231–240 of 445 posts
Seems like the process is what failed here. Maybe there was zero feedback loop between the creator and the consumer?
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…
I love the Bloomberg Terminal style. I watched one of my users retrieve some product information yesterday, a few key presses and it was there. Much faster than a web application. The colour scheme also looks good. A black background gives you many more high contrast choices. Try using yellow or cyan on a light background. It seems most of the colours are based on the old 8-bit selection; red, green, blue, cyan, yell…
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…
> ASK! ASK! ASK! Except users lie all the time. They don't know what they need or want. People are horrible at being logical about what will actually help them. Watch them work. Watch a bunch of people work. Test and prototype changes and watch more people work. And watch them work at their desk or where ever they work.
> Except users lie all the time...
Users who have "skin the game", who actually have to use the application usually have valuable observations and suggestions. Does it mean that you should uncritically implement what they ask for verbatim? No, but sometimes the insight is right in front of you if you're receptive to it.
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The industry I worked in was networking (data center products, routers for ISPs, etc), but technical support. I did that for 20 years. Even though it was pretty high end stuff.... everyone hates technical support and I found that generally companies eventually devalue it as time goes on. I got tired of that system. I got paid really well but just got tired of seeing the atmosphere at company after company get more ne…
> Then someone would roll out metrics that show those folks overseas who just close cases are doing great because ... they just close cases without solving the issue. We've all got bad metrics stories, but wanted to share this one. Friend at megacorp was doing JS work, and working with the offshore team in India (few people in the US, and 3-4x as many in India IIRC). India team was "killing it" because of all the iss…
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The industry I worked in was networking (data center products, routers for ISPs, etc), but technical support. I did that for 20 years. Even though it was pretty high end stuff.... everyone hates technical support and I found that generally companies eventually devalue it as time goes on. I got tired of that system. I got paid really well but just got tired of seeing the atmosphere at company after company get more ne…
Sounds sadly typical. I wonder how many fields there are where "everyone who's actually good at field X eventually goes into related field Y instead because it's higher paying, more respected, better atmosphere, etc".
Everyone values support when they talk about it... don't want to actually pay for it.
Instead, I have found much success in slowly deprecating these applications and, instead, giving these users direct read-only access to the database and teaching them SQL. SQL is not a tool only for 'technical' people. Most of these users have mastered the 'dark arts' of Excel so they are capable of learning other tooling. These users can then query the data in any way they want and export it in any way they want. There is more to this, like ensuring to only give them access to reporting databases. The application then can focus on being an interface for updates / writes and not for data exploration.
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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.
There is a certain irony in reading about wasted screen space on Medium. That uncloseable banner on the bottom is driving me a bit crazy.
I used to open dev tools and add the style: visibility: hidden; but that got old fast.
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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.
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.