Live data from Hacker News

Whitespace killed an enterprise app

uxdesign.cc

401–410 of 445 posts

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh wow, I stand corrected. I always thought it was 10 years old because I discovered it around 2008. Sheesh.

Remember Windows XP? Fun fact: we're further away from its first release (2001), than it was from Windows 1.0 (1985). Remember Windows 7? We're further away from its first release (2009), than it was from XP.

And those of us who do remember Windows 1.0 (not using it, though, but I do remember the ads), are probably mostly closer to retirement age than to the start of our careers... I feel old now.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#402
Speaking of data intensive applications, I find it really hard to design a complex UI with popular frameworks such as bootstrap/antd because of the amount of padding/white space in input/select/row/column components. Always have to adjust the CSS/LESS/SAAS/whatever to get to an optimal amount of whitespace.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#403

Was a PM for a product that got criticism for its lack of density. When you are building a powerful tool for power users, you may need density and a lot of levers for flexibility. The consumer/enterprise distinction is huge here. As a domain expert, I was for a sparse UX that emphasized the awesome just-works power of the product. I'll never forget how one bank IT director customer said, "I just can't pay for somethi…

> If your product or UX trivializes someone's job, they are going to fight you.

I find that kind of arrogant. In a lot of cases, the UX designers simply underestimate the real complexity of a task.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#404

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's also slow, unresponsive and breaks all the time. The dark mode toggles back to bright mode randomly, posts sometimes don't render... It takes multiple seconds to render the comments in a thread. It's a mess.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#405
> A large business by its nature has massive-scale data and usually thousands of users who directly interact with it—searching, manipulating, reporting, and more. They need to move through that data quickly, without a lot of digging around in the interface.

The challenge strikes me as less handwaving assertions of what "large business" ops is about, more understanding user needs and capturing intent with a UI that balances productivity and experience.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#406

Related and no doubt even as infuriating is the tendency to also decrease the contrast of UI elements by, in addition to adding copious amounts of whitespace, turning blacks into light greys. I remember one instance where an internal website was "modernised" with a new stylesheet and panicking for several minutes wondering if something was wrong with my eyes or monitor, because everything looked faded and unclear in…

Yikes, that's a contrast ratio of 1.84... well below the AA accessibility guideline of 4.5 from webaim.org. I personally aim for about the AAA guideline of 7 (about #595959 on a white background) since I appreciate the lower eye-strain of slightly reduced contrast. I also like having the option to go darker for emphasis. Chrome developer tools now shows you the contrast ratio along with these recommendations when you…

since I appreciate the lower eye-strain of slightly reduced contrast

I don't understand this --- it seems to be a recent trend, but if anything, it causes more eye strain. For many years full white/black was the norm, and no one really complained. Perhaps it's because of monitors being set to max brightness/contrast by default? IMHO FFFFFF/000000 should not be uncomfortable to look at, and if it is, the brightness is probably too high.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watch them work. This x1000! I took on a freelance project for a heavy machinery hauling company. They were a year into transitioning away from some customized off the shelf Enterprise scheduling and dispatch system into some custom built software by an “Enterprise” consulting company. They were originally bringing me in to audit what the team that was building it but that pretty much changed on the day I submitted…

Loved the story. I'm studying (mainly web) software development right now, but this type of work is what I enjoy most. Studying & understanding users' workflow and building a solution that does exactly what they need. Do you have any tips/ideas on how can I pursue this as a career?

Contact is in the profile, reach out and I’ll make the time.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#408
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has purposefully broken their search and navigation, but probably in an anti-consumer metric-driven way instead of designer-driven.

Ebay is the pinnacle of broken search and navigation! They should be winning awards, industry accolades, Webbies, the works!

Yes, both Amazon and EBay are bad examples.

They are old-school because they are lazy about it, not because something is already optimized.

Whenever I hear about how great a Amazon is as a company, I just do a single search and am dumbfounded.

Example:

If you type the name of a product - even when it is in their catalogue - it may not come up.

Search for 'mousr' on Amazon and you only see PC mouses.

The only way you can get to the mousr product is by typing the company name.

It's ridiculous.

Tip of the iceberg.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#409
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has purposefully broken their search and navigation, but probably in an anti-consumer metric-driven way instead of designer-driven.

Ebay is the pinnacle of broken search and navigation! They should be winning awards, industry accolades, Webbies, the works!

I find eBay search more predictable than amazon. When I use amazon I feel that they show to me what they think I should get instead of what I want.

Re: Whitespace killed an enterprise app

#410
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bet is on React Exactly, it is a bet. A bet in which you can win nothing more than a refined résumé, or lose a lot of time. In the context of web development, in the past 10 years I have seen other developers and myself write wrappers for the same JavaScript libraries again and again and again in so many frameworks and for so many CMS I lost track and count (incomplete list: typo3, Drupal, Wordpress, GWT, jQuery…

> This usually included weeks of work, after which it was possible to write web applications which could've been written with vanilla JavaScript on a static, handwritten HTML page in a single afternoon. You can have a website up and running (not just locally, but live on the Internet) within literally 5 minutes using React and Heroku, netlify, now.sh or whatever. If it takes weeks to do that, you're doing something f…

It did not weeks to write the website, sorry if that was not clear from my original post. It took weeks to port existing JavaScript libraries into the ecosphere of the respective framework, to a point where it was indeed possible to write the website we wanted in 5 minutes.

> You can have a website up and running (not just locally, but live on the Internet) within literally 5 minutes using React and Heroku, netlify, now.sh or whatever.

Of course, I am not disputing this! But it is equally possible to have a website up in literally 5 minutes using vanilla JS + HTML + CSS and an nginx Server, without taking the dangerous bet that the framework you have chosen won't be obsolete in 2 years.

Post reply on HN