251–260 of 290 posts
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How do you use the old Gmail? I hate, hate, hate the new one.
They hide it behind this strange URL https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/ You should see a banner with an option to 'set basic HTML as default view' across the top. It's great. You see all the information - nothing hidden behind icons, and page loads between screens actually take less time than with a SPA.
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> Of course, in the first 10 seconds or few minutes, but I suspect strongly this effect fades over time. This is part of the general phenomenon of looking for your keys under the lamppost. It's easy to do an experiment that tests how people feel about your new design after looking at it for a minute and a half. Want to compare how people feel about the old and new designs after six months of getting used to them? Tha…
You are confusing aesthetics with usability. Useful tests are not designed to find out how people feel about a design, but whether those people can complete task(s) they need to do with the design. The latter is usually apparent within an hour, and most of the problems surface once you have tested about 5-6 people.
And unless the software is quite simplistic, 5-6 people is just enough to falsely validate the preconceptions of the UX designer.
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Why is it better? What is the reason it's preferred?
It’s less visually jarring and doesn’t feel malleable. Find another human interface that consists of sharp edged shapes. That design aesthetic is like brutalist UI. Pretty for the architect, but few others are moved.
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People aren't using those sites because of their UIs, but because of the content they offer. UI isn't the only factor, but it is a necessary factor.
> UI isn't the only factor, but it is a necessary factor. Necessary for what (or for whom)?
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I'd agree. Given the opportunity, programmers will often work without regard to business needs. For example, rewriting an old codebase using their favourite new stack.
> For example, rewriting an old codebase using their favourite new stack. Sometimes that is a business need, but the rest of the business doesn't recognize it (or won't until it's too late). Yes, having your website running on coldfusion 5 isn't actually a problem - data comes in, data goes out, orders are filled (ecommerce, for example). If the actual business needs didn't change ever... there would not be a need to…
This. I work for a big payment system company. They had to buy another Exadata, reaching the maximum plan offered by Oracle. The refactor was delayed so much that now we have little more than one year to rewrite everything. If we don't make it in due time no more transactions will be processed. Some devs who pointed the need for a refactor left the company in the last two years and said it feels like a time bomb ticking with every git commit.
Meanwhile the UI/UX guys are trying to create a design system whilst redesigning the internet banking system and app, backed by the CPO and CTO (!?). I mean, I'm not the one calling the shots, but neither a deisgn system nor redesign should be a priority for a least two years.
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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.
This is true for everyone from janitors to CEOs. The big question is, what jobs are harmless, which cause improvements being “over-worked”, and which have the greatest odds of causing substantial destruction? UI / UX redesigns should be tested with small amounts of users, with all key metrics measured, and see what happens to those metrics and user retention after a few months. Otherwise, UI redesigns has a chance of…
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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…
Reddit tries pretty hard to force you back onto the new design, too. When not using old.reddit.com it "forgets" that I opted out of the redesign on a regular basis, and even old.reddit.com occasionally redirects to the new design.
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> For example, rewriting an old codebase using their favourite new stack. Sometimes that is a business need, but the rest of the business doesn't recognize it (or won't until it's too late). Yes, having your website running on coldfusion 5 isn't actually a problem - data comes in, data goes out, orders are filled (ecommerce, for example). If the actual business needs didn't change ever... there would not be a need to…
>Sometimes that _is_ a business need, but the rest of the business doesn't recognize it (or won't until it's too late). This. I work for a big payment system company. They had to buy another Exadata, reaching the maximum plan offered by Oracle. The refactor was delayed so much that now we have little more than one year to rewrite everything. If we don't make it in due time no more transactions will be processed. Some…
What has bugged me in the past (and why I don't like being just a 'coder') is that... hey - people in my position have a perspective few others have. Sometimes we can see things that others can't, and generally we're smart enough to understand the business impact. If you're being asked to implement 'business logic' all day, for months or years, at some point, whether you want it or not, you can see how a business is being impacted by things that you can see. Raising a flag like "hey, xyz should probably be a priority..." and being dismissed because you're just a coder and don't understand the business - besides being insulting, sort of doesn't really jive with reality. In many cases, the software team are the only people that actually have a strong understanding of 'the business' - how many of the pieces fit together, etc.
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>Sometimes that _is_ a business need, but the rest of the business doesn't recognize it (or won't until it's too late). This. I work for a big payment system company. They had to buy another Exadata, reaching the maximum plan offered by Oracle. The refactor was delayed so much that now we have little more than one year to rewrite everything. If we don't make it in due time no more transactions will be processed. Some…
Yep. I can't say I've worked on data at that scale, but the 'every commit is a time bomb' - had that feeling on things. What has bugged me in the past (and why I don't like being just a 'coder') is that... hey - people in my position have a perspective few others have. Sometimes we can see things that others can't, and generally we're smart enough to understand the business impact. If you're being asked to implement…
Strongly agree. The biggest barrier between devs and refactors with zero interface impact is AGILE mentality of always aiming to deliver value to the end user with every deploy. Business people just don't understand how much of an impact crappy implementations and error handling does have on the end user. We see 5~6% error rate, which represents hundreds of thousand of people daily, but shipping a new "feature" (that within months will be used by a few hundred people with a very high bounce rate) is always the top priority.
From time to time there is a meeting with the following subject: "why are users not using the basic features", and the business people's answer is always "the ui is outdated" or "the menu is confusing the user". Those answers are gathered by talking to some random users on the streets close to the company building (I'm not making this up).
> 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…
>People aren't idiots. They don't do this work for no reason. Citation absolutely needed. In my experience people are frequently idiots, and work gets done for no reason after someone with authority is convinced that it's a good idea by someone aching to do that sort of work. If it happens in so many other cases, it does happen in UI/UX as well.
Proper (re)design initiatives need to born out of the intersection of "viability, (user) desirability, and feasibility."
Usability is only scratching the surface of how to quantify the impact of a redesign and the author doesn't acknowledge the convoluted nature of how design decisions actually get made in non design-led tech organizations. The best companies (i.e. FAANG) have data and are measuring the outcomes of design decisions before developers even get assigned the work.
From the author's vantage point and how they get assigned work, they are missing the forest for the trees.
Thoughts?