Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer • Hacker News Board

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#241

Post by throwway120385 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

JusticeJuice wrote: post #31

throwway120385 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any strategies, but I've had designers also want to add unnecessary steps to a gui-driven process. One designer kept arguing about the cognitive load of having a user simply insert their credit card into the reader to signal intent to pay. They wanted a flow where the user would touch the UI to indicate whether they wanted to tap or insert or scan a coupon. There was no reason to do it that way. I don't…

This could be tested with usability studies and a good user researcher. Make a prototype of the 'fast' way, and the 'lower cognitive load' way. Try it with 15 people per prototype, track metrics, and ask people about the experience afterwards. Make sure everyone on the team has an open mind and see what sticks.

Our "usability study" is the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who use our UI entirely without issue every day. Market validation is better than any usability study you could pay for.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#242

Post by throwway120385 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

iudqnolq wrote: post #144

throwway120385 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any strategies, but I've had designers also want to add unnecessary steps to a gui-driven process. One designer kept arguing about the cognitive load of having a user simply insert their credit card into the reader to signal intent to pay. They wanted a flow where the user would touch the UI to indicate whether they wanted to tap or insert or scan a coupon. There was no reason to do it that way. I don't…

I hate that specific issue. Do not ask me if I want to tap a contactless card or insert my card. I'll do one or the other and then you'll know what I want. I call this dropdown-driven-design. "Our UI builder tool had this option, so we have to use it".

That was exactly what the designer was trying to do. We kept telling her "people tell us what they want by presenting their method of payment." And she kept sending us articles about cognitive load for some reason. I just don't think she had any of the domain knowledge she needed to understand why that was a bad idea, and she didn't take the time to get it either before arguing with us.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#243

Post by illiarian » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 5:17 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #240

doctor_eval wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember clearly the first time I ever heard the term “UX”. It was condescending explained by some guy from Google to a quite technical audience of telcos, many years ago. For reasons I couldn’t explain, it pissed me off. Later, they produced Material Design. The prosecution rests, your honour.

What do you think the best design system today is?

- https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

- https://bbc.github.io/gel/

- (not strictly design system s) https://every-layout.dev/ and https://book.inclusive-components.design/

These are by people whose primary goal isn't promotions, keynotes or CVs.

Tailwind also does a decent job with both the framework itself and the commercial UI examples: https://tailwindui.com/

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#244

Post by asoneth » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

Zardoz84 wrote: post #214

asoneth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you deal with bad designers the same way you deal with bad developers. Try not to hire them in the first place, fire them if you can, and if you're stuck with them try to make sure they are occupied with tasks that will not cause too much overall damage.

or use "ugly arm" method (I don't know if this is the correct English name of this). Ir, show to they two options. First a obviously ugly option that nobody would use. Then, show your desired option. They would use your desired option, perhaps with some minor changes, and they feel that did something.

Not quite the same thing but I've heard of people putting "A Duck" in their designs, which is a superfluous design element that is included solely for the purpose of letting a micromanaging superior remove it so that they can feel like they contributed to the design. https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/

But whether it's a duck, anchor, strawman, whatever you call it -- the risk with proposing an obviously bad solution to make the good solutions look better is that every once in a while they'll pick the bad solution. I think it was a talk by Mike Monteiro where he explicitly cautioned against using this approach because it tends to backfire hilariously at the worst possible moment.

Re: Rules for developers to design beautiful UIs without a designer

#245

Post by CRConrad » Tue, Apr 18, 2023, 7:41 AM UTC

waldothedog wrote: post #188

tmtvl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Styling to make it look like a button which is jutting out would signify the option for interaction to anyone who's ever seen a device with physical buttons, like a keyboard, smartphone, television, remote control,...

Doesn’t this discount the nature of the medium? The option for interaction is inherent. Everything on a screen can be clicked. The language, iconography, and visual treatment combine to differentiate certain items and establish an expectation in the event of a click.

There already exists a convention of visual treatment to establish the appropriate expectation and differentiate items that actually do something in the event of a click on them, and it's the one specified in the comment you replied to. HTH!