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Software should convey a sense of calm

patrickjuchli.com

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Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#41

Post by gnramires »

grey_earthling wrote: post #25

I'm not sure “software” is useful as a category in this context. If you're trying to make a useful tool these principles apply, but if you're trying to farm users for ad money they don't. People will say they want the former, but in practice they often choose the latter (and then grumble about it not being more like the former).

I think it's less users choosing it, but market forces pressuring most tools to turn into ad-ridden nightmares.

There are secondary effects like the ad-ridden product may have more money for development and deliver better features. But at this point we're all wondering if there isn't a better funding model that can deliver both good experience and sufficient development funds.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#42

Post by magicink81 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #9

> I want to find the same things in the same places How else will designers justify their jobs? I wonder if designer should be reworked to be a seasonal or consultancy job only, to only hire them when you're making a new product/big feature or there's a drastic need to change things but never otherwise. Having them as permanent staff leads to our present usability and accessability nightmare of everything constantly…

Design is misunderstood, often by designers, and it seems like you also may have some misunderstandings based on your assessments of what should designers do (vs what they do). Based on your comment it sounds like the designers you work with have an over-emphasis on visual UI design. I don't think you are to blame though - I have observed a consistent dumbing down of design discourse and practices among people that don't take the time to learn the depth of what is available. This includes most practicing designers. I have observed that designers are less interested in educating the world about their practices than perhaps they need to be in order to change this situation. Design in most cases is essentially a set of knowledge work processes, the best of which is built on solid research practices informed by psychology and cognitive science.

For anyone interested in up-leveling their own understanding of design I recommend the articles, videos, courses and other materials available from the Nielsen Norman Group https://www.nngroup.com/

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#43

Post by mdoms »

A lot of modern software makes me feel stressed, confused and aggravated. When I open Youtube Music I never know what I'm going to get - sometimes Your Favourites is at the top, sometimes Mixed for You, sometimes something else. When I open Netflix it's almost always the case that I want to continue watching something, but will I find that in row 1 or row 4? How long will I need to scroll to find it?

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#44

Post by quelltext »

phailhaus wrote: post #10

> Words like simple or intuitive are misleading here. They can be attributed to a solution in retrospect, but they don’t form a principle from which clear recommendations for action can be derived. Fantastic nugget of wisdom here. Saying that you want a product to be "intuitive" or "simple" is as useful as saying that you want it to be "good, not bad."

I disagree. A product might be visually appealing, serve hundreds of functions, be inexpensive, be sturdy, etc.

These are all things that affect whether a product could be perceived as good vs. bad.

Importantly, intuitiveness is not relevant for some products, or not what makes it good or bad. The tradeoffs between other aspects of your product could be such that trying to achieve intuitiveness would actively reduce value.

Identifying intuitiveness as something you can optimize for or not is not pointless. I'd also argue that intuitiveness can be measured and strategies for more intuitive designs/patterns can be formed.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#45

Post by ysavir »

pc86 wrote: post #33
ysavir wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is at all true, is the problem that designers are out to justify their jobs, and making changes as a consequence, or that designers are being put in a position where they have to justify their jobs, and are making changes to satisfy their managers? If anything, the problem in this scenario is that culturally we need everyone to be contributing all of the time, even for posi…

Are you suggesting that designers keep getting paid for work they've already done?

I'm suggesting that if a company has designers that know their product, branding, team members, philosophies, values, and that have proven quality of work and ability to get along with the team, that they not eliminate their position because there isn't any design work needed _right now_. When you do need design work, you don't want to have to go through the trouble of hiring, on boarding, etc.

The same applies for software engineering.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#46

Post by quelltext »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #15

I actually think the mid 1990's Mac and Windows GUI programs were much better at fulfilling this ideal. We have regressed from there. I am most familiar with Windows, so I will speak from that perspective. Because software was an application, and the path of least resistance was to use the OS provided controls and menus, there was a sense of uniformity in how you accessed features. Keyboard shortcuts just worked and…

A lot of the user interfaces we use today are "better" than what we had in the old days. The old generic windows and buttons and whatnot don't work on a finger touch input. Switching apps via gestures, visual cues by animation, use of space, effects to bring things in and out of focus, a lot of things have been refined and evolved over the years.

Yes, things are not perfect but claiming that designers are making everything difficult while programmers would have just made everything better albeit not as pretty looking is really not a fair assessment. I mean, preference and general nostalgia, I get it, but it's a bit much.

Getting raw access to your data also wasn't a breeze in the past with program often having their own binary formats and not exposing any programmatic interface at all to get data in or out. Not sure how this relates to the cloud.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#47

Post by ysavir »

jrm4 wrote: post #31
ysavir wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is at all true, is the problem that designers are out to justify their jobs, and making changes as a consequence, or that designers are being put in a position where they have to justify their jobs, and are making changes to satisfy their managers? If anything, the problem in this scenario is that culturally we need everyone to be contributing all of the time, even for posi…

If this is the best argument one can come up with for not being critical here, for me it absolutely proves we need to be more critical here. Of course, I don't wish to see anyone suffer, but I'm seeing something like: "Hey, we're paying a guy to dig holes and fill them back up with no value whatsoever, why are we doing that?" "Hey, man, stop attacking hole-diggers, they're just trying to make a living."

Can you go into more detail of why you think we need to be critical of designers? The GP makes no effort to justify their criticism of designers, perhaps you can provide some reasons for it, and thereby allow people to respond to actual arguments.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#48

Post by cbanek »

This just reminds me of the composer Soyo Oka, who did the music for some great games, like SimCity (SNES), SimCity (NES, unreleased), Super Mario Kart (SNES), Pilotwings (SNES), etc. She said that in making the SimCity music she wanted it to feel comfy while building the city, not hectic or frustrating. And god, what a masterpiece of a game and music. I still play it 30 years later.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#49

Post by sizzle »

jimmaswell wrote: post #9

> I want to find the same things in the same places How else will designers justify their jobs? I wonder if designer should be reworked to be a seasonal or consultancy job only, to only hire them when you're making a new product/big feature or there's a drastic need to change things but never otherwise. Having them as permanent staff leads to our present usability and accessability nightmare of everything constantly…

Visual UI "graphic" design, full of fleeting design trends and dark patterns, sure I agree, bundle them up and send them to the moon. UX =/ UI

Human-centered design professionals who went to school for/taught themselves from the field of Human Computer Interaction, which involves a multitude of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies for assessing usability and bringing the voice of the user early into the development lifecycle on the otherhand... now that is sorely lacking and is historically underinvested in. Their job makes your job as a developer easier, not having to redo work and waste time if they are plugged into your dev team and focusing on your users.

Ask yourself, as a developer, do you feel you have the specialist skillset and expertise to truly validate designs with real people (users)? Is this something you would want to do, if only those pesky UX "design" professionals didn't take them over to justify their jobs?

Let's put you in front of 10 different users of your product for an hour each, give you a facilitator guide, and have you guide them through a task-based usability review of your product. Make sure you aren't asking leading questions or biasing their responses, then synthesize the essence of all the interviews into insights to improve the product design. Finally create a read out report that you have to present to senior leadership for another hour on what you learned and how to improve the product design. Oh yeah, you now have 0 hours to code in your fulltime 9-5 job. Good luck!

Note: I acknowledge a UX researcher is a full-time specialist role, however any UX designer worth a damn should be T-shaped and able to use qualitative research methods to interview users and evaluate their designs.. otherwise they are a UI designer and guessing at best.

Re: Software should convey a sense of calm

#50

Post by tmp_anon_22 »

sizzle wrote: post #49
jimmaswell wrote: post #9

> I want to find the same things in the same places How else will designers justify their jobs? I wonder if designer should be reworked to be a seasonal or consultancy job only, to only hire them when you're making a new product/big feature or there's a drastic need to change things but never otherwise. Having them as permanent staff leads to our present usability and accessability nightmare of everything constantly…

Visual UI "graphic" design, full of fleeting design trends and dark patterns, sure I agree, bundle them up and send them to the moon. UX =/ UI Human-centered design professionals who went to school for/taught themselves from the field of Human Computer Interaction, which involves a multitude of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies for assessing usability and bringing the voice of the user early into th…

> from the field of Human Computer Interaction

This is how you get death by a thousand A/B tests a la Google, Facebook, and other ultimately user-hostile interfaces that optimize for ad engagement.

Give me a compassionate, thoughtful, designer who isn't an ass hole any day of the week.

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