241–250 of 354 posts
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
The cancer has now spread to each professional, industrial, each institutional site I use. One after another, they fell into the mobile-friendly but desktop-unfriendly and any-real-use-unfriendly fad: white space everywhere, flat design, white text; the amount of information on a screen has been divided by 2, by 3, by 4, I don't know, with wide spaces on the sides, with huge vertical space between each line of inform…
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
> Designers are ruining software in general. I agree with you. But what I find hilarious about it is that in the 90s, there was a meme that software engineers cannot do usability very well, and you need specialized designers. I think it all comes down to humility. Think about and respect the user. Do usability studies and follow their results, like Microsoft used to do in 90s. Don't let your notions of aesthetics ove…
You can't win. Gnome does usability studies and follows them, which gives them vocal opponents who don't want their software dumbed down.
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
I agree completely. Take a look at sites like Craig's List, Google, Amazon, Ebay, Reddit, and Hacker News. Fancy design doesn't make a website good, but it often makes a website bad.
Two of the worst trends at the moment are bright colors and senseless animation.
Nope. Not at all. Shockingly bad.
"But at least there's a CSS way to limit paragraph width to a reasonable number of words or letters that works on any device and that degrades gracefully without resorting to Javascript, right?"
No again.
LaTeX does this exact thing and has for years. Why is this so damn hard?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The low contrast text? You realize that this is a feature?
I don't find it to be a feature. I find it infantilising. "Other users didn't like this post, so we'll make it hard to read". I think it was a terrible design decision on an otherwise very clean site.
Like Stack Overflow making the lower rated answers less obvious (at the bottom).
Oh, and SO greys out text too.
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
As a designer, I agree completely. The problem is: interaction design really is a discipline in its absolute infancy. It's not graphic design. It's not engineering. It's not architecture. Pretty much anyone can just pick it up and start doing it. And the people who decide to ship shitty designs you're complaining about are more concerned with 'pageviews' or 'installs' (and in turn, their bonus) than actual usability.…
The mechanism here is that whatever esthetic and psychological principles are in play, an interface must also present the needed info and functionality. Craigslist and HN do that in a more-or-less bullshit free way. UX designers can get caught up in other concerns.
In fact there is a systematic bias: since we know that users don't like too much information, UX pros will want to hide info and functionality. But since no one likes boring designs, they also want to add cooling-looking (i.e. distracting) stuff.
The site was organized and simple to use, but everything good must come to an end, so one day the maintainers announced the site would be completely rebuilt, because the look had not changed in years, and we all know that old is bad.
Time went on and the unavoidable day arrived were the new "improved" design became mandatory instead of an option.
I still cry when I visit Internet Archive at a rare occasion. What before was a organized site useful for research, has turned into an slow bloated unorganized "mobile first" abomination, to further rub salt into the wound they decided that infinite scrolling was a great idea.
Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them. At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy. I basically think design is like…
>You know what works? Craiglist, that's what works. Reddit works. Hacker News works. Political views aside (and the post doesn't concern those either), this is quite relevant: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1407-why-the-drudge-report-is...
Both of them emulate tabloid newspapers (Drudge at least does it on purpose). But that's why I don't like to read them. Small bits of information everywhere, unsatisfactory individually, yet too disorganised to be treated collectively.