The new Google Calendar is pretty sweet though, especially the day view when you have multiple calendars displayed
UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
211–220 of 290 posts
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Redesigns tend to happen because someone in management decides they want to remake the UI in a way that appeals to them, whether or not it makes sense to anyone else. The MS ribbon was a classic redesign. It broke the standard menu metaphor and crashed productivity for no good reason. Flat design was in a similar league, but not quite as bad. Is that a button or a text element? How can anyone tell? Refinement is a mu…
Ribbon may have been a bad idea, but MS claimed they did a bunch of UX research around it. Why is the standard menu metaphor better? Hunting through a hundred menu items whose names I don't need is a pain, especially if I don't have years of experience learning the options.
I saw a presentation at Mix once where they went through the redesign process in detail. For myself, and many others, the end result wasn’t great—and not only because it was different—but there was study behind it.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#213> To preface the article, I primarily work on, and prefer, back-end code. I've been involved in both web and software development for over 4 years now Cool, cool. To preface this comment, I'm a user experience designer, and I've been doing web software development and design for over 20 years. In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact. Main principle you wan…
> In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact. Did you read the article? The author specifically says, "Before all of the UI designers that read this go out and riot and champion against me for saying UI redesigns are a waste of time, let me say that I do value design . I think at the bare minimum, a product or website needs to be usable, and if you possess a…
> Did you read the article?
Please don’t do this.
> Maybe you should try to understand
Or this. Reminder: be civil, don’t be snarky.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Job security, designers can only design, so that's what they do. And if there is nothing new to design, they will keep redesigning. Gotta keep up with the trends.
Coders can only code, so that's what they do. Even if there's no new features needed or the old software is working fine as is, they will keep refactoring. Gotta keep up with the trends.
I actually agree. In my experience though, since the design is more visible to business people, it's easier to convince them it's needed. Tech debt gets attention when development grinds to a halt and productivity takes a toll.
The other thing in my experience is that usually the dev is last in line when it comes to decision making, unless you have a strong tech person who can take control of the product vision and push back. But those people are rare since they have to wear multiple hats. Usually I see that designers make the design first based on some use case or story and the devs then get to code it.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#215Entirely on-point. When I think of the major apps I use today that I do like and ask What new UI do they need, the answer is none (gmail, hn, venmo). In fact, some UIs would do well to hide the noise and look more like HN than Yahoo (e.g. github) When I think of the major apps I use today but dislike, the reason is usually performance, not pretty icons (slack, uber). Sometimes the redesign itself is an obstacle (redd…
This is a good point to make. I think the author has just had bad experiences with designers, as have I.
Gmail, venmo, etc. don't need a redesign because they were thoughtfully designed through a good process in the first place.
To speak to your AWS example; right now I'm in the process of redesigning an incredibly complex product from the ground up because is was so poorly designed the first time around. The users complain all day, the field engineers complain every day. A total redesign is our only hope to make it as a company longer-term.
The original engineers chose Material as the component style, which is terrible for a data-dense app. So as a part of all this, we're transitioning to a new design system that increases data density, readability, and has more component options to make actions absolutely clear and make space usage more efficient. We're also including in-app terminal support for those that prefer to use it that way. Also, certain parts of the FE will be metadata driven, where it makes sense for business logic.
TL;DR - This is a very broad topic that the author covers very superficially from their limited experience, but I absolutely loathe bad designers and poorly thought out redesigns.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#216I've noticed that it's a commonly accepted fact in most other areas of software development that mass rewriting of large and extensively-used pieces of code is a bad idea precisely because it'll probably introduce plenty of new bugs that were either never a problem in the existing code, or was noticed and already fixed there in the past. Yet when it comes to UI, those introduced bugs --- breakages of users' existing…
Many creative professionals (that includes programmers) will go and do the thing they like instead of doing the thing that is needed. For architects that could be a ron of glass and open spaces while the people who use this space would rather have a space with lots of cosy private corners and spots, for programmers it is insisting on certain frameworks, languages or patterns despite hurting the project. For sounddesi…
I agree with all that. But I'll add this. If the CEO is in any way involved with design, then you're already fucked. At every company I've every worked for either a) the company is big enough that the CEO doesn't even know there's a UX specialist, or b) the CEO defers to the UX specialist.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#217something has changed with the HN ranking algorithm lately, no? this is not an interesting article.
I'd agree that it's not a good article. But it is "interesting" in that the topic of UX redesign is very relevant to the software field.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
An idiot, in the original sense of the word, is someone who focuses on themselves, showing no interest in the common cause/politics. It's a bit heavy, but reapplied here it could mean someone who focuses completely on visual quality, while not putting their time into other important aspects of the product (almost all of which are more important that visual quality, at least according to OP).
This is how I would describe the noun of idiotic design if it existed.
Well, if it didn't exist before, you just created it.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know this will never happen, but it would be interesting to see the percentage of Reddit users who took the time to opt out of the new "improved" interface. I suspect that number is small, because most people have learned to just quietly sigh and accept random UI changes, but larger than the Reddit UI team would care to admit.
If you are a moderator of a reasonably popular subreddit, you can find out by checking the traffic statistics which breaks out old vs new! For example, for my little link-sharing subreddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/ ) : https://imgur.com/a/sUcEQeQ You can see a large fraction of the users have taken the time to optout, perhaps as much as a third (!) of those who can. Considering how passive most users are, thi…
Thanks! 1/3 opting out is indeed damning. I'm surprised they made those stats public. Hopefully a moderator of /r/programming, /r/news, /r/politics, or some other mega-popular subreddit will post their stats.
Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time
#220> To preface the article, I primarily work on, and prefer, back-end code. I've been involved in both web and software development for over 4 years now Cool, cool. To preface this comment, I'm a user experience designer, and I've been doing web software development and design for over 20 years. In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact. Main principle you wan…
As a user, 9/10 if I notice the UI has changed, it's because I'm unhappy and feeling encumbered or lost. It's very rare that a redesign had me saying, "Oh wow, that's so much better!" So many UI fads have set usability back but get repeated with most redesigns... hamburger menus, login forms that hide password fields until you've entered the username, ultra minimal forms that leave the user guessing what is interacti…
On phone apps, if I noticed the UI 9/10 of the times I notice a UI change it's because I opened it do do something, but all I can see is a tutorial on how to use the new UI.