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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.
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.
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
You make an excellent point, however, I would suggest that there are many more examples of "successful" open source projects that have poorly designed interfaces than successful commercial closed source projects.
The issue I think is it is hard to get motivated to put the effort into UI design if your expected market is mostly geeks and maybe at best a few thousand users. If you are on a budget with a target audience of millions then it is easier to find the "time" or "motivation".
Absolutely. In 2015, there's no reason I should have to pay any attention to your interface. If I notice your UI, you've failed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A lot of "new UI/UX people" seem to be following wherever a tiny number of people from very famous tech firms lead. Unfortunately, this remains true despite those tech firms themselves producing some of the most horrible user experiences I can recall in a multi-decade career recently, often as a direct result of following the same path themselves.
For example, on a lot of web or graphic design forums, if you even try suggesting that flat design is almost always a bad idea that is built on poorly chosen basic design principles, you have a pretty good chance of being downvoted/modded/censored into oblivion. This remains true even if you try to present a neutral, objective case based on specific examples of poor usability, never mind trying to engage in wider debate about artificially limited tools leading to over-emphasis of icons (even though icons are frequently a bad choice for almost anything), over-emphasis of animations (even though animations often do more harm than good), trendy large and lightweight fonts harming readability, lack of brand differentiation because of the near-uniform appearance of everything, and so on.
And don't even think about going beyond generic flat design to criticising Apple's recent design efforts or Google's Material Design, because you might as well just hand in your geek card on the spot.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
+1 to that.
To me a computer is a tool and I find arbitrary change in UI irritating.
And +2 to your comment. I use a computer to Get Stuff Done. Hipsterism in the UI (look at Windows 8 if you want to see the worst of it) works against me, not for me.
I don't mind a bit of style, but really, a plain old boring interface that enhances my ability to work is what I want.
Maybe that's why I like text-mode interfaces (I'm a big Emacs user). Text mode is dull and boring but it lets me do my work effectively.
Granted, everyone doesn't need or want to go to such a basic interface level. But how helpful are dancing cursors, animated icons, illegible fonts, and all the other "hip" things? My computer interface isn't a fashion statement, it's a tool!
The GUI was a solution to a problem, and the problem was the command line.
Those who remember the command line, linux dweebs aside, are dead or retired. Correction: those who remember having nothing but a command line are dead or retired.
Thus the current generation have forgotten what problemns have been solved, and they're creating them again. Bizarre cryptic commands, weird gestures on an unmarked screen area: both violate discoverability.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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...
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"?
By an odd coincidence, about 20 minutes after I posted that, my wife was confronted with a family emergency and needed driving instructions to a city around 400km from here. Google maps used to have a straightforward interface that worked well (albeit a bit slowly) with just about any browser. But about 6-8 months ago they replaced it with a modernized, low-contrast, monstrosity with one of the more opaque UIs I've ever encountered. Apparently it only works with a "modern browser", because I had to go through three PCs and 5 browsers to find one (Chromium as it happens) that would actually display and print driving instructions. I'm sure the folks at Google are very proud of their shiny new UI. I can't think why.
I think perhaps I am expected to upgrade the user end of this workflow. i.e. I need to be replaced with a more modern user.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
If you're building a UI without knowing your audience, it's almost impossible to do a good job. Building substantial, customised UIs has been a large part of my work in recent years. I think much of the value I bring to these projects is that I make a big effort to get inside the heads of real world users, see things from their perspective, and give them the UI they need to get things done. That means knowing the target audience, ideally through things like direct conversations with users and solid data about how the systems are being used. Some of the most important code I write is the code that converts between a simple presentation and interaction design that fits the user's mental model and the sometimes horribly complicated internal model used by whatever system they're talking to.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.