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Are Programmers Ruining the Design of eBooks?
An anonymous reader writes "The Toronto Review of Books claims that the majority of digital books are awful because major publishers are handing over the design work to programmers, not artists and editors. This results in the 'typographical horrors' typical of so many eBooks, and hundreds of 'lackluster' iPad adaptations. 'Programmers are suddenly being given free reign to design books,' the article laments. 'Most publishers don't care about the iPad or eBooks very much... which may be an aesthetic rejection based on the publisher's historical reverence for the printed page.' Don't we deserve better eBooks?"
(Posting AC because I'm at work and I don't log into websites from work...)
I find it amusing that the article linked for this story has some atrocious typography of its own. In today's day and age of CSS3, that sort of leading on the internet is simply unacceptable. If you're going to complain about the typography in ebooks, perhaps you'd like to get your own website in order first.
That's why I always use Comic Sans :)
And here, boys and girls, we have one of the so-called "designer" types that has been fucking up Ubuntu et al for the last two years.
'Programmers are suddenly being given free reign to design books,' the article laments.
Given? We're being "given" this?
I don't know how it works in the ebook industry, but in my fifteen years of professional programming in a variety of other industries, I've found that when they "give" me free reign to design the UI, it really means they rejected my suggestion that they hire a designer (if they even asked).
You're pointing at the wrong target, bud -- it's the chucklehead manager, with the designer clothes and designer watch, who thinks designers are a waste of money.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
One of the remaining options like getting a UI designer to design your UI.
Mmm, Unity and Gnome 3.
Letting 'UI designers' design UIs has been a freaking disaster, because they always seem to pick shiny over usability.
I wish there were a "mod to infinity" option. If there were, I would give it to you.
Too many programmers think of a UI like some needless accessory (or worse yet, think *they* know how to design a great UI, which usually leads to disaster). This is why so many open source apps have such godawful UI's. GIMP, Blender, etc. have a lot of great work under the hood, from a lot of very dedicated and skilled programmers. Too bad they've traditionally been buried beneath a *horrid* UI that would have made Steve Jobs commit seppuku.
Here's a tip. If your open source project is worth a bunch of programmers, it's worth at least one decent designer too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I can't imagine how bad an ebook designed by artists/editors would turn out. 90% of designers still think the web is print, even the ones who grew up using the web. If artists were in charge, an eBook would be a 500mb PDF with rendered graphics of every page.
What is needed is a modern typesetter profession, with a mix of design/UI sense and logical/programming skills, who can design "books" with various requirements that can be viewed on a multitude of devices with different sizes and capabilities, with minimal time invested in each individual book.
Not disagreeing here, just trying to add to what you are saying.
Programmers aren't horrible people or anything, they've just spent a lot of time at becoming quite good at a specific skill. Artists and designers spend an equal amount of time becoming good at another skillset, and usability specialists spend the same time becoming good at understanding other stuff that faces the user.
I don't really think that the problem is the fault of the programmers, but rather management. See, management seems to understand the process of creating something as only the mechanical part of the creation (hammering in the nails, writing the code, making the pictures) and completely miss the complexity of coming up with a good design to begin with, as well as the iterative nature of most good design (usually only partly successful on the first try). This is just the mentality of managers, mostly old-school managers who still think that all problems can be solved by engineering and manufacture (or the equivalent).
Most programmers that I know are fully aware of the fact that their skills at making usable interfaces are very limited, as is their knowledge of colour theory and such (the domain of the graphic designer). I am painfully aware that although I can perform a mean usability analysis, my skill at programming is limited to "hello world" levels. Okay, some graphic designers think that usability is simple and they can do it based on artistic insight (they usually state this just before creating some usability nightmare).
Management then stops the programmer from implementing the solutions proposed by the usability experts as that takes resources away from making the nuts and bolts and says something like "we will fix that at the end of the project", resulting in a really clever but unusable product that requires a few months of fixing all the little details at the end...which is too much work, so it just gets shipped like that. Surprise, surprise, nobody wants to pay for it.
Editors for text, artists for art, usability experts for usability, programmers for programming, and managers who have a clue about this all. Please?
It's not a designer you need. There are plenty of UI designers who prioritize form over function. To really get a simple, workable, clean UI you need a usability expert who is going to take the time to design a front end that streamlines the functionality and ease of use for the end users. It's not easy, but with the proper prototyping and testing, any UI can be improved.
It's sad to see the current state of eBooks. There is so much potential there, features and possibilities which are as yet untapped.
I'm really a low 5-digit Slashdotter, but this ID is where I am now.
You have to be very careful about "getting a UI designer" -- many of them have UIDD (UI Designer Disease) and will take a functioning UI and layer on more stuff until it becomes hard to use. Recent battle: UIDD-guy -- "that UI is to complicated -- too many buttons on the main screen"; me -- "but the users use every one of those buttons on a regular basis"; UIDD-guy "but if you just put them in menus you could add other functionality to the program without adding more clutter"; me --"the users don't have any additional functionality requests, they just want to get the job done. You are here because someone higher up decided that everything needs a UI designer review"; UIDD-guy "well this certainly does need to be changed"; me "ok, watch the users use the tool -- the flow goes from upper left to lower right as they do their work, there's no back-hitching, there are no "extra clicks" involved with them getting their work done -- how are menus going to help this?" ; UIDD-guy "Menus are just better because it's less visually taxing. Clearly you aren't listening to me." Months later someone else re-wrote the UI according to UIDD-guy's suggestions. Users revolted and were ticked enough to actually measure throughput and number of clicks. The redesigned and simplified version took 22% longer with 35% more clicks -- so yes with the redesign users could do more clicks per minute -- but it often took two clicks instead of one. UIDD guy still thinks its better because it's cleaner. UIDD is a crippling disorder.
I apologize for unloading on you, but you've just hit a major peeve.
I am a programmer. I recognize that Graphic/UI design is a separate skill from programming. The problem is, often I get handed a project with no UI specs. I always point it out (because I am sick and tired of the "programmers are poor designers shit") but no resources are assigned - so people end up with what I think is a good idea.
The root cause is not your perceived programmer hubris, it is the cheapness of the upper levels setting project budgets. The thing about programmers is that good programmers are excellent problem solvers - so you can ask us to do anything - and it will get done - some things better than others.
Oh, and you will find that programmers are the most logical people around - it is the rest of you that are irrational.
Personally, I don't believe in design by focus groups. If you want a horrible design where a million confusing badly-designed functions are all crammed into one page/screen, then a focus group is the way to go.
Users are really good at knowing what annoys them, but they generally don't understand what the good available solutions are. As a consequence, they will invariably insist on slight tweaks to the way they have always done things, and that every new function gets added to their favorite screen, page, or menu. The end result is invariably the UI equivalent of the worst spaghetti-code hacks.
A really good design requires someone with the insight to see what the basic problems to be addressed are, what all the available tools are on your platform to solve such problems, and to design the entire system around that. No committe will ever be capable of that feat.
What you need to take from users is what tasks they need done, and how they are used to doing them. The design then needs to be created by a designer, who has the insight to see what could be made easier for them, and will generally act as their advocate. This is the one thing I felt Steve Jobs always got right.
Exactly. My son started using Linux at about 18 months, and did his first install a week after his 2nd birthday. Given that he didn't learn to read until just before he turned 3, I think it is safe to say that there is no 'command line problem'.