Slashdot Mirror
Winners and Losers In the World of Interfaces: 2013 In Review
An anonymous reader writes "A review of the top UX successes and failures of 2013 covers hot topics ranging from Snapchat to the Nest thermostat to David Pogue's departure from the New York Times. The author begins: 'In terms of UX milestones and missteps, 2013 failed to produce industry-altering innovations like 2007 with the introduction of the first iPhone or 2012 with the demise of Blackberry. Yet on another level, UX design in 2013 gave us a glimpse at the rapidly broadening definition of UX design as a structural concept and its role in the future of new media device design, content creation and even the status of product reviews created by leading tech journalists. In a critical way, I personally find this more interesting than blockbuster introductions that alter the technology landscape.'"
Losers:
Ubuntu
Slashdot
Winners:
Everyone else
I will admit it works better on iPhone than Classic but it's useless on traditional mouse pointer driven interfaces.
Having used a Z10, the blackberry UI was definitely uninspired, but the gesture controls? Genius.
Unlike the iOS gestures, the BB10 gestures actually increase my workflow.
Still not as customizable as android...
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Oh thank goodness. He was really cloying and sycophantic, IMO. His videos were like something from 1980s Nickelodeon channel-- not speaking to us as adults... I think we were supposed to get caught up in his childlike wonder (didn't he put his actual kids in his videos) at the golly-gee miracles of technology, without really any critical filter or skepticism, especially when it came to whatever Apple was "introducing" (aside from a rare cursory "some folks may be scared by the potential loss of privacy here, but..." asides). As technology changes the essential nature of our culture, is it too much to expect a tech reviewer/writer cover the implications of technology beyond the "...but my 9-year old LOVES the boingy-boingy noise it makes..." stuff?
Somehow Yahoo (something no one uses/reads) seems to me to fit his style more than an actual newspaper of record that ostensibly covers current events with some depth and maturity beyond the shiny glossy stuff media consultants want you to know (valerie plame excluded)...
why are industry-altering innovations necessary?
the whole expectation of continuous economic growth is flawed
if you have a spare half hour, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
As interfaces get more and more simplistic to suit 4 inch screens people jab at with their thumbs, losers are everybody.
There's been a constant dumbing down of computing devices for at least 20 odd years now, until they actually not general purpose computing devices any more, but mere locked down tools to spy on our every move.
I've heard people say, "UI/UX" and sort of assumed it had something to do with User Interface and some other stuff. It looks like it's "User eXperience" which seems a bit broad to me. I mean... everything in the program contributes to the experience in some way, so it's kind of like saying, "everything that impacts the user", which people who are in "UXD" obviously aren't touching. I mean, I can't believe the "UXD" person is writing the code that determines how fast and stable shit is. Likewise, the people who work under the hood aren't designing the UI.
It looks like somebody realized UIs don't really need much improvement. The only thing they can do is make it worse, so they had to broaden their job descriptions. "Oh, I don't just do UI design. I do UXXXXXXXXXX design".
Just fire all these people.
Yahoo! Sports is an utter disaster.
Reading this article I was left with the impression that it was written by a trendy "UX designer". My suspicion was confirmed when I scrolled to the bottom and found it was written by Charles L Mauro, president of MauroNewMedia; a company specialising in user interface design and UX optimization.
User interface designers are usually the last people you want to get to design a user interface. They're the sort of people who produce crap like Metro, Unity, GNOME 3, the Gmail interface, the ribbon and can cancerous interface that's slowly killing Firefox with each new version. They focus in interfaces that are "innovative", "fun" or "magical", and don't seem to care about speed, productivity, usability, consistency or conciseness.
Surely there's an island we can ship all these UX designers to? They can sit around all day enjoying their latte and generally being trendy, and in the mean time we might start getting some software that's actually usable.
This article makes no sense. What the fuck does Facebook's political stance have to do with UX?
Anyone who's ever used Facebook could tell you their UX is terrible, you don't need to bring politics into it.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Seriously, if you're going to write two paragraphs about why something is good, you ought to at least throw a sentence in there explaining why it is good. Below is the relevant paragraph from the article.
Ok, we have heard enough about the Internet of things (IoT). The surprising fact is that, aside from all the hype, there is very thin working evidence that the IoT is actually happening. Like all new and potentially massively important technologies, IoT has lacked all manner of effective working business solutions. Then along came the Nest thermostat, which, aside from some seriously sketchy industrial design decisions that brought out a small army of design patent litigators, is a robust UX solution based on IoT technology. The UX of Nest was created by Tony Fadell, who contributed to the UX design of the original iPod (think original rotary wheel design).
While the Nest UX has a number of fumbled task segments, overall it shows that a well-designed UX configuration can and does drive adoption of a new technology as compelling as IoT. Of course, the power of IoT only surfaces when devices like Nest connect to all manner of other things not produced by Nest designers and engineers. This means a vast universe of other things ranging from Department of Energy databases to your local heating oil provider to the locks on your doors. This can and will happen, but not until those who create the “Things” of IoT agree that the first rule of IoT is simply: “All devices must play nice with other things on the network.” This is no small matter, as the entire thrust of modern management science has been to NEVER collaborate with your competitors. So, now what?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why would you want a patent encumbered audio format on your BSD machine ? This is slashdot after all ..
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Has anyone else noticed that the term "UX designer" and "UX" cropped up right around the time everything went to shit?
Windows got Metro.
Apple got iOS 7, and some really idiotic features in 10.9.
Linux got Gnome 3 and Unity.
I work in the graphics design industry, and whenever I see "UX designer" I almost immediately run in the opposite direction. Very, very few people can successfully use that term and back it up with stuff that actually works and works well. 99% of the time it's some self proclaimed asshole who thinks his ideas are the bomb, when they're really just a pile of rubbish. In fact, some of the best "UX designers" out there don't call themselves that and actually go out of their way to avoid the term. Those are the people who don't really call themselves anything- but you can tell from their portfolios that they know what they're doing.
TLDR; UX is a side effect of good UI design. It is an unnecessary department created by failed web designers who want to feel important. Can we please get back to innovating user interfaces that people want and work well now? Because I'm tired of where everything is heading these days.
What 2013 demonstrated us is that UX is not user driven anymore, but marketing driven.
The User Interface is not trimmed anymore to help the user on solving his/her problems or executing his/her jobs.
The User Interface is, now, trimmed to help someone else's job. And this job is to sell something to the user (at best), or simply take something from him/her (at worst).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
this flat shit is an abomination. I just hope it dies soon.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
https://archive.org/download/MAME_0.151_ROMs/MAME_0.151_ROMs.zip
https://archive.org/details/MAME_0.151_ROMs
is this even legal!?
Because some people like to listen to something other speeches by Richard Stallman...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
UI is sometimes good.
UX is ALWAYS bad.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
And its at least 30 years old! This "UX" marketing droid needs to be taken out and shot.
"2013 failed to produce industry-altering innovations like [insert innovation #1] or 2012 with the demise of Blackberry"
So the demise of Blackberry was an industry-altering innovation. Good to know.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
If the user interface is confusing, it's because you're stupid.
I'm not sure the article is saying anything. For example, #1 on the list is the Nest thermostat. It has a lot of words talking about Nest, but nowhere in there does it explain why nest is so amazing. It has a pretty picture, but it's hard to see why it is qualitatively better than the old fashioned thermostat.
The "old fashioned thermostat" shown is the famous Honeywell Round, usually credited to Henry Dreyfuss. It's one of the iconic objects of 20th century industrial design. The Nest thermostat copies that design. That's it's big selling point. There are other thermostats with Internet connections.
All it does is turn the HVAC on and off. It's not for use with systems where outside air intake is controllable with a damper or fan. It doesn't control fans separately from heating and cooling. It doesn't sense CO2 and humidity, and increase the air change rate when more people are present. (That last feature is a huge win for classrooms, conference rooms, and hotel function rooms.) Newer commercial building systems do all that. The Nest could have brought that technology to the home. But it didn't. It mostly just looks cool, and performs like other semi-intelligent thermostats.
The new BB10 series, it was almost as if they hired a bunch of high school developers to make an interface.
Good point :)
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Fuck you, bitch.
So, the Philips Hue is not an advancement in UX as it takes such a deeply ingrained idiomatic interface as the light switch and makes it more complex, adding another layer of control. Flip the switch and nothing happens. Oh, it was already on? Flip it again, grab the phone, adjust the light. Not what I call an improvement. Yes, it can change colors. Wow! So can a whole host of other technologies. Is it $5 per bulb or less? If not, then I don't want it. I have 27 bulbs within my current view in my small apartment. Does it work with my existing switches? All my lights already have switches on the walls. The starter kit is $200 for three bulbs. Sorry, I don't see that as any major UX improvement.
My name fits again.
some of the best "UX designers" out there don't call themselves that
Probably because anyone who is actually good at design realizes that "UX Designer" is a horribly-designed term.
iOS 7 - failure in moving away from all skeuomorphism. And I *like* Apple products. Steve would not have endorsed the changes... He was about beauty as well as function - that's why we have the graphic fonts of today. No - I am not a Steve "fan" just stating a fact. I run Linux and Android and HP WebOS - and when needed - Windoze too.
GOOD.
UX: the field of taking something that's familiar and works well and replacing it with some as different and as "sleek" as possible regardless of the critical importance of visible affordances, constraints, natural mappings, etc.
"We've replaced your boring 20th century 'steering wheel and pedals' interface with our new three shells interface. Drive safe!"
The only people bemoaning a lack of "industry altering innovations" in user interface are the people who want to be paid to throw out every principle of designing things to be usable.
I'm sorry, but the Nest UI is utter crap (as is the device's perpetual "learning"). Just for example, if your wifi password is at all secure, it's a real pain in the arse to enter. Then there are the submenus. It's fine if you dig into the menus routinely, like on a daily basis, but otherwise, remembering what you can configure and how to find the controls is ridiculous. I've never used a Samsung Gear smartwatch, but the Nest is kind of like what I gather people criticize the Gear about.
Why? Because they managed to herd 36 recalcitrant states that did not want to be clients into a super jumbo IT project that is more or less working within a few months of its ORIGINAL deadline, despite attacks from congress, governors, and the meanies on Slashdot.
The Loser? Oracle, who couldn't create a health exchange website for ONE SINGLE STATE, a state that actually really wants a health exchange website, in the same amount of time. Oracle's Oregon site is projected to be working "after January".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This article is just trash. I mean, the whole thing! It's just buzzword-laden bullshit that can't even be parsed into coherent thoughts. There is very little meat in this supposed roundup of interface wins & losses, and to top it off, it doesn't even mention the horrendously well-accepted "interface failures" which have been primary topics of discussion in the wide open world of UX this year.
My take: anything involving the word "UX" this year has most assuredly been a GRAND success at the unstated mission of screwing people (the ones forced to use the interfaces) over, whether it be by way of simplifying (read: removing) functionality, tightening (read: hiding) features, or even just by repurposing (read: obfuscating) old "paradigms".
Well, at least -I- think my summary is better than their article!
UX is the new Usability I guess. Surprised they didn't mention Windows 8 anywhere. That train wreck is singularly responsible for a massive augering in of sales. Smartphones didn't help, of course, but I saw dozens of people walk into Best Buy, look around for laptops running anything other than Windows 8, and turn around and walk out because they couldn't find any... and I don't even work there.
Barack Obama?
Same great interface as it ever was, in text mode or graphical.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"more then happy"
It's MORE THAN, you American cretin...
"People don't scale."
Or at least what I think is your point. Regret if I've maimed it.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I found the original post article fascinating and then eventually trailing off into 5000 too many words.
I appreciate the multiple effective Slashdot commentators accomplishment at semantically flensing the formerly elegant carcass of the OP missive.
What however is the low energy high quality of life and strife relieved peaceful future that the Internet and connected humans need to facilitate?
The author's OP missive at least noted some of the major twists in the confused battle. By my estimate, the now 20 year old failure of Yahoo mail to permit POP message downloading for free is the little tiny failure that no user interface redesign can correct. I am within a hair's breadth of taking my local mailing list for parents of disabled children elsewhere, thanks to the stupid Yahoo re-design.
The author's description of Google's chrome-cast and Netflix binge watching are both interesting developments in the struggle to get media and infomation moving without the exhorbitant charges of patent licensing and copyright fee collection.
A side comment that a paper newspaper is more energy efficient than a free newspaper furnished over the Internet is an interesting assertion worth exploring. I am concerned that the Internet system burns more electrical energy and has a larger fixed term in the y=mx +b linear equation of value than is recognized.
Does anyone one else get the sickening irony of one of the great pro-Linux Web sites changing their layout to look like Windows 8?
...and those people either use vorbis or are morons?
Read my CV in detail, assuming you can actually read, and you see that I have been in man-machine systems design for over 40 years and have an extensive background in complex user interface problems. UX is a new discipline which combines several fields of expertise for the specific purpose of optimizing the TOTAL user experience of products and services. Before you rant...I suggest you read.
CM