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What Comes After User-Friendly Design? (fastcodesign.com)
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, writing for FastCoDesign: "User-friendly" was coined in the late 1970s, when software developers were first designing interfaces that amateurs could use. In those early days, a friendly machine might mean one you could use without having to code. Forty years later, technology is hyper-optimized to increase the amount of time you spend with it, to collect data about how you use it, and to adapt to engage you even more. [...] The discussion around privacy, security, and transparency underscores a broader transformation in the typical role of the designer, as Khoi Vinh, principal designer at Adobe and frequent design writer on his own site, Subtraction, points out. So what does it mean to be friendly to users-er, people-today? Do we need a new way to talk about design that isn't necessarily friendly, but respectful? I talked to a range of designers about how we got here, and what comes next.
See: Large-company games being developed/released.
They're increasingly marketing-heavy, while still increasing development budget... but they're using that budget to create pay-walled content INSIDE their full-priced software.
Basically, they're converting the software from a product, into a virtual salesperson, asking for more money.
Now, there's a landslide of jargon you could attach to this, like 'monetizing' and 'empowering', and 'whales' - but it's all basically just again, having the software itself act as a marketing agent, rather than a product.
When I went to a developer conference (PAX Dev) a few years ago, the folks there were already sick of it - but knew it was what they'd be asked to do, even on small teams.
The whole thing is a bit crazy though - like mutually assured destruction.
The audience size in general is increasing over time, the profit potential even for small groups is as good as it has ever been. This whole movement is largely based on fear of losing out - but it was never really needed before, and it's largely management demand rather than real need that drives this trend.
All someone has to do to reverse this trend is release quality software that provides what these products do, without the money-grubbing aspects, and the 'marketing-agent' mentality will die back, by the force of the greatest marketing tool, word-of-mouth (or social media).
For the time being though, the investor demand is, as always: Grab for everything you can, and the large guys comply with everything they have. I've been in the meetings - the software developers will do what they're asked, and the sad results are about what you'd expect.
When you read the article, there is a video at the bottom that autoplays. If you pause the video and scroll so that it is off the screen then scroll back, the video picks back up and starts playing again.
I guess the author is testing user hostile design on us to see what we will do.
Well, kinda.
A lot of what makes Photoshops user interface usable is that people are used to it.
If you jump into it as a new user it isn't really better than GIMPs.
OTOH change for the sake of change should be considered bad user interface design.