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How the Web Became Unreadable

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Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#271

Post by nercht12 »

freelancezombie wrote: post #268
state wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Designer here, how can we solve this? I'd love to have my work peer reviewed because design is so subjective and I feel like I'm probably making elementary mistakes despite learning for years.

In case you haven't read this yet: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html

It's old, but still useful.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#272

Post by cfjgvjh »

cooper12 wrote: post #230
eriknstr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That website is currently not loading for me.

Ah it seems to redirect HN users to [0]. Sorry, it worked in my search so I didn't know about that. You can just search for "color typography" and read an alternate link or try clicking into that one from Google/the address bar mode since it seems to rely on reading the referrer. On a sidenote, the whole book is great so if you do read it and find it useful, I would pay for it. [0]: http://practicaltypography.com/gra…

That's one of the most exciting things I've seen all week. Thank you very much. I'm sure I'll enjoy reading it.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#273

Post by symlinkk »

EdiX wrote: post #260
matt4077 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there are many designers working on OSS who don't also use it. I' even doubt the premise that there are terrible open source UIs created by designers. The vast majority of OSS GUI apps were probably styled by programmers, and I think they proved quite well over last 20 years that they chose well when not becoming designers. The problem with design is also that it doesn't work very well in the "bazaar" style o…

GNOME employs professional designers and produces consistently the worst designs in open source: kill features left and right in the name of "simplicity" then add excessive padding to what's left all in service of achieving that "ugly but useless" state that everyone loves.

I've heard many people make the same complaints you do about GNOME but I personally think it is the most polished and best designed desktop on Linux.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#274

Post by The_suffocated »

paulddraper wrote: post #246
lacampbell wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a very helpful hint as to which community contributed content is good quality. Like Stack Overflow making the lower rated answers less obvious (at the bottom). Oh, and SO greys out text too.

Hmm, since the appearances of low-quality answers on SO are so different from the others, I usually end up moving the mouse over them impulsively to read them. Had SO not greyed out such postings, I would have simply ignored them and saved plenty of my time.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#275

Post by ozgung »

js8 wrote: post #127
eitland wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this is always the case but I wonder if, in some of the cases, this is what makes it hard for designers to get accepted in open source: the fact that many of the developers are also users and as such are pretty opinionated while the designers that come to open source might often be very eager to "set their mark" on something?

I wouldn't judge designers this way. I think they are users too, but they have a certain aesthetics, that can be even more subjective than, say, software architecture. And in OSS you cannot really do usability studies, it's expensive (although commercial companies don't do them much today either, I think). I think the problem really is lack of humility of some designers, which was trend-set by Steve Jobs. SJ didn't d…

No, this is the most common misconception about Steve Jobs. It's like another cancer affecting the young entrepreneurs and designers.

He didn't have strong opinions on many things, he had a very compotent team and he continually pushed his teams to their limits.

iPhone was the result of a long and iterative design process involving many smart people.

Here is the ancestor of the iPhone from 1983: http://gizmodo.com/279688/apples-original-iphone-1983

Apple was working on the tablet project (iPad) long before they were working on the phone project. First iPhone designs indeed had physical buttons like iPods of the time. Then they decided to marry the phone project and the tablet project. Hence a phone with a multi-touch screen.

Of course all of these are marketed as if Steve Jobs was a genius and everything was so obvious to him from the beginning. That's just not true.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#276

Post by gcb0 »

state wrote: post #163
jonstokes wrote: post #55

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.…

nope. it's not. everyone who studied industrial design have it down to a science. what happens is that webdesigners and silicon valley ued/UX people came from graphic design. so it's new to them. and the industrial design people are shunned away just like system analysts are on the coding side.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#277

Post by nercht12 »

Silhouette wrote: post #207
state wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's hard to disagree, but I think the problem is more fundamental: way, way too many people working in tech assume that because Google and Facebook and Apple and Microsoft are huge and financially successful overall, that means they know what they're doing and should be emulated. This has been true in recent years with the trendy but awful design. It's not just the typography. The obsession with flat design and givi…

Eh... I think that's true in part, but I've also met people who really love that flat Metro design. It's hideous in my book, but it's trendy, yes, but that's because some people like it.

More so than that, looking at website design from a monetary perspective: It's fast, cheap, and easy. It takes alot less time to put together a sleek modern website that utilizes the flat but nifty new CSS3 features than sitting down at the drawing board and creating something truly beautiful... which, when you're done, may or may not turn out how you dreamed. With websites in high demand, it shouldn't be any wonder than a typical but FAST-and-CHEAP-to-produce site will win out for the majority of cases.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#278

Post by omnimus »

jonstokes wrote: post #55

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…

1. Whats good design is very differend thing for hard geek power users vs regular people. Complain as you want, there is thousands of ones like you and milions of the regular users. Products are made for the mass. 2. Good interface is not about amout of clicks or even time spend. Its about how easy it is to use. Its about pace and how much you have to think about it. 3. There are so many bad designers out there. Its same for programming, but you wont necessary see the bad code. The percentages will be similar. The pitfall is that self educated designers dont seem to see the depths of the problems. When you have good educated designer they almost forsee the future and are extremely aware of the big picture. Self educated programmers tend to be much more modest and aware of their capabilities because the skill is more visible. The design gets reduced to skin part of design which is marginal. 4. Design is what made all the ios android jobs. The startup boom is driven by design. Design is going to stay.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#279

Post by gurkendoktor »

js8 wrote: post #97
jonstokes wrote: post #55

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…

> 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 what's changed is that engineers do not work in a vacuum anymore. You can follow Apple's or Google's UI well-known guidelines with a little branding and your app will be fine. Of course, that requires humility as well.

Re: How the Web Became Unreadable

#280

Post by gurkendoktor »

usaphp wrote: post #73
jonstokes wrote: post #55

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" Did it ever occurs to you that they had far less functionality when these examples were created? Backend programmers kept piling functionality into these apps and at some point no matter how good a designer is it just gets overwhelmed.

iTunes 12.0 was the worst update to the iTunes UI ever, and its only new feature was support for Family Sharing, which is mostly a backend/store feature. It was 100% a pointless UI overhaul.
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