Comment by JohnFen
2 years ago
> the goal of Interface design is to find the least amount of things needed to get you from point A to the desired Destination as quickly as possible.
That shouldn't be the primary goal of user interfaces, in my opinion. The primary goal should be to allow users to interface with the machine in a way that allows maximal understanding with minimal cognitive load.
I understand a lot of UI design these days prioritizes the sort of "efficiency" you're talking about, but I think that's one of the reasons why modern UIs tend to be fairly bad.
Efficiency is important, of course! But (depending on what tool the UI is attached to) it shouldn't be the primary goal.
> I understand a lot of UI design these days prioritizes the sort of "efficiency" you're talking about, but I think that's one of the reasons why modern UIs tend to be fairly bad.
IMO, the main problem is that this "efficiency" usually involves making assumptions that can't be altered, which achieves "efficiency" by eliminating choices normally available to the user. This is rarely done for the benefit of the user - rather, it just reduces the UI dev work, and more importantly, lets the vendor lock-in the option that's beneficial to them.
In fact, I've been present on UI design discussions for a certain SaaS product, and I quickly realized one of the main goals for that UI was to funnel the users towards a very specific workflow which, to be fair, reduced the potential for users to input wrong data or screw up the calculations, but more importantly, it put them on a very narrow path that was optimized to give results that were impressive, even if this came at the expense of accuracy - and it neatly reduced the amount of total UI and technical work, without making it obvious that the "golden path" is the only path.
It's one of those products I believe would deliver much greater value to the users if it was released as an Excel spreadsheet. In fact, it was actually competing with an Excel plugin - and all the nice web UI did was making things seem simpler, by dropping almost all useful functionality except that which happened to align with the story the sales folks were telling.
> In fact, I've been present on UI design discussions for a certain SaaS product
That makes sense. An SaaS-type offering is fundamentally different from selling a product. SaaS companies are incentivized to engage in manipulation of their customers. For them, the UI is more a sales tool than a user interface.
> The primary goal should be to allow users to interface with the machine in a way that allows maximal understanding with minimal cognitive load.
If you use your phone, is your primary goal to interface with it in a way that allows maximal understanding with minimal cognitive load?
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. You go read the news, send a message to a loved one etc. there’s a human need that you’re aiming to fulfill. Interfacing with tech is not the underlying desire. It’s what happens on the surface as a means.
> If you use your phone, is your primary goal to interface with it in a way that allows maximal understanding with minimal cognitive load?
Yes, absolutely. That's what makes user interfaces "disappear".
> Interfacing with tech is not the underlying desire.
Exactly. That's why it's more important that a UI present a minimal cognitive load over the least number of steps to do a thing.
Indeed. Our brains are good at making steps disappear, if the underlying system is predictable.
In other words, an UI with more steps but fully predictable has much lower cognitive load than a predictive UI that has fewer steps, but occasionally guesses wrong (or an UI that just has fewer steps, but they're sort of different each time, which is currently the norm on the web and mobile).