care and last.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#27

Post by sillysaurus3 »

acdha wrote: post #22

This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI. One phrase I hear a lot is “The future is longer than the past”. It's relevant here as well – spending all of your time worrying about existing users have to spend a couple minutes getting used to a new keyboard design isn't a good reason not to make improvements w…

"The future is longer than the past" seems like the perfect excuse to justify pretty much anything.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#28

Post by remon »

The problem with arguments like these is that there being "no good reason" is highly subjective. Excessive change is generally better than no changes at all. Things have to evolve and even if we miss the mark every now and then it should always improve over time on average when new ideas are tried and tested.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#30

Post by shawnwall »

Google is making a huge amount of progress in UI and UX; the company has historically been rather mediocre in terms of it's UI and UX, while Apple was always the star. Over the past year or so the roles have reversed, and Google continues making strides towards unifying their applications in a single user experience and ui paradigm that allows for simpler app use, particularly for new users.

It's easy to get upset when things change, but keep in mind that change can be positive and/or negative.

Post reply on HN