Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: A Point of Contention - Modern User Interfaces
Reader Artem Tashkinov writes: Here are the staples of the modern user interface (in varying degree apply to modern web/and most operating systems such as Windows 10, iOS and even Android):
- Too much white space, huge margins, too little information
- Text is indistinguishable from controls
- Text in full-CAPS
- Certain controls cannot be easily understood (like on/off states for check boxes or elements like tabs)
- Everything presented in shades of gray or using a severely and artificially limited palette
- Often awful fonts suitable only for HiDPI devices (Windows 10 modern apps are a prime example)
- Cannot be controlled by keyboard
- Very little customizability if any
How would Slashdotters explain the proliferation and existance of such unusable user interfaces and design choices? And also, do you agree?
I fear that many of the issues listed in TFS are the result of decisions made when the OS UI conventions are defined. Then, apps follow these conventions without regard to what what it means for their product.
That is not to say that the original conventions are always bad, they were designed for a certain feature set to provide for defined functionality - the problem comes when they are applied, without thought in third party applications. The decision to follow the OS conventions are either made by executives who feel the application needs to be a "seamless" part of the system (and Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. spent millions on the UI conventions so let's just copy their work) or by designers that don't know any better or are just trying to get their product out quickly.
I have never seen a great set of tests for UI developers to self-evaluate the end product. We've all been there when after working with a product for a while, everything you've done seems to make sense and you develop mental shortcuts that allow you to fly through the UI.
The only real solution is, as part of the development process, set aside time for third party user testing with feedback sessions. I've been through a number of them, they're humbling, surprising and educating - then there's the fun part where you need to take the results and tell your boss(es) that they're wrong.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
On web pages, at least, the excessive white space is an obnoxious side-effect of current "responsive design" practices.
More specifically, it seems that the idea that 'content is like water' results in having just enough content to fill the small screen of a mobile device and then presenting that same content on a larger screen by introducing huge amounts of white space to pad that small amount of content out.
It should have been glaringly obvious that this was going to be the result from looking at the pic on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
how could designers not have seen this coming?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
That doesn't explain it.
I can explain the proliferation of unusable user interfaces in two words: Graphic Artists
I saw this trend start in the 1980's. We were designing a new version of a successful Macintosh product. We were working on the user interface. The graphic designers could make things look good, but had no grasp of principles. The big eye opener to all of the developers but zero of the graphic artists was when an artist was describing an operation and then indicated using a certain button as doing something very different than it was described as doing earlier. Something unworkable. Something that revealed the entire mindset was about how good it looks aesthetically.
In our ensuing discussion it was recognized how a lot of consumer electronics at that point (late 1980s) looked fantastic on the shelf, but had horrible user interfaces.
Back in the day Apple had Human Interface Guidelines. And I understand that Microsoft did too.
Today all of that has gone out the window. I'll just give one example. Google's Material Design. Not that I'm criticizing it. But just criticizing the NAME. The name screams it is all about the aesthetics and not how well it interacts with human beings.
And we wonder why things have such badly thought out UIs. You have to start with basic principles. Get a good book like The Design Of Everyday Things. It explains the user interfaces of things like Door Handles, Faucets, and things you would never think about. It describes a lot of principles that you wouldn't think about, yet suddenly recognize. Once you read the book, you can answer what an affordance is when designing a UI.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Right. The way I interact with my PC, with mouse/kbd, and 2 x 24" screens, is totally different than interacting with a phone or tablet.
But apparently the 'designers' are too lazy or clueless to a) know the difference, and b) build two different interfaces.
This
As part owner and lead engineer and developer for an online GPS tracking platform I experience this on a weekly basis.
Just fired a guy 1/3 my age and 1/10 my experience for telling me I am too old school and think I know everything.
Fucking guy insisted on using microscopic fonts and all grays with almost zero contrast ratio.
I could not even read that shit on a 28" monitor.
I don't think it's laziness, more like cluelessness. There was a big push for several years after smartphones and tablets took off to merge UIs across platforms. I suppose part of the justification was to try to draw in developers from both the smart device and desktop worlds to do more cross-platform work, and part of it was likely just to simplify (read: make less expensive) maintaining and developing features where an OS might be on everything from multiple screen desktops to 5" phones.
At the end of the day, I doubt even a smart UI abstraction layer will ever make these variant UI scenarios fit under one hood. Many web developers have known this for a while, which is why you have mobile and desktop versions of sites in many cases, but I still think Microsoft and Apple need to fully accept the reality that what works on little may look like shit on big (and visa versa, as my experience with an 8" Windows 10 tablet even in tablet mode informs me).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I was with you until the very last point. Lack of customizability is a good thing. It creates standardisation. It means when people pick up a device of same or similar model to their own they know how to use it without any guess work. It makes support and training easier, though admittedly at the expense of finely tuned specific tasks.
Its amazing how perfect Windows 95 was UI-wise. Its been downhill since. They got the UI right and then they decided that for the sake of being new, they had to break what was working well. You cant do much better than the taskbar/desktop model with the object oriented icons and drag and drop popularized by OS/2 and picked up by win95.
As a principal designer somewhere in SF Bay Area, I have instituted a reverse age policy. Must be 35 or older to work for me.