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If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

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Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#51

Post by coldtea »

zootboy wrote: post #15
binarymax wrote: post #11

There’s a flip side to this. If you change the UI for no reason, people get upset. For example, the latest iOS update flipped the speaker and mute buttons during a call. Why? No improvement was made, it’s just frustrating.

I'd go a step further: if you change the UI for no functional reason, you are a bad person who is causing needless consternation, confusion, and productivity loss. Even if you believe you have a functional reason, you had better think really long and hard about whether the supposed improvement you want is worth the pain of every single user needing to adapt to that change.

>I'd go a step further: if you change the UI for no functional reason, you are a bad person who is causing needless consternation, confusion, and productivity loss.

On the flip side, who do get to be promoted.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#52

Post by coldtea »

hackable_sand wrote: post #43
zootboy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go a step further: if you change the UI for no functional reason, you are a bad person who is causing needless consternation, confusion, and productivity loss. Even if you believe you have a functional reason, you had better think really long and hard about whether the supposed improvement you want is worth the pain of every single user needing to adapt to that change.

Disagree. It's a lot more involved than that.

What is more involved?

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#53

Post by coldtea »

ignoramous wrote: post #22
binarymax wrote: post #11

There’s a flip side to this. If you change the UI for no reason, people get upset. For example, the latest iOS update flipped the speaker and mute buttons during a call. Why? No improvement was made, it’s just frustrating.

> If you change the UI for no reason... This appears to be not true for the OS (but only for Apps / websites). I'd say, for personal devices, folks expect a shiny new UI every OS update. For ex: iOS and Android are always in contention for who changes UI the most, from one version to another. Besides, styling changes and form changes are not the same.

>I'd say, for personal devices, folks expect a shiny new UI every OS update.

A 99% of folks could not care less, when they're not downright annoyed by the UI changes. There has been major reactions on UI changes (from Office, Gmail Windows, Gnome, iOS and macOS to Facebook). There have been in comparison crickets about the UI not "updating fast enough", and those are mostly from designer types (like the stupid "skeuomorphic" hoopla a decade ago).

A small minority of designers and superficial people is the one making any noise about UI needing to be updated every time.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#54

Post by coldtea »

buggy6257 wrote: post #25
windows2020 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next Windows version should be called Windows Legacy. Remove all the objectively (from the perspective of a non-oblivious user) stupid stuff that 10 and 11 added including half-baked UIs, extra clicks, inconsistencies, random forced changes, 'AI', etc. How many of us have encountered 'Legacy' systems that get a bad wrap but are actually responsible for everything? Eventually Legacy will have a positive connotatio…

> the objectively (from the perspective of a non-oblivious user) You’ll be happy to hear there’s an easier way of saying this! It’s “subjectively” If you need a shorthand you could also go with “IMO”.

If it's only a concern of a stupid minority of people, then the parent might as well use "objective".

Some people don't believe the earth is round either, but the rest of us don't consider it a "subjective" "IMO" fact.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#55

Post by ffsm8 »

nkrisc wrote: post #19
jcgrillo wrote: post #16

This was actually not the conclusion I was expecting: > Don't bother improving your product unless it results in visible changes the user can see, find, and hopefully appreciate. I couldn't disagree more strongly. I can't think of the last time I encountered a UX change I thought was actually worth it. They're always bothersome, because now I notice the tool --it's no longer an extension of my mind and body, instead…

I can tell you from personal experience on a UX team why it happens: The UI is designed for features A, B, and C. We design, test, revise design, test, and so on. There’s more thought and rigor that goes into than you might be thinking. Hurray, product launches, it looks good, and most importantly it works and users are successfully completing their tasks. Now what? Well at the company town hall meeting the CEO annou…

> The UI is designed for features A, B, and C. We design, test, revise design, test, and so on. There’s more thought and rigor that goes into than you might be thinking.

What you're saying is spot on wrt new features in large corporations. That's not what is usually considered to be a "redesign".

Another thing about this is that these designers aren't actually users of the software they're designing. A recent example I stumbled upon the other day is portainer. It was a fantastic web UI back when docker got started, clearly made by people that had an issue and wanted to solve it. It had issues and warts, but it added value overall.

Nowadays it's not really worth using anymore, because none of the developers or designers actually have ever used it to manage anything themselves. It just doesn't actually solve any issues anymore, despite having lots of pointless features and looking more shiny now.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#56

Post by jcgrillo »

nadagast wrote: post #49
jcgrillo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what these people are using a computer for. If they're writing software, then a shell, a text editor, and a language toolchain are what they'll be using. Bash/zsh/fish, emacs/vi(m)/whatever, gcc/llvm/cargo/babel/etc. These are all tools with UX. But these tools--the ones programmers use--don't change willy-nilly. Doing so would hurt us , so we don't do it. Why do we treat "non-technical" users differently?

I think there have been and will continue to be UX improvements to programmer tools. GitHub is one example. You think tools that stagnate will continue to see the same levels of adoption in new generations of programmers? It's an empirical question, I guess I just don't see it, and I say that as someone who loves vim & emacs.

Stagnation is a good thing. It means you got it right. Your search has found a local optimum. For example, the screw cutting lathe has been stagnant for about two and a quarter centuries[1]. Sure, there have been incremental advancements--geared heads, power feeds, numeric control--but the basic UX is fundamentally the same. You have gears (virtual or physical) to control the feed rate of the cutting tool, and hand wheels to move the saddle and compound.

EDIT: I'd bet the unix shell experience is similar. It's hit a pretty stable point where it's unlikely to be revolutionized. There are certain improvements--tools like atuin[2] are nice--but fundamentally the UX will remain the same: you type text commands into a prompt, the basic readline controls work, you may have tab-complete. Text editing has hit this same stable point. You're not going to do better than vim or emacs.

EDIT2: Actually, I think GitHub is a good example of this kind of good stagnation. The code review experience of GitHub's competitors is largely the same as GitHub's.

[1]https://ocw.tudelft.nl/wp-content/uploads/ED2011_2_Fabrikage... [2]https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#57

Post by whoknowsidont »

sumuyuda wrote: post #31
ignoramous wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of the last time I encountered a UX change I thought was actually worth it I mean, I am terribly glad we're done with Windows 95 and Android 4 style UX; aren't you?

I think 90s desktop UIs are probably the peek of usability. Once the UI trends went flat and minimal, usability has taken a huge hit. I’d agree with the quote, every big UI rework has been controversial, see Windows Vista, Windows 8, and iOS 7. Even at an app level, developers will frequently refresh their UI, usually dropping features and making the software less useful.

> usability has taken a huge hit.

Based on what? What are you basing this claim off of? It's often touted, but I've never seen any actual evidence for it.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#58

Post by jpc0 »

nadagast wrote: post #50
jpc0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familiarity

You think the only reason vim & emacs aren't used as much as iOS/Android/Windows (or equivalent defaults on those platforms) is familiarity?

No.

I think users feel the other options are better due to familiarity.

I generly find modern interfaces clunky and really inefficient to use and this iescoming from a younger person who grew up in win 98+.

After I actually spent some time on a cli and using vim there's no way I would go back. Sure I can put up with it but if you give me a choice I would use the cli and vim any day of the week. Unfortunately these days you need graphical applications for things so I use a tiling window manager as a compromise and would you believe I like windows 10 and 11 purely because I can use them mostly the same way.

I generally want a single full screen thing on my screen and to be able to switch "desktops" to another full screen thing. Add something like tmux (I settle for tabbed terminal when using windows) and I'm happy.

Modern windows and macos with multi desktop workflows does exactly that.

For applications I never want to move my hands from exactly the position they are in right now. Added bonus, don't make me search through a billion and one menus for a thing I want to do and specially don't make me practice my FPS aiming to hit the button.

Ironically the GUI applications I like the most have a fuzzy finder on a keyboard shortcut or every single action is available from a keyboard shortcut.

The ones I hate follow "good modern UI" you know like putting everything in a ribbon that scrolls across the screen for 20 pages and all the buttons are tiny and the screen is cluttered with crud.

So yes I will take vim over VS code for both UI and UX any day of the week.

Sometimes it's perfectly fine for a user who has never used tour product to not know how to use it fully.

Keep your fancy UX design Philosophy for the website that teaches how to use the app. I need UX to get out of my way, not make 5 functions easy to use and everything else a pain in the backside.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#59

Post by pizzafeelsright »

zootboy wrote: post #15
binarymax wrote: post #11

There’s a flip side to this. If you change the UI for no reason, people get upset. For example, the latest iOS update flipped the speaker and mute buttons during a call. Why? No improvement was made, it’s just frustrating.

I'd go a step further: if you change the UI for no functional reason, you are a bad person who is causing needless consternation, confusion, and productivity loss. Even if you believe you have a functional reason, you had better think really long and hard about whether the supposed improvement you want is worth the pain of every single user needing to adapt to that change.

You're telling me you released a product that was so incomplete and it requires weekly updates?

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#60

Post by thih9 »

jcgrillo wrote: post #48
thih9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it improves your experience with the tool? For example, the page that annoyed you because it would load 3 seconds now loads instantly? This could be even not because of some flawed initial design, but due to unrelated technology advancements that are available just now.

Performance improvements that don't force me to adapt my workflow are great! Making a page load faster is always a good thing. They're also not super visible. I think there's a theory of this from game design where something like 100ms is just as annoying as 500ms, but get it below ~30ms and you're golden. I've forgotten what it's called.

Performance improvements are just an example.

In any case - looks like we’ve found a category of UX changes that you enjoy: something that forces you to adapt your workflow, just in a way that makes it better for you.

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