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Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

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Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#61

Post by namdnay »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54
iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations. The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time. Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win…

The author may have identified that "the idioms come from the use of system frameworks", but they absolutely got wrong just about everything about why apps are not consistent on the web (e.g. I was baffled by their reasons listed under "this lack of homogeneity is for two reasons" section). First, what he calls "the desktop era" wasn't so much a desktop era as a Windows era - Windows ran the vast majority of desktops…

Yeah the author conveniently ignores the fact that the UX of Mac apps was radically different to that of PC apps, so it’s not that designers/developers were somehow more enlightened back then, it’s just that they were “on rails”

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#62

Post by Klonoar »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations. The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time. Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win…

> You can't change the height of a native button, for example.

You can definitely do so, it's just not obvious or straightforward in many contexts.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#63

Post by davemp »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #29

"Avoid JavaScript reimplementations of HTML basics, e.g. React Button components instead of styled elements." Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev ... 1. React is an irrelevant implementation detail. You can have a plain HTML button in a button component, or you can have an image or whatever else. React has nothing to do with the design choices. 2. React is also…

> Tell me you know nothing about web development without saying you know nothing about web dev

This Twitterism really bugs me.

You took the time to write a really detailed response (much appreciated, you convinced me). There’s no need to explicitly dunk on the OP. Though if you really want to be a little mean (a little bit is fair imo), I think it should be closer to level of creativity of the rest of your comment. Call them ignorant and say you can’t take them seriously or something. The twitterism wouldn’t really stand on its own as a comment.

Sorry for the nitpicky rant.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#64

Post by jcoq »

Much of this is foisted upon us by visual designers who wandered into product design. It's a category error the profession has never quite corrected. (maybe more controversially, it's caused by having anyone with the word "designer" in their title on a project that doesn't need such a person - this category is larger than anyone thinks)

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#65

Post by skydhash »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54
iamcalledrob wrote: post #39

As the author identifies, the idioms come from the use of system frameworks that steer you towards idiomatic implementations. The system UI frameworks are tremendously detailed and handle so many corner cases you'd never think of. They allow you to graduate into being a power user over time. Windows has Win32, and it was easier to use its controls than rolling your own custom ones. (Shame they left the UI side of win…

The author may have identified that "the idioms come from the use of system frameworks", but they absolutely got wrong just about everything about why apps are not consistent on the web (e.g. I was baffled by their reasons listed under "this lack of homogeneity is for two reasons" section). First, what he calls "the desktop era" wasn't so much a desktop era as a Windows era - Windows ran the vast majority of desktops…

> Developers weren't so much "following design idioms" as "doing what is easy to do on Windows".

Most people only uses one computer. Inconsistency between platforms have no bearing on users. But inconsistency of applications on one platform is a nightmare for training. And accessibility suffers.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#66

Post by sph »

Shows a picture of Office 2000 and says "The visuals feel a little ugly and dated: it’s blocky, the font isn’t great, and the colors are dull."

Are you serious? Nothing has come close to it. Yeah we have higher resolution screens, but everything else is much less legible and accessible than that screenshot.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#67

Post by 8organicbits »

RobotToaster wrote: post #52
nkrisc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 03/04/2026 March 4th or the 3rd of April? If you have an international audience that’s going to mess someone up. Better yet require YYYY-MM-DD.

is automatically formatted based on the user's locale.

This is still a partial solution as the user needs to know that their locale is being used and know how their locale is configured to understand the format. This is most problematic on shared computers or kiosks, especially when traveling.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#68

Post by exe34 »

polkapie wrote: post #50
JojoFatsani wrote: post #24

Most software is not designed by intelligent and thoughtful people anymore. It is designed by hastily promoted middle manager PM/Product type people who, as has been mentioned elsewhere, simply were not around when thoughtful human interface design was borderline mandatory for efficiency’s sake. There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the busine…

[flagged]

Would it be better to bring this up in the retro? We're getting sidetracked here. We could set up a meeting with the stakeholders.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#69

Post by Nemi »

uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #58

In text boxes in some applications, enter submits the entered text, and ctrl-enter forces a newline (not at my computer, but I think Slack does this). In others, it's the other way around (pretty sure GitHub does this for comments). I don't know how we got here and I don't know how to fix it, but "bring back idiomatic design" doesn't help when we don't have enough idioms. I'm not even sure if those two behaviors are…

Thats funny because I thought it was shift-enter that creates a newline in a field where an enter submits. Just shows the fractured nature of this whole thing.

Re: Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)

#70

Post by ako »

alienbaby wrote: post #30

designers are creatives and will always believe the visual elements of a design need to be updated, refreshed, modernized etc.. then we get flavour of the month nand new trends in visual language and ui design that things must be updated to. As soon as UI design became a creative visual thing rather than a functional thing , everything started to go crazy in UI land..

That is because they know the users. Users are very sensitive to this: if the outside wasn't changed then the internals cannot be much improved. You see this with cars, cars need a new design otherwise customer will think nothing much changed. Customer will usually buy newer over better because they think newer must have improvements, and styling signals new. Same with computers, all the disappointments when apple releases a new macbook without changing the exterior....
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