Ironic because this site is broken on mobile
Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
91–100 of 183 posts
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#92I think as long as looks like and feels like what they should be, that’s fine. I absolutely hate designers who try to hide elements from the users or require a mouse swipe to reveal them. Mac and everything on Mac seem to be the worst offenders. ChatGPT website comes into mind too.
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#93I agree with the principles discussed here, but am not agreement with the rules based approach. Great looking design isn't about UI 'rules' - it's about making the users of your application love what you're presenting and the application users being able to easily use the features which you're providing without having to think. You can find out more about the principles I follow here: https://photonlines.substack.com/p/an-intuitive-guide-to-int...
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#94>> ...summarize these rules into one sentence, it’d be:
>> Prefer global UI consistency over local optimizations.
I weep for our field, because this should be true beyond the confines of each app.
Instead even on the desktop we have hoards of local "optimisations" - one in each bloated Electron POS.
There's a place for novelty UI - entertainment.
Productivity should have no place for it.
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#95For engineers doing UIs once in a while, I can recommend Refactoring UI [1]. It has a bunch of practical tips for making your life easier: Picking a color palette, font sizes, margins/padding etc. [1] https://www.refactoringui.com/
This stuff is of course subjective, but a lot of the "improvements" on that page involve adding a bunch of extra whitespace everywhere, the exact trend a lot of people are complaining about nowadays. I'm not saying it's bad per se, but I would not present the design choices on that site as broadly good either.
It's fascinating, since I don't get the impression that UI elements needing room to "breathe" was an ironclad rule during for example the era of Windows 95. It sounds like folk wisdom for everyone on the same bandwagon of mobile-first. So much creative design potential (and admittedly some inaccessible ones) is lost when these opinions are passed down as the rule of law.
Another bugbear for me personally: rounded corners. Ask online and it feels like people just parrot the idea that rounding is "more friendly and pleasing" over and over, as if blind repetition of an ideal makes it true. But I've never looked at a picture of old webpages or UI frameworks with sharp corners from 20 years ago and go "that's unfriendly." It feels like with this one, a couple research papers came out a while back showing that rounding makes users spend less energy on element identification, and then used that outcome to conclude "well, I guess a huge swathe of UI design is now a solved problem."
Subjectivity died with the need to squeeze out every last drop of "efficiency" out of every UI design. And no, I don't think that rounded corners are friendlier and more pleasing than all alternatives. In fact, I believe they are a staple of the web and modern UI design in general homogenizing into a bland, unremarkable mess, and are thus irritating. I just border-radius: 0; everything globally and call it a day.
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#96As a designer first turned developers in the early 2000, I beg of you to learn the gestalt. Frameworks, languages, computers, come and go, but the human body doesn't change and the knowledge I have in design, I carry every day and have barely changed over the years. Sure there are new patterns now... "hamburger buttons" and swiping, but the logic remains the same. Human's don't change quickly. They discover things th…
What are some of your favorite book recommendation on this?
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with designers is I have to google words like "gestalt" and perform some sort of sacred incantation to "learn" it, all while forcing my eyes to roll back forward. Who can afford to think like this though? FAANGS? Every designer I've worked with loosely knows some design theory that is impossible to question beyond a quick "hmm maybe a few more pixels on the padding?" and is largely a pixel pusher due to p…
I feel the world "gestalt" has been thrown around in your circles a little too heavy handed. Who can afford to think like this? Anyone curious about the human brain. If you're concerned about the time to design something well, I would take just as long designing a terrible solution to a problem! Explaining with words why your design is the way it is isn't a waste of anyone's time, it's having a degree of confidence m…
I read your comments and I think you come across as intelligent, thoughtful, knowledgeable and as someone who cares about doing a good job.
Most people aren't those things, certainly not all at once. Most people seem to me like they mostly care about collecting a paycheck. That was their motivation for their studies and it's their motivation for their employment. You see people talking about writing obscure code so others can't replace them, you see this guy above talking about redesigning an app to justify their work week.
I think these people who don't care are the same ones who make up all these excuses - we didn't do a good job because we didn't have time. We didnt do a good job because the client asked for a bad job. We didnt do a good job because if we do a bad job we have more job security.
Any time I see these types of excuses I judge the person making them to be someone I don't want to work with. I don't make these excuses. I always strive to write good and maintainable code. I take the time I need to do things right and if someone pushes me to take shortcuts I push back if I can or I find a compromise like fixing it later(and then actually do so). If a client asks me to build something I know will be bad I tell them and suggest a better approach.
In short, I take responsibility for my own work and I do not allow others to compromise the quality of my work. I do not respect people who blame others for their own shortcomings. Quality is less about constraints and more about having the ability and caring about it. Doing bad work generally isn't faster, if anything it's usually slower at least after a while. It's just that the people who do bad work needs an excuse to explain why their work is bad.
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#98I would argue that the second screenshot with redesigned Lighthouse is slightly worse that the "old" design
- the vertical ruler between the sidebar and the content is gone, making page structure less pronounced - the redesigned dropdown menu has no borders or shadows and blends with the primary background - the redesigned dropdown menu lost the little dot which highlighted currently selected option, replacing it with a folder icon, but now it's not useful, because it's the same folder icon for each option - the old design had really nice and noticeable "Add URL" button. I suppose, it was removed in favor of the "plus" button in the sidebar, but it's not nearly as noticeable and without the label it's not clear what it actually does
Sure, the issues in the old version are valid, but I think the redesign introduced more severe usability issues instead of mostly aesthetic issues
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I understand that cost benefit of having just one implementation for mobile and desktop. But it is still annoying. Of course it's annoying. When desktop software is using mobile UI, that's the result of a deliberate choice to make the software worse (something you care very much about as it affects you) in order to save the company money (something you don't care about). It would be weird if you weren't annoyed by…
> blatant disrespect Let's stop pretending that "companies" could just do things better at no extra cost. I prefer a desktop UI on a desktop, but I also prefer paying less for software I use, and halving the UI development costs to enable that is a pretty sensible tradeoff.
They don’t have to do things better. They just need to stop changing things. Computer UIs used to be designed by HCI people. There were volumes of books explaining best practices. Then companies prioritized curb appeal and forgot their own heuristics that were backed by actual research.
Re: Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces
#100Starting from 'what looks good' is putting the cart before the horse. Making a UI usable and well laid out first is key. Practical UI and Refactoring UI are great resources, as long as you read them through a lens of 'what works well?' instead of 'what looks pretty?'. The author is absolutely right in that alignment and consistency are important, but that should really be your starting point. Building a good user int…
> The "make it pretty"-step should really be the last thing you do. If you design your UI with heavily visually simplified components and in black and white, it should still work and feel right. Make it work right, and the pretty will come.
Totally agree. I’ve fallen into the trap of chasing “cool” or fancy visuals first, but the most beautiful UI is the one that actually solves the user’s problem. A slick-looking interface that doesn’t work well isn’t really beautiful at all.