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Improving UI and UX: Changing the "Open Source Is Ugly" Perception (opensource.com)
jones_supa writes: For four years, Garth Braithwaite has been working at Adobe on open source projects as a design and code contributor. In addition to his work at the company, he also speaks at conferences about the power of design, improving designer-developer collaboration, and the benefits of open source. Still, he argues that the user experience is weak in many open source projects. One of the largest contributing factors is the lack of professional designers contributing to open source projects. Secondary to that, there are open source project owners who are unaware of the value of design or are unsure where to start with the design process. In an interview to Opensource.com, Braithwaite talks about the UX/UI topic, and gives some honorable mentions of projects that get it right.
Mozilla put UI/UX people in charge of Firefox and destroyed the product. I'll take my "ugly" open source programs any day.
It's not a surprise that many of the larger open source projects lack professional UI/UX designers. These groups tend to become cliques where anyone who is not a programmer is seen as less than worthy. Who the hell wants to try to assist groups with attitudes like that? There are so many cases where professionalism is missing in the entire equation.
Many programmers need to wake up and understand that it's their own staunch idealism that is driving people who could greatly improve things away.
Maybe he should get his employer (Adobe) to get rid of that shitty sidebar that only disappears if you click the word Tools (despite no indication that's what's active) and which comes back every time you restart Acrobat Reader.
No to mention the billion-and-one things that can pop over the top of your PDF. Or the services, scheduled tasks, taskbar icons, startup entries, etc. that are recreated all the fucking time even when you disable them and tell it not to update. Or the horrendous options dialogs that hide all the options.
People who live in glass houses...
No matter how much users want it.
Perhaps he should spend his time working on the Photoshop / Illustrator UI which I find totally pants. http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/
I think some open source projects lack refinement in the user interface. Some of that I think comes from the people working with the projects. Sometimes I think interface polish is not a important focus and its much more about function. But let's also look at recent Windows UI and OS X. I think in general Windows 10 is ugly, and OS X has done little to change their user interface in OS X significantly in a long time. I do not count changes in fonts or adding small incremental changes as being any improvement. I also think this is why a lot of Windows users still like Windows 7 over everything else. Because when you have to look at the screen for hours, its nice to have a user interface that is easy on the eyes. I actually think Windows 10 is a big step back in ugly.
One of the largest contributing factors is the lack of professional designers contributing to open source projects
How about that, he wants someone to pay him to fuck up other people's projects and wants to browbeat those people into letting him fuck up their projects by saying they need professional design.
"open source is ugly, let's change things" is what turned Gnome 2, the best desktop environment of its day, into Gnome 3, which no one who has a choice uses.
"professional designers" can go to hell.
I edit code using emacs. It would make any "UX designer" throw up. To the clueless, it's "user experience" looks horrifically bad, especially how I have mine configured up old-school without menus or GUI buttons. Just text and a mode line.
But you know what? I can utterly, totally, annihilate people using better "UX quality" text editors when it comes to heavy duty text editing. I've had people literally gasp out loud watching what can be done.
I'll make a similar claim for other SW I've used, such as CAD systems, which are all but incomprehensible for novices but let experts work magic.
People mistake "ease of newbies being able to do something" with "expert usability". These are not the same. Most of the time, UX designers optimize for the first thing at the expense of the second. It's one thing if you can manage to get both, and I'm not saying that's impossible or that it never happens. But most of the time when UX experts get their hands on something, actual usability for experts is sacrificed on the alter of hand-holding for novices.
That's even becoming true of desktops now. Configurability is the enemy: it's too confusing, and we must not have anything which might require thought, no matter how useful it is. Computing is trending towards playskool-levels of being dumbed down.
Dear GOD almighty, UX and UI designers should be banned from ever touching a keyboard/mouse. They're the pariahs of software development. The first sign a software project is going downhill is always, always a shitty UI. When UI "experts" start calling the shots you know you're in deep shit.
Many people complain about the GIMP, but I started there and then had to learn Photoshop. The only reason people complain about GIMP is that they learned to use Photoshop first.
Then again, Apple, who used to be king of very functional design has thrown that all away in the search for "clean" appearance... whether or not it is consistent or usable and Google (Android) seems determined to follow.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
...will ironically continue to wonder why the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" hasn't happened while simultaneously misunderstanding and dismissing UI/UX.
The smartphone era has seen the resurgence of Mystery Meat Navigation thanks to Apple and Google. UI/UX is currently racing to the bottom.
What? Adobe...open source?
One of the largest contributing factors is the lack of professional designers contributing to open source projects.
No, it's the lack of good designers.
Whether the designers are professional has nothing to do with it.
Professional designers can be terrible, as demonstrated by Windows 8, where the professional designers were utterly unable to see that forcing a mobile UI paradigm on the desktop was a total disaster.
It's nice to see slashdot hasn't lost it's ability to shoot the messenger. Instead addressing his comments, which are pretty much right on, everyone takes the opportunity to point out the designs they feel are worst ever.
Fact is, Open Source will remain counter culture until it has full teams to meet the designs that the public wants, instead of designing to geeks desires.
The "user experience" is inadequate, but that is not related to colorful themes, ribbon interfaces or new animations. Spray paint that old double-wide and it's still just a double-wide.
It's the lack of consistency across platforms that makes even Windows users puke. Basic functionality is still in the last millennium. You can't even assemble a suite of portable Linux apps without rewriting most of the code.
Mr. Garth Braithwaite should get his head out of his butt and pay more attention to some serious deficiencies. No, we don't need a better Flash Player for Linux, thank you.
The older I get, the less I adapt easily to change.
This is particularly problematic with commercial OS / applications.
I like Open Source products because when I upgrade them, I am not always faced with a new learning curve (exceptions of course, Gnome 3 I'm looking at you) and best of all, if I don't like it I can roll back to a prior version.
I think it's the 'professionals' who can't nail down a good, consistent design that has longevity.
Since too many times the complaint about design is basically "This doesn't operate or look exactly like another product I use!". Given that this is a pointless goal to achieve (unless there is only one such product in the world), and given that such designs can easily be locked up by "Look and feel" design patents, but only those with potloads of cash, therefore will be financially and legally untenable, the entire process is frequently pointless and really should be considered nothing more than an excuse, rather than an explanation or problem.
GIMP will NEVER get spot colours because Kodak won't let them out. Complaining about it won't be fixable, by no decision anyone can make.
Unless the just ignore the law and go ahead anyway.
Please let us know who would take on, say, GIMP and support it in breaking the law on Pantone patents.
.
The premise looks at the worst of the open source software projects and compares it to the best of the proprietary software projects. That's typically how these types of comparisons are done, with a huge anti-open source bias.
If you ask the wrong questions, you're going to get the wrong answers.
In my experience, when a UI expert says you need to fix your interface, he is almost certainly right.
When a "UX" "guru" says you need to "update" your "experience", he is almost certainly wrong.
A good UI is hard and takes *a lot* of time. I don't think the problem is a lack of designers but a lack of designers who can really put in the *time* with developers to actually polish things.
Sure, you can get things working to 90% but that last 10% that actually makes something quick and easy to use if HARD. Most open source projects just don't have enough people with enough time to devote to that last 10%.
The "open source is ugly" premise is sometimes right but for the reason that we're used to closed source software companies actually having enough staff and devoting enough time to that last 10% ... some of the time ;)
Ok so there's a small problem about lack of aesthetics in open source user interfaces.
But that problem pales in comparison to the poor usability of many FOSS applications.
I think the usability problem there is a lot to do with an Aspergers-like (focussed on own knowledge and context, non-empathetic) trait among developers.
A developer often makes the mistake of developing a UI that they themselves find easy and fast to use.
They can't or won't empathize with another, non-technical user. They can't or won't think "As that person(a), what do I know and not know? In general, and specifically as I approach and go through the UI) What are my goals? What is my vocabulary and set of concepts?"
They can't or won't even put themselves in the place of a user who is another technical expert but doesn't have the particular same technical knowledge, goals, assumptions, or focus of attention that the developer does.
Non-FOSS software products often benefit because the company can afford to bring in UX specialists to work alongside the pure software developers, whereas many FOSS projects are pretty much software developers only.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I remember when I used to use Linux: Ubuntu 10.04 with good ol' GNOME 2.32 or whatever it was. Then Shuttleworth had the great idea to throw it all out and bring in the professional designers. I'm now a Mac user, which may seem ironic because Apple has plenty of professional designers, but the ones Shuttleworth hired must have been complete UI Nazis because what they came up with was an abomination. I don't know whether Linux can afford or attract decent designers; the only ones they seem to find are people with some very strange ideas, and who don't actually use computers.
Frankly, I don't give a flyin' fuck about the UX/UI of ANY OS/platform/app I use. What I DO give a flyin' fuck about is all the goddamn telemetry/phone-home bullshit that's finding its way into everything that runs on a CPU. For example: http://news.softpedia.com/news/the-document-foundation-wants-to-overhaul-the-libreoffice-interface-497839.shtml. Last I checked, LibreOffice already collects usage data & sends it somewhere; supposedly it's opt-in. Mozilla supposedly uses telemetry in Firefox. What's their marketshare again? How well-liked is Firefox's UX/UI? And Microsoft, backporting their telemetry bullshit to windows 7/8/8.1; WTF for? Next time I plop my big ass down on the crapper, I'm gonna have to think about the ginormous epidemic of jackassery that seems to be spreading, and electing a minority, Barack Obama, into the whitehouse, was THE catalyst that got the turdball rolling. In the city I live in, the city council was recently usurped by four females through a rigged election. Look here: https://www.yakimawa.gov/media/points-of-interest/new-yakima-city-council/ and here: https://www.aclu.org/news/federal-court-rules-yakimas-voting-system-violates-voting-rights-act. Yakima is owned by a drug cartel, & Barack Obama likes it that way; nothing like equal rights & equal opportunities for the poor minorities.
Open Source is ugly when they copy Apple and Microsoft. Almost all of the big projects do it, and claim it as some kind of central feature or revelation in design.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's pretty simple, and I'm always surprised software engineers have such a hard time understanding this: Specialize for the user.
Does the vi UX suck? No, it's perfect for people who are great are memorizing esoteric commands for efficient text editing.
Does GIMP UX suck? Almost all professional designers have been brought up using either OS X or Windows. Yet the GIMP UI still looks like it's running under X11. That's a non-starter for 99% of the user base, unless you're going to tell me GIMP was never meant to enter the mainstream.
In summary, don't cheap out on the UI because you want to use some open source UI library. Understand end-user expectations (i.e., not just YOUR expectations) and fill them.
Using "UI" and "UX" in the same sentence (or worse, as "UI/UX", as in some of the comments) showcases ignorance of the problems, solutions, and disciplines involved in making satisfying software.
Most Linux projects could use a Costco-size box of UX helper, regardless of whether the UI works well or not.
They're not orthogonal to each other, but fixing one doesn't necessarily fix the other.
What's more, just like coders and EEs, UXers come in all shades of good, bad, heroic and abominable.
Find a good one and work together. Her job is not to fuck up your favorite program.
In the end, the actual problem is that the people doing most UI/UX design these days are Millennials (aka Hipsters).
An integral part of these people's identity is that they're always right about everything, even when they're absolutely 100% wrong.
They've been raised by Baby Boomers (who we long thought to be the worst generation; Millennials have proven otherwise) to have a total inability to handle criticism. Legitimate criticism is typically mislabeled as "bullying" by Millennials. Perversely, because "bullying" is now allegedly involved, this allows Millennials to treat the wrongly-labeled "bully" far worse than the mislabeled "bully" ever treated anyone else!
This is why it's not unusual to see Millennials ban people from online discussion, for example. Millennials tend to be petty tyrants, hypocritically claiming to support freedom and justice, while simultaneously showing extreme contempt for both by engaging in censorship.
When you combine Millennials and their rotten philosophy with something like software UI design, the result is a complete disaster. Millennials automatically assume that their awful work is correct, even when users very plainly explain what the problems are. Millennials, being sure that they're correct, either deny or ignore the very valid complaints that users bring up. In the end the users typically move to an alternative piece of software, if one is available.
Now before you start with the "get off my lawn" crap, this isn't about age. If whatever generation comes after the Millennials can undo all of the damage that the Millennials have done, then I welcome their effort!
Why don't all you people just leave FOSS alone!!!!
I think there are two categories of projects, paid developer open source (e.g. Linux, Eclipse, etc.) and spare time open source. In the latter developers are largely scratching their own itch and generally won't be interested in spending a large chunk of their time effectively pushing pixels around, particularly when they could be adding a new feature.
We need less back-seat coders in open source (people with an opinion but aren't actually writing code, e.g. all the anti-systemd whiners) and more people willing to jump in and write code if they are having issues.
and user experience design is like feminism: They look like good ideas, until you understand that they're just power grabs. UX people, like many architects, value form over function, and clarity over flexibility. Programmers gave us the Linux kernel. User interface people gave us Gnome.
The whole 'UX' campaign is what destroyed usability in today's software. It traded graduated learning and functionality with fisher price level capabilities. Large fonts, wasted whitespace, and condescending status messages (think google, facebook, or the 'new' microsoft) rule the day. Search boxes are tacked on after the fact to make up for the useless interface. Of course, when one of these users wants to do more or have a problem fixed, it's technical people who have to get around the total lack of flexibility and technical feedback to fix the problem.
Lack of 'professional' designers is not the issue. There are plenty of paid designers turning out crap designs, too.
The argument made about developers vs users is also bullshit. In earlier times, the applications were developed by developers for use by ANYONE who wanted to do whatever it was the application was designed for. This forced anyone who wanted to do these things to learn how the application works. If it was designed well, the result was an educated, productive user who understands at least some of the underpinnings of the required workflow. Today's 'designing' assumes the user is an idiot and actively prevents any real mastery of the process. This results in garbage output.
VLC has a good design? Did they even look at the options panel? It has to be one of the worst. My favorites are the textboxes that give no clue as to the datatype or format expected. Firefox hasn't had a good interface since they wiped out the menu system. The fact that classic theme restorer is one of the more popular addons for the program speaks volumes about 'UX'.
Naturally, the guy being interviewed pointed out mostly pointless web 'apps', each with typical hipster names that have no relevance to their actual functionality. About what I'd expect from 'UX designers.'
...argue about what license it is and push you to change to another, rather than...contributing.
Considering that the majority of Linux contributors are openly hostile to User Interface and Application "Look and Feel" considerations, and there is a general apathy to writing documentation to the "Hand Holding" level the average consumer demands, you only need to think about it for a moment to grasp the answer to "Is Linux ready for the Desktop" question.
It isn't, and never will be; a Geek has to be there somehow or Grandma isn't buying, regardless of how useful it would be to her.
From TFA: .... developers should look to improve their own design skills"
"What should developers who can't attract designers do? They shouldn't wait around. If they can hire a designer, great, but
As a dev, I want every possible option and every possible option to be exposed to the user, 'cause that's how I think as I'm programming.
As a designer, I know better-- a good interface HIDES options and choices from a user (and the less technical your expected audience, the more should be hidden) until necessary.
There's been many times where I've found that design choices can eliminate many programming problems and bottlenecks.
The author recommends three projects as having good UI and UX:
SASS: http://sass-lang.com/
Bower: http://bower.io/
Ember: http://emberjs.com/
These projects have two things in common: their websites suck, and I've never heard of them before. (Well, Bower's website is OK).
It's true that poor but trendy UX/UI gumpf has ruined mainstream computing from the point of view of the nerdy minority.
GP wants to retain an enclave of technical quality within a world of dreck. I support this.
But with the garbage that passes for quality software these days, all moving elements and meaningless icons, we won't keep any quality software unless we fight for it.
And who ever said we'd left "text based interfaces"? Just because they are difficult for newbies doesn't stop experts from using them as fast as thought can travel.
and, in my experience people get used to all kind of shitty or non-shitty icons, but if UX fails in central points (like clearly conveying importan messages to the user or providing fluctuating support for basic features like copy&paste) it frustrates users much more.
This. Good UI is harder than developing program code since it requires both designing the stuff, programming it and then convincing the programmer X number of times to change it again until it "gets right"!
Few people appreciate and respect that, which makes them irrelevant to such discussions.
Damn! Captcha: lexicon ;-)
This one. Polishing is boring and takes lots of time, and the new developers have horror to "boring code".
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
frickin' SPEED!!!! Very high on my list of any UI design. BUG FREE would be second.
google pulled $100 million dollars in funding and _that_ destroyed the project. A few (easily undone if you're so inclined) UI tweaks didn't do that. It's just the part that gets the most nerd rage because it's the most visible.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I gasp every time I see someone who bothered to learn emacs.
Actually a good UX person recognizes the audience for a given piece of software and designs for that audience. That was well known back in the stoplight book. The problem is that product people don't realize that grandma is not the appropriate target audience for everything.
I'm just sayin'..
Not much of a think piece either
What the public wants is well represented by Android, iOS, Windows, and the like. The public already has this. Please, let us technical people have one last bastion that doesn't suck for the technically literate.
The thing is that, in the real world, the function of the tech guy is to facilitate communication among those do not share his particular skill set. He isn't being paid the big bucks to retreat into his bunker, never again to see the light of day.
Most 'modern' UI's are hellishly disfunctional. Fashion over function everywhere.
Both the old style and ribbons did that. The biggest problem with the ribbon is that it's a screen real-estate hog.
Other than that, the ribbon hasn't improved anything I've noticed. The UI was rather arbitrary before the ribbon and it was arbitrary afterward also. In that case, don't move stuff. You get used to the arbitrary positions and memorize them. When the ribbon came along, I had to relearn it all.
All those options should be "googlized" so that one can search options based on key-words and synonyms. There's too many for hierarchical menus to be effective.
Table-ized A.I.
No, you shouldn't use it just because it's free. You should use it because it's Free.
The problem is that open source developer tools are suited for source code over all other aspects of projects. This isn't just a problem with UX/UI design, it is also a problem with technical writing for documentation, marketing, user interaction, the whole nine yards.
Right now, please, tell me the best way to submit a conceptual UI design for an application into a git repository? Do you just create a PSD file and submit it? Then when someone else edits the PSD, how do you diff it? How do you easily track revision changes of visual assets?
In the closed source world, we have asset management systems that work in parallel with our source code management systems. But this is something that isn't common within the open source world. On top of this, great design is quite possibly much harder than great code. With code, it is easy to run new changes against unit tests to ensure that things do not break. But with layout changes, small or overhauls, how do you test them? They are subject highly to opinion more so than pure fact.
On top of this, take the general nature of open source projects in general. There are often many hoops to jump through to even push a fix for a confirmed bug after discovering it. Just one example (but this has been par for the course all along), I discovered a simple but critical bug in the MariaDB database server returning incorrect results on a SELECT statement. The test case was extremely simple and verified within an hour or two of the bug report being submitted. A couple weeks went by, no work happened on it. I decided to pull down the MariaDB code, hunt down the bug, fix it, and push the change to their git repo. The entire change was only modifying a single if statement condition. The approval process missed several releases of their software and took months, and countless chats in their IRC channel as well. If this is what it takes to get a single simple bug fixed, just imagine what someone would have to do for a serious change like UI cleanup and overhaul of a major application?
On top of that, just read the comments throughout here on Slashdot on this article. The main opinion is that UX/UI design is just "change for the sake of change" - which is apparently inherently bad. But take a step back and think about this: We're about to hit the year 2016. When are we finally going to have "The year of Linux on the Desktop?" We've been trying to push that concept for over a decade. But what is preventing it? Absolutely horrible UX/UI design, that is it. Linux itself may have almost every feature of Windows/OSX, but the elegance of being able to access and use those features is absolutely horrible from someone that doesn't already know Linux. Now look at Android, Google took Linux and re-imagined the UI from scratch, and now it is widely used and successful. It is intuitive and easy for novice users. They don't even need to know it is Linux at the core, it shouldn't matter. The interface is sleek, clean, and simple (save for some bastardizations that some of the handset makers and carriers screw up)
If you want the ultimate test of good vs bad UX/UI design, it is actually quite simple: have people sit down that have absolutely no idea how your program functions. They've never seen it or used it before. And have them attempt to use it with zero supervision. Watch how far they can get. See what all they can do. Look for trends and patterns in their usage. Find where people are getting frustrated, and try to make it simpler. This is what Microsoft did back in the '90s to create the start menu and start button. Check out the history of Windows Chicago: http://oyvind.servehttp.com/wi...
As a dev, I want every possible option and every possible option to be exposed to the user, 'cause that's how I think as I'm programming.
That's a load of crap. There's nothing inherent in being a developer that makes you want to do that.
You could just as well say:
As a dev, I want every possible option, and to have them configurable through a file on the filesystem, 'cause that's how I think as I'm programming.
or:
As a dev, I want no options whatsoever, because I've already made the correct decisions while I'm programming
In reality, if you're adding anything to a program, whether it be an option or functionality, you need to understand why you're adding it, when it will be used, and whether or not it's optional or necessary.
There's no magic to user interface stuff, it's just another problem domain to understand and address - at least on the functional side. You may not necessarily have the artistic ability to make it look shiny, but you should be able to make it _work_.
there's still very little similarity between even that use and a text editor.
You mean the same Adobe that can't even follow the keyboard shortcuts standards of the OS itself? THAT Adobe?
If memory serves, double clicking the ribbon title where the menu items used to be collapses the ribbon.
I like some of the ribbon (context sensitive tool bar part), but don't like the difficulty to find infrequently used things (eg, setting print area in excel).
I wish they just did a context sensitive tool bar and a traditional menu.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The interface should be as simple as is necessary, but no simpler. Hiding things is fine, but they have to be discoverable without going snipe hunting.
It's annoying to keep collapsing and uncollapsing the ribbon. Also, the old-style tool bars were ALSO context sensitive (in some software). That's not something new to ribbons.
Table-ized A.I.
Designer: We've designed a new hammer. We've moved beyond the traditional "head and handle" paradigm. Meet: EggHammer. A simple egg-shaped piece of iron that you hold in your hand with a small flat area on one end. No handle. No join to wear out. Simple. Elegant. The egg shape fits in the palm. The flat end hits the nail. Best of all, you can put it on the shelf and it will stand there as an objet d'art resting on the flat surface. $199.00.
Carpenter: Dafuq? All the force from pounding goes right into my wrist like this. It's like pounding nails with a rock. What the hell are you babbling about? When I'm done with my hammers I hang them on nails I pounded into this board... with a hammer that doesn't suck rocks, which is what you're trying to sell me for TEN TIMES THE PRICE OF A REGULAR HAMMER.
Designer: you don't understand design.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
How about allowing the user to customize the interface to some extent. Here's some notes that use web browsers as examples:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UserDef...
Table-ized A.I.
What ever happened to the "Advanced Options" checkbox?
Such as recyling the classics into a pointless roadtrip of a GUI.
Do you want to install?
Do you want to accept the licence?
Do you want to click on a box?
And another box?
Burma Shave
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - to me, the UI of cat and vi (the old vi, not vim) are far more attractive than any GUI. GUIs have so much more scope for getting it wrong; they so often end up feeling like an overstuffed, Victorian living room with arsenic in the wallpaper (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). To make a good GUI, concentrate on simplicity, extensibility and convenience; an interface that is good to use will be naturally beautiful.
Like it or not but people coming from the main OS, windows, expect the system button (minimize, close etc...) on the right side. So why the heck shift it in the left side in ubuntu ? You rise the difficulty of somebody switching or tying to. That is one example among others. And don't tell me "you can switch". Yes I know that after googling. But somebody trying ubuntu will not. Interface similar to what is the user standard should be the default.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The problem we have is the change in behavior in computing.
For the stuff we use to have desktops and laptops for had been moved down to tablets and smart phones.
Why? The performance on these devices are getting very decent, the price is affordable, they have long battery life, and are very portable.
The Bill gates vision of a PC for every home, is obsolete, today most people don't need what we call a PC, A small computing device is what they need and want for daily usage. Now what we call PCs now are less of a personal device but more of workstation to get real computing work done (also playing high end games).
This means that good 1990's and 2000's UI rules are now in flux. A lot of things are still in experimental phase now.
However in my opinion, they should really separate Workstation UI with Personal UI.
Work Station UI means we should take advantage of larger screens, make it easy for a person to work on one project while at a quick glance monitor others that are going on, the ability to reference other material, and roll back and merge changes over time.
The personal device market, we are normally working on a single app, however with notifications and alerts to let us know something may ask us for distraction. Make it easy to organize clutter as we collect more apps, and find and use them quickly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just compare the look and feel of an iPhone with that of a standard Android phone. It's better.
Unfortunately GUI design is hard to get right. It takes both talent and effort, and lots of it. It's easy to get it wrong.
For better or worse, many FOSS projects have neither. Interfaces are put together by coders. I would like to point to the Gnome desktop as an example of a lot of design effort gone wrong, and to the KDE desktop as an example of where coders have run amuck with the GUI.
As a browser I way prefer an "old" look (Seamonkey) over Firefox, so in that sense I'd say you're right.
The problem is: where to get good design? It's rare to find an enthusiastic FOSS coder who can do a decent GUI job, and even rarer to find a decent GUI designer who'll go through the pain of trying to take charge of a GUI design of a FOSS project. It's more frustrating than herding cats.
For better or worse, this is the one area where corporate software development may have an edge of FOSS: design standards can be (and usually are) imposed across a product or a product range. Not a guarantee for success of course, but often better than FOSS offerings.
If memory serves, double clicking the ribbon title where the menu items used to be collapses the ribbon.
I like some of the ribbon (context sensitive tool bar part), but don't like the difficulty to find infrequently used things (eg, setting print area in excel).
I wish they just did a context sensitive tool bar and a traditional menu.
The big problem with the ribbon is that it's not quite as context-sensitive as it claims to be. The section of the ribbon that's open is often simply the last one you used, unless it's no longer applicable to the context you're in. If it's a global option (home, page layout or similar) then it's available in all contexts. There were times I'd been working away in Word or Excel for over quarter of an hour without need of the ribbon (using keyboard shortcuts and the context-menu key for all my edits), and then when I needed to go to the ribbon for something, my flow would be broken by the fact that I had to re-orient my mental context to the currently open ribbon. I couldn't work on auto-pilot like I used to. Context-sensitivity should mean that my first available action is defined by the context, but with ribbons, that ain't so.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
the real clusterfuck of UX design can be found in so called 'enterprise' software or in-house developed applications.
my god, calling those horrible is still giving them too much credit.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Most people use computers as an appliance. They don't use fridges to freeze genetic samples at a certain consistent sub-zero temperature, but instead use them to keep ice cream cold enough. Those same people just want to surf the web and open some apps without having to struggle with it, and seek familiarity in design - the visual vocabulary if you will - to access information. The GUI as a "grammar" for language is ever-evolving as text-speak, and the issue is the perception of open source being ugly because it follows the need of engineers, the same ones who over-engineer remote controls with 20+ unnecessary buttons (most of the time people use power, volume up/down, channel up/down).
Either way, /.'s inability to see beyond themselves is not surprising, especially on the topic of UX.
Then why do the silly buggers REMOVE items rather than hide them?
Oh yes, they don't use them so if they take them out they don't have to maintain them.
Thanks, GNOME morons!
Here comes a new idiot on a crusade to change all our UIs just for change's sake. The reason why I went with Mint Linux was specifically because they are striving to keep the UI *the same.* All the apps I use have had the same UI forever and it's great! I can get work done.
Twinstiq, game news
... because open source devs care about getting more devs, not about users. Every single time I've been in an open source project and make a suggestion that would be useful to users, it's the same line. 'We don't care about users, we care about devs."
I cringe when I hear anyone claim they can design an experience. The designer designs a human-machine interface, the user produces his or her own experience when interacting with it. A good interface will generally result in a good experience, but people aren't identical and their experiences aren't either. I enjoy some interfaces the majority of people have trouble with and I dislike some interfaces the majority seems to love. Can I complain to the designers of the last category because they annoyed me on purpose with a bad experience? Or was what I experienced not part of what they designed? If it wasn't, they shouldn't call themselves user experience designers.
The language that claims that a designer actually designs what the user experiences sounds arrogant, self-centered, narcissistic. It doesn't sound like the kind of designer I would actually want to hire.
Our UX designer decided that a "disabled" button isn't a button that does nothing, but rather means a button that, when you click on it, tells you why you shouldn't click on it. Not a bad idea, but it flies in the face of the last 30 years of GUI design. And of course, the UX team is always right, and you have to implement everything exactly the way they said... even when they reverse themselves and tell you to implement the exact opposite of the way they told you before.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Most open source projects just don't have enough people with enough time to devote to that last 10%.
Then on top of that, you'll sometimes find that the project leader isn't interested in fixing blatant usability issues. Hell, with some projects it's hard enough getting legitimate bug fixes accepted, much less a UI change that someone will take as a personal affront to their self-esteem.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas