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Whitespace killed an enterprise app

uxdesign.cc

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Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#301

Post by TeMPOraL »

blueboo wrote: post #229
seabird wrote: post #223

Modern UI design is awful. It might work for Joe Moron, who is just scrolling through video clips and short fragments of text, but I can't imagine why you would ever try to apply design principles designed for that case to professional users. Do people really think they can take the complexity out of these inherently complex business systems? I'm not saying that everything has to look like shit, but no amount of dumb…

Well, let's challenge ourselves: what is the best designed (digital) interface with the deepest usability? Or some outstanding interfaces that square that circle? I'm familiar with 3d software suites, and they're (mostly) all highly-configurable, permitting custom layouts, panels, toolbars, and even enabling intermediate users to create UI tools. To your point, they're also ferociously complicated for novices. Bloomb…

Gmail is a bad example. It's way too limited, very low-density in default settings, and generally slow. Thunderbird would be better, but it's far from the peak of what's possible. If you redesigned Thunderbird around the principles of terminal or Emacs-based mail apps - in particular the keyboard-first focus and high performance, with Thunderbird's rich content rendering, then it would be much closer to e-mail perfection.

3D software suites like 3DS Max or Blender are perfect examples of software that's a tool, not a toy. The learning curve is roughly proportional to the breadth and complexity of the problem domain, so training is required, but the software itself doesn't waste your time and patience with slow and low-density UIs.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#302

Post by TeMPOraL »

z3t4 wrote: post #249

There are tradeoffs when designing for first time use vs repeated use . And also between simple and powerful. Like a GUI vs a Terminal. Or keyboard shortcuts vs Menu. A user configurator vs a cad program. Or when it comes to game design - first time vs replay vs endgame. Maybe Ux designers can be inspired by games - designed for engame (multiplayer) but with campaigns with a progressive difficulty ...

That would be great. Each game usually features its own weird UI, with unique shortcuts, half-broken controls and plenty of design experiments - and yet users don't have any problem with learning all of this. A lesson for the UX people that users aren't as dumb as it's often said.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#303

Post by opportune »

thirdsun wrote: post #77
danielvaughn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God yes, the older reddit interface was so much better. I don't give a shit how pretty the UI is.

That’s the strange thing about reddit’s new design: It not only lacks functionality and performance, but also white space and clean aesthetics. It feels dated already.

it was designed to make it easier to integrate ads

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#304

Post by pard68 »

I rewrote 12k Powershell application for a previous job. Thing was ugly, full of errors, but they had been using it forever.

Turned it into a webapp. It didn't last three weeks. The users didn't want change. My app was able to increase speed by about 10%, management wanted it. But the guys in the call center didn't like it. Unlike the redesign in this article, I spent a year using that Powershell app and was very familiar with how it was used and its shortcomings.

There is something to be said for just wanting the status quo.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#305

Post by Roboprog »

PakG1 wrote: post #57

I'll forever be scarred by a web app I made to make the workflow in a mainframe terminal obsolete. Was so proud of what I'd done and all the theoretical productivity I had enabled (hey, I calculated the numbers, and the manager signed off on it!). But my only lasting memory of that app is that it probably didn't increase productivity as much as I thought it did when I looked at how they used it day to day, and only s…

Bank tellers went through this in the 90s. You could tell when they swapped out their terminals for Windows. No more machine gun F key navigation, hello “hunt n grunt” cruising with the mouse.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#306

Post by ilikehurdles »

Roboprog wrote: post #305
PakG1 wrote: post #57

I'll forever be scarred by a web app I made to make the workflow in a mainframe terminal obsolete. Was so proud of what I'd done and all the theoretical productivity I had enabled (hey, I calculated the numbers, and the manager signed off on it!). But my only lasting memory of that app is that it probably didn't increase productivity as much as I thought it did when I looked at how they used it day to day, and only s…

Bank tellers went through this in the 90s. You could tell when they swapped out their terminals for Windows. No more machine gun F key navigation, hello “hunt n grunt” cruising with the mouse.

This is what I’m increasingly going through with apple’s Touch Bar. Half the time I’m accidentally hitting it when I don’t mean to, and the other half of the time I have to look down, as a touch typist, to find the “button” I want.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#307

Post by megy »

duxup wrote: post #8

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…

> So this designer set out to solve the problem, taking cues from modern consumer apps.

The problem is, the arrogance of the designer. Who would ever redo something without talking to the user?

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#308

Post by pvorb »

delecti wrote: post #247
duxup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think that was just one I bookmarked at some point and there it is in my history ;)

Other than "np", as in "np.reddit.com", which is used for "no-participation mode", I think the other two-letter sub-domains are used for language codes. I think at one point in reddit's history doing things like de.reddit.com could give a german site, and so on. I'm not sure what "ud" would refer to, but I assume it's similar.

Maybe "undefined"/"undetermined"?

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#309

Post by megy »

varikin wrote: post #27
duxup wrote: post #8

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.

You don't ask them how do they want it redesigned. You ask them what they like, what they don't like. And preferably, you get a chance to see them use it.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#310

Post by tingletech »

scarejunba wrote: post #299
vermooten wrote: post #53

I worked at a company whose name begins with K ... exactly this happened. The 'old' UI was an ASP nightmare from the early 2000s but it contained all that the users loved. The new thing never took off, despite the CTO putting his job on the line for it. Another company had a green-screen nightmare from the 1980s replaced by some mouse-driven mofre modern UI - ditto. The users could easily naviate with arrow keys, tab…

What's a "green-screen" in this context? Like a terminal app old school style?

yea, most old terminals had black and green CRTs; or black and amber. For some reason the ambers were still called "green screens".
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