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?

Comments

Easy answer

[YrWrstNtmr]

How would Slashdotters explain the proliferation and existance of such unusable user interfaces and design choices?

Phones and tablets.

Re:Easy answer

[houstonbofh]

This... People are designing for one medium used one way. All of the large data workers I know (Programmers, accountants, graphics designers, architects...) HATE these new UIs and use Windows 7 / Gnome 2 style interfaces. (And often have dual monitors) I suspect it will not be long before things start to shift back...

Re:Easy answer

[naris]

Its really the proliferation of the horrid iPhone UI. iOS has a horrid User Interface that is really difficult to use and everyone seems to be very quick to copy the least usable portions of it :/

Re:Easy answer

[big-giant-head]

Bingo we have a winner .. At work if we have a choice the developers use Linux and the customize the UI the way they want it... Usually a Gnome 2 , a KDE ( like windows with the menu and apps pinned to the bottom) or similar interface. I realize all the hipsters think this minimalist ui with a very small, dull color palette is cool, but it isn't. It's very limiting and very boring and 99% of the users are not hipsters ... so we are not impressed ..

Make UI's Great Again !!!!

Re:Easy answer

[alvinrod]

I think part of the problem is that the basic screen shape has changed. Traditionally, monitors used a 4:3 format that worked reasonably well for most sites and the resolution was low enough that letters had to be sizable so as not to be unreadable. However, we moved to the 16:9 format for most monitors which adds horizontal space, often at the expense of vertical space which is utterly useless for most things beyond watching movies filmed in a 16:9 format.

Studies that were done over 100 years ago found that the best line-length for human reading was around 4 inches at most. The extra width that modern screens provide don't give much benefit, but at least with a tablet it's much easier to adjust to a portrait mode where the added vertical space means less scrolling. Otherwise there isn't a lot of useful things to do with a UI other than add more tool pallets, but for a non-professional tool, its typically better to avoid throwing too much at users so we've got all this extra space that provides no benefit. So websites fill the void by throwing in a side column of ads, but that's worse than just empty space as far as I'm concerned.

The touch model of phones and tablets as makes it more complicated to have a universal UI. Web pages with context menus or anything that interacts with a mouse hover are horribly clunky on touch screens, and optimizing for different platforms is often time consuming or doesn't even make business sense depending on how much traffic you get from different platforms. The same goes for applications that could be run on either a tablet or a PC as the interaction models are different enough that trying a one-size fits all approach often degrades the experience for both users. Using an application with bigger buttons that are necessary for touch targets with a mouse and keyboard just feels like the UI has wasted a lot space and trying to touch small targets designed for mouse use can be exceptionally frustrating.

Re:Easy answer

[DickBreath]

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.

Re:Easy answer

[RoverDaddy]

This isn't specific to iOS, but there's this 'modern UX' Philosophy that functions should be completely hidden until needed, which does seem to develop from a 'mobile first' attitude. One example: I've been baffled on how to delete entries from a list, because there's no edit mode for the list, and even if there is, still no 'affordance' to suggest this is what you click to delete. Why? Because 'delete' is obviously a swipe left or right (depending on the app). Then and only then do you get to see a nice big red 'DELETE' box. The user should just 'know'. Similar to how Windows 8 introduced those awful 'hot corners' that made charm controls spring up if you left your mouse (or touch) there. But of course this isn't universal. The iOS Podcasts app uses an edit mode for lists and check boxes that look like radio buttons (another minor gripe) to indicate which items in a list should be deleted.

A couple decades ago there seemed to be a much more rational UX philosophy where controls were obviously controls, text was obviously text, window frames and borders were -good- things because they help the user's mental model of the UI match the software, and on-screen affordances were designed to give the user a clue as to what does what. We've gone backwards.

Re:Easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, but I actually agree with this. I still hate the ribbon. A menu is a reasonably nicely categorised index of functionality - easy to read, properly aligned text, room for descriptiveness as required, sub-categories where appropriate (but highlighted in a consistent manner), and it has hints like underlines for keyboard shortcuts. And when not in use it neatly vanishes. The ribbon takes the menu, hurls it across the screen with a bunch of apparently random icons with no thought to readability, alignment, sorting or descriptiveness, actively hides some information in a non-standard way, and thoroughly confuses the distinction between a toolbar (a small set of tools kept visible for ease of access) and a menu.

I really, really wish the ribbon would just go away.

Forgot Some...

[BrendaEM]

Hate:
White text on a bight yellow background, on Galaxy Note 3 Android.
Where the fuck have the icons gone? Windows.
Why can't I cut an paste information from your dialog.
Why are things still not resolution independent. Adobe, and most music production applications.
Don't think you need files and folders? Think again, and the includes you Firefox mobile bookmarks.

The creator of "material design" need to be shot. There's a difference between not being limited by the physical world, and needlessly disconnect us from what we have already learned.

In the battle between KDE, Gnome, and Unity, Cinnamon won.

Love:
Rounded corners rule!
Shadows show us what's on top!

Maxims:
Just because Apple did it, doesn't make it right. Remember, they had a bad year last year.
People need to work, more than you need to masturbate over your own art work.
Most serious file management takes place in two windows.
Clean means that you are too lazy to update the functionality in your program, so you are leaving useful stuff off.
Those who think that the command line and a GUI cannot coexist have never seen a 3D CAD or design program.

Re:Forgot Some...

[Calydor]

You forgot a maxim:

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad, and just because it's new doesn't mean it's better.

Re:Forgot one

[grumbel5969]

Scott Meyers calls this the The Keyhole Problem and has a paper with a bunch of good examples.

My "favorite" modern example of the problem is Chrome's omnibox auto-completion, you get six results at maximum, they don't even give you a scroll bar or a "Show more" link, six results only. There used to be a command line option to increase it, but they removed it some years ago, it's now a hardcoded constant in the source code.

Re:children and old people

[arth1]

You're right about people's motor and vision skills are not what they used to be, but I find that primarily to be because it's not the same people.
Things have been dumbed down for about a decade now, and young users expect things to be simplified, not having experience with anything else.

40-70 year olds have computer experience, and handle cascading menus, middle mouse buttons and overlapping windows just fine - it's the young generation that requires a single application on the screen with simplified controls. And not too many words they have to read.

tl;dr: It's dumbing down for a dumber generation.

Re:No only

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:White space

[houstonbofh]

You mean on paper? Huh... why would someone do that?

Looks like you have a promising future in web design!

Oh lord, the pain

[fyngyrz]

Some of this is web design (I use the word "design" very loosely) and some is application design:

o the "designer" mindset has gifted us with extreme low contrast backdrops and fonts - STOP THAT

o bloody pop-up/over dialogs that were not asked for are constantly used - THIS IS HOW TO MAKE ME GO AWAY

o menus drop without being requested because mouse went over them - WAIT FOR A BLOODY CLICK!

o Videos autoplay just because I've arrived, or because the mouse pointer went over them. Ever think *I* might want to control what damned noise comes out of my computer, or what data I want to stream on my phone? You should. Because while I'm desperately trying to figure out how to shut up / stop your video abortion, I am hating on you and everything you represent, and vowing to NEVER come back to your site, which I promptly implement via my hosts file because you SUCK.

o Do NOT change the web or application UI: NEVER make a modal UI. Present a consistent interface that can be learned and incorporated into muscle memory. Enable/disable elements as appropriate. IOW, if a document isn't NEW or Loaded, Save should be disabled - not GONE. This is so everything in the interface remains where it was. We want to work, not read your damn interface over and over and over and over just to see where we're at.

o Make ALL keyboard commands configurable. In some apps, some of the things I do most often have no shortcuts and no way to add one. How annoying. How stupid.

I swear, there are days when I'd like to hunt down these so-called "designers" and yell at them until my voice gave out.

All of the above is effete nonsense that designers engage in an attempt (which is actually abject failure) to justify their title; stop all that, and just do it right. Don't even try to be "fancy" unless you're writing a game.

Also, if you say "UX", I just want you to know you've made me work to suppress an urge to slap your face. Hard.

Non-Discoverable Interfaces

[dcollins]

For me, the #1 modern UI sin, which wasn't included in the list here -- Non-discoverable interfaces. Interfaces based on some "gesture" which is never explained, and for which one cannot find an explanation (unless you already know the gesture to get there, if it exists). Pinch-zoom, hover in a magic corner, drag from edge, press screen for short vs. long time, invisible menu bars, etc., etc. In the 1984-2010 era I could follow the words in the menus and discover new features in any piece of software (and so could anyone, assuming they weren't illiterate). The last few years have brought my first experiences with software that I just couldn't begin to figure out how to do anything with.