Comment by constantcrying
7 months ago
Designer right now value aesthetics over usability. If your design starts out from the question "how do we make this more user friendly", you will arrive at a totally different answer than when you ask "how do we make this look like everything else, but also stand out".
Aesthetics are essentially worthless for a user interface and should always be a secondary concern. But clearly designers have elevated aesthetics over usability, hence the numerous and constant redesigns of everything.
If you care about usability you know that a redesign necessarily comes at a great cost, since you are breaking many of the mental connections of your users. It is only justifiable if there is some serious gain by doing that.
> Aesthetics are essentially worthless for a user interface and should always be a secondary concern.
That is one of my random thoughts: Windows could have kept the Windows 95 look and been perfectly usable. Sure there might have been a need for certain UI tweaks, but for most office/home use there was no reason to change it.
The whole "let's make it friendly" is annoying. If it's a tool make it practical. If you need to write a manual because of that, then please, go right a head and do that.
The problem is that design tends to be driven by the marketing department...