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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#221

Post by wtetzner »

mbesto wrote: post #127
JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

This is reductionist and myopic. I've personally been through building forms online and it's hell to try to find consensus on perhaps the most common forms used online. Let's take a credit card form: - Do I let the user copy and paste values in? - Do I let them use IE6? - Do I need to test for the user using an esotoric browser (Brave) with an esoteric password manager (KeePassXC)? - Do I make it accessible for someo…

Why would you ever disable paste? It can only make it more likely that the user will make a mistake (and hate you for making the form harder to fill out).

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#222

Post by chupchap »

jjcm wrote: post #148

Worked at Figma for 5 years. The author uses Figma as an example, but I think misses the point. They're so close though. Note these quotes: > Both are very well-designed from first principles, but do not conform to what other interfaces the user might be familiar with > The lack of homogeneous interfaces means that I spend most of my digital time not in a state of productive flow There are generally two types of apps…

Good point, I think in case of Figma the idiomatic design was set by Sketch and other UI design apps, which in itself was a step away from the idiomatic design established by Photoshop.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#223

Post by jimbokun »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations. The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time. Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win…

The web did have HTML and CSS, but as the author notes those have been bypassed for Web Assembly and other technologies.

Date picker and credit card entry should always always always use the default HTML controls and the browser and OS should provide the appropriate widget for every single web page. For credit cards especially the Safari implementation could tie in to the iOS Apple Wallet or Apply Pay and Android could provide the Google equivalent. This allows the platform to enforce both security policy and convenience without every developer in the world trying to get those exactly right in a non-standard way.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#224

Post by jimbokun »

dfxm12 wrote: post #220
jimbokun wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very mild jolt of anxiety every time I want to enter a new line in Teams or Slack, wondering if it will send a half completed message I will need to edit after the recipient has seen the half completed message, or it will enter a new line like I want it to. The behavior also changes if you start editing a numbered or unordered list. Maybe that enters the "formatting tools" mode you mention?

If you're worried about this, consider a copy and paste from notepad.

Note the "very mild" jolt, not quite enough to rise to the level of switching to Notepad (or Emacs in my case).

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#225

Post by viccis »

JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

>It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people

As someone in the middle of arguing about API design and service boundaries in a complex system with a product manager right now, who has redesigned our full system's architecture and release roadmap himself, I wish it weren't true.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#226

Post by wky »

teeray wrote: post #12

> There are hundreds of ways that different websites ask you to pick dates Ugh, date pickers. So many of these violently throw up when I try to do the obvious thing: type in the damn date. Instead they force me to click through their inane menu, as if the designer wanted to force me into a showcase of their work. Let your power users type. Just call your user’s attention back to the field if they accidentally typed 0…

Relatedly, scrolling time pickers are also a toss up on mobile. Sometimes a single swipe on the minutes gets you from 12:00pm to 11:50am, sometimes it doesn’t.

I wish the analog clock picker where two quick taps set the hours and minutes (and one more tap for am/pm) was more common.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#227

Post by lmm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #109
8organicbits wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a partial solution as the user needs to know that their locale is being used and know how their locale is configured to understand the format. This is most problematic on shared computers or kiosks, especially when traveling.

I mean, once in a different country, you either experience the locale shock once then adapt, or you've seen it before and kind of know what to expect. And for the rest of the users who have no idea about locales, using whatever locale they have on their computer might be technically incorrect for some of them, but at least they're somewhat used to that incorrectness already, as it's likely been their locale for a whi…

> And for the rest of the users who have no idea about locales, using whatever locale they have on their computer might be technically incorrect for some of them, but at least they're somewhat used to that incorrectness already, as it's likely been their locale for a while and will remain so.

Not really. A lot of computers are set to US locale (probably because it's the default) and the user just has no idea why some programs have dates in some crazy middle-out format and avoids those programs.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#228

Post by mbesto »

userbinator wrote: post #171
mbesto wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reductionist and myopic. I've personally been through building forms online and it's hell to try to find consensus on perhaps the most common forms used online. Let's take a credit card form: - Do I let the user copy and paste values in? - Do I let them use IE6? - Do I need to test for the user using an esotoric browser (Brave) with an esoteric password manager (KeePassXC)? - Do I make it accessible for someo…

All you need to do is use standard HTML form elements. None of those questions are even relevant, just excuses to increase complexity and make things harder for everyone.

[flagged]

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#229

Post by lmm »

weitendorf wrote: post #155

Guys, I found out about this technology called Cascading Style Sheets recently and I think it's the missing piece we've been looking for. It lets you declaratively specify layout in a composable, hierarchical system based on something called the Document Object Model in a way that minimizes both clientside and serverside processing, based on these things called "stylesheets". The best part is, it's super easy to cust…

> Cascading Style Sheets recently and I think it's the missing piece we've been looking for. It lets you declaratively specify layout in a composable, hierarchical system based on something called the Document Object Model in a way that minimizes both clientside and serverside processing, based on these things called "stylesheets"

I tried that and it was an absolute nightmare. There was no way to tell where a given style is used from, or even if it's used at all, and if the DOM hierarchy changes then your styles all change randomly (with, again, no way to tell what changed or where or why). Also "minimizes clientside processing" is a myth, I don't know what the implementation is but it ends up being slower and heavier than normal. Who ever thought this was a good idea?

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#230

Post by skydhash »

least wrote: post #216
physicles wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Slack it can get even worse. If you turn on Markdown formatting, shift+enter adds a new line, unless you’re in a multi-line code block started with three backticks, and then enter adds a new line and shift+enter sends the message. I can see why someone thought this was a good idea, but it’s just not.

It’s kind of modal editing. Your 99% is enter to send because it’s a chat program. You’re sending mostly quick messages where adding a chorded input to send is just adding extra work to that mode. When you enter a code block, that assumption changes. You are now in a “long text” mode where the assumptions are shifted where you are more likely want to insert a new line than to send the message. I think people that hav…

> I think people that have used tables or a spreadsheet and a text editor kind of understand modal editing and why we shift behaviors depending on the context.

I don't have a spreadsheet software nearby, but I remember the cell is highlighted different if you're in insert mode or navigation mode. Just like the status line in Vim let's you know which mode you're in.

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