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Whitespace killed an enterprise app

uxdesign.cc

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Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#381

Post by rangibaby »

ioddly wrote: post #338
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

Hallelujah. It's not just enterprise apps, either. I've seen more than a few consumer app redesigns that just seemed to tack on the "clean", "minimalist", "whitespace" ethos, without really having a clue of an understanding of how users actually used the product. I think this is a big factor in what killed slashdot. They did a big redesign years back that added a lot of whitespace but actually made it incredibly diff…

> I hate the new interface and always browse on old.reddit.com, mainly because of the higher density of information that makes it easier for me to scan for posts I want to read. I'm actually trying to "redesign" an app (I put design in quotes because I'm a dev and just trying to make a personal project look nice) and one of the struggles I have had is that high information density can look crappy at first but once yo…

> high information density can look crappy at first but once you get used to it, is a better experience.

TL;DR

Your app should have the information density that it needs to be:

1. Useful and 2. Help the user avoid operating the app in a way that they don't intend to or is dangerous

Looking fancy is a secondary concern to good function. Typography has an important function because it is how you convey information to your user. Poorly laid out or written text can cause your user to get tired or use your app wrong.

Of course, making a useful interface is a difficult and long job. It is also thankless work, because if you do a good job your users will use your app without even noticing how well designed it is (good design is invisible!).

It's much easier to slap a pretty facade on your poorly designed app and call it done. People will be impressed by it, but struggle to use it.

I would recommend finding physical copies of Josef Mueller Brockmann's books, especially "Grid Systems in Graphic Design" and "The Graphic Artist and His Design Problems". They are both old (pre-DTP) but have great basic advice about how to design pages.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#382

Post by thirdsun »

tabtab wrote: post #146
thirdsun wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Proper white spacing shouldn’t be the problem of any redesign. Also consider that users often have a tendency to rebel against change. Habits and routines are hard to overcome and the actual might be that features and data simply aren’t in the same place they used to be, regardless of if that new location is much more reasonable. I saw it again and again: Users memorize hard-coded paths to certain functions…

No, you don't really need much white space. Use thick lines to show boundaries. They do the job of visually segregating things without wasting screen real-estate. White-space became a "thing" because of the increased use of touch-screens, such as iPads and smartphones. The space helps avoid fingering mistakes. However, if the vast majority of users are using a keyboard and mouse, it's an anti-feature. People started…

White space has its purpose - grouping and the principle of proximity comes to mind.

Of course this argument comes down to how much white space is appropriate and we may actually agree, but if you're indicating that the whole idea of white space, and other Gestalt principles, is a fad, I think you're wrong.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#383

Post by thirdsun »

memling wrote: post #178
thirdsun wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Proper white spacing shouldn’t be the problem of any redesign. Also consider that users often have a tendency to rebel against change. Habits and routines are hard to overcome and the actual might be that features and data simply aren’t in the same place they used to be, regardless of if that new location is much more reasonable. I saw it again and again: Users memorize hard-coded paths to certain functions…

> I saw it again and again: Users memorize hard-coded paths to certain functions - simply changing the name, appearance or position of certain elements along that path was enough to throw them completely off the track. It seems like that argues against changing it to me, at least in productivity-sensitive applications. There could be a justification in revamping the interface if there is an expected amount of turnove…

I'm not sure if I agree. Of ourse it's a decision that has to be weighted and carefully considered, but by avoiding slight and temporary inconveniences at all cost nothing would ever change or progress. Often people don't know what they want or need until they see it and sometimes people have to be forced to abandon the idea of faster horses.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#384

Post by woogiewonka »

It blows my mind that to date we have major companies who put forward horrible UX. Few come to mind off the top of my mind: Chase, PayPal, Digital Ocean. Trying to get statements from Chase is like playing ping pong. Webflow, Freshbooks, all major offenders.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#385

Post by jaaames »

mruts wrote: post #151
dqv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are custom keyboards, they're just hard to find. The Devlin KMX-144 or the Logic Controls LK1800 come to mind. I'm sure there are others. You can use (n?)curses to make a terminal user interface. I still prefer the web - just with the keyboard as a first class citizen.

I don’t think webapps can ever make the keyboard a first class citizen. The browser already has a bunch of keybindings. Personally, I’ve never used a web app that I actually liked or trusted. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always worried the page will time out or refresh or something. Like imagine emacs or vim in a browser window, it would be horrible!

Try vimium, I've been using it for years - as long as the HTML is semantically correct a surprisingly amount of the web is navigable.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#386

Post by TeMPOraL »

shawnz wrote: post #319
TeMPOraL wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy but time consuming. I.e. not ergonomic. Also point&click UIs tend to sacrifice composability, whereas keyboard-driven interfaces tend to allow to chain operations and modifiers in a way that makes it ergonomically cover much larger space of possible workflows.

> Easy but time consuming But learning is time consuming, too. Keyboard-driven interfaces can be more efficient but they are not discoverable. Maybe keyboard-driven interfaces make sense for the domain specific tasks that you do every day, but would you want a keyboard-driven interface for every random website you come across?

> would you want a keyboard-driven interface for every random website you come across?

Definitely, no. But you can have both at the same time; in fact, in 90s-era applications and in professional desktop software, this is the norm. You build your discoverable UI, but ensure every action is attached to a keyboard shortcut, and that keyboard shortcut is also discoverable. Call it "progressive enhancement" of UI ergonomics, if you like; the point is not to put the ceiling for regular users on the level of your average first-time user.

> But learning is time consuming, too.

Not as much as time wasted if you don't provide a "faster path" to learn. I'm trying hard to understand, why modern UX designers react to the possibility (not even requirement) of users learning like devil to holy water. That is, beyond the obvious reason - pretty but useless software sells better, as you rate looks on first impression, but ergonomics on repeated use (i.e. after sale).

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#387

Post by TeMPOraL »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #325
TeMPOraL wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching someone use an interface can be low-quality information, especially when that interface is already heavily optimized to guide the user down a prescribed path. If that's your sole input, then you're essentially doing a naïve gradient descent, and you're bound to be stuck in a local minimum. Asking users, in addition to watching them struggle, can inform you on what they're actually trying to achieve, and what…

I do try to avoid getting them to tell me _solutions_ though. "What's the most annoying part of your job with this software" (with followup questions to understand why and what they were trying to do and _why_ they were trying to do it) is better than "What feature do you want that would most make this software less annoying"?

This I can agree with, but with a caveat: if you're dealing with professional domain and users who are domain experts, it might be worth it to pick their brains about features too. They might have used other software in the past, and know a design element or functionality that works better.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#389

Post by atoav »

You can get a beautiful fast and dense interface if you want one. But then you need someone to actually design it for you.

Most design that happens today is actually Styling rather than design: you just slap some framework on everything select some colours, apply some layout patterns and call it a day. Maybe you “go wild“ with some minor detail and are proud for beeing a rebel.

Like with architects who like to use glas and wide open spaces everywhere, regardless of social use, this is what divides really good designers from mostly ok designers.

Design is not finding the same clean, minimal look for everything, but looking at every interface that has been designed (including physical interfaces) and asking the question what is appropriate. And let’s face it: sometimes your design is worse than the unstyled browser default or the “readability mode”.

Design should be a lot of work, but like always you don’t pay an expert just to get it done, tou pay them for their experience, their knowlede and their ability to treat your project the way it deserves to be treated. This takes a little longer, but the iconic minimal designs everybody and their grandmother knows (Rams Braun radio for example), were 90% thought and the rest was styling and technical problems to be solved.

If you have a chance, please hire someone for actually thinking about a design and critically analyzing things they try out — this is were all great usable designs come from. If it looks modern as a side effect, so be it. Give them somebody who knows all hairy technical implementation details as a side kick and you are good to go

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#390

Post by int_19h »

maxxxxx wrote: post #377
int_19h wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a major rewrite of large chunks of the interface from native C++ using raw Win32 calls (and said C++ was written back in 1996 in many cases, to the point where it'd do AddRef/Release calls by hand sometimes - forget RAII and anything that you know of modern C++), to C# and WPF. And it was necessary even solely from an engineering perspective, because adding features to that original code was becoming a huge pa…

The result was worse in pretty much every way. Graphically (whole idea was it to take out all colors from the Ui? I don't know anyone who thought the 2010 UI was a good idea), Slower, less customizable , less features (for example they removed macro recording). It was definitely not a good showcase for WPF.

These are different issues, though.

For example, the color was a UX design decision - WPF made it possible to do theming easier, but even so, doing it instead of using stock controls actually required extra effort. But, speaking of colors and preferences - when VS 2012 went with its "black and white" color theme a couple years later, a lot of people actually demanded specifically the return of the blue VS2010 theme. Which is why it's still there today.

As for macros, it was essentially on life support for several releases prior to all that. It was essentially a separate subproduct, coming from Office originally (since it also uses VBA for scripting), but forked ages ago, and not well maintained... and it was completely broken by changing the GUI framework. So the choice was basically to rewrite or drop it at that point, and a rewrite would require substantial work - on par with the rest of the product, really. And with I would agree, though, that WPF was not a stellar framework at the time. But, ironically, VS adopting it made it better in so many ways - for example, WPF font rendering was fixed (to be less blurry) largely because of user feedback in VS2010. Perf was improved substantially, as well.

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