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.

Comments

Pot, meet kettle. Ketle, meet pot.

[kevmeister]

I'd say it's an all out war for worst design between GIMP and Photoshop. I really, really hate the design of both.

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.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Re:No thanks

[Hognoxious]

From what I've seen and read a lot of newer UI/UX people are ignoring everything that the UI/UX people learned and built up over the last 20+ years.

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.

Re:No thanks

[vtcodger]

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.