Comment by ahartmetz
7 hours ago
I think new UI designers might mistakenly think that they are in the fashion industry, when actually they are in the ergonomics engineering industry, or should be.
7 hours ago
I think new UI designers might mistakenly think that they are in the fashion industry, when actually they are in the ergonomics engineering industry, or should be.
The amount of times I absolutely cringe from super lux UI which clearly a lot of time and energy went into prettifying at the absolute expense of usability and affordances. I love Apple TV but flip to any screen with multiple buttons and not being able to tell which button is selected. Or the Russian Roulette of Youtube trying to select any of the overlayed buttons on the actual video frame. I would 1000% trade shiny for more usablility in 99% of apps.
The Apple TV one drives me insane. The selected button is so subtly raised that it takes a lot to see. Usually I need to move it back and forth and look for the motion.
You can do both, that's what Apple was famous for in the past.
A mere fashion industry would be fine, because you could just ignore that and stay old-fasioned. This fashion industry is coupled with enforced corporate dress code.
I don't like it either, but they are in the fashion industry.
Why did the label on my Fig Newtons get redesigned? It's not because it lacked in usability. It's because the company knows that customers respond to visual updates. If something looks the same year after year, lots of people will see it as old and tired. A redesign makes it feel modern and fresh. At least to enough people that it matters.
I had the same experience on a recent trip to The UPS Store. The color scheme was all different from the previous time I shipped a package. I commented to the clerk that they'd redecorated. He said they do it pretty often.
Software has a visual aspect to it, and the same forces are in effect. Part of a UI designer's job is to be on that treadmill. That's probably not what the job should be, but the people who pay their salary want it to be.
At least on the brick and mortar side of things it’s not so bad since the refresh also allows a maintenance cycle while the store is temporarily closed. And I can think of many examples (KMart especially) where the lack of store refreshes/deferred maintenance torpedoed the entire chain (Walmart and Target were not afraid to teardown or abandon outmoded locations).
Well stated, but I will say, it is not impossible to do both.
Tantacrul is my favourite (and, actually, only) example of this. His work with MuseScore, with Audacity, his videos about them, and his takedowns of Sybellius etc. all opened my eyes to the world of designers who do things with hard-nosed analytical thinking, user studies, good principles, and make something useful. Even his little digressions about Paint3D and Ubuntu's Mobile OS are illustrative.
You are right but man the new Fig Newton packaging looks just like the store brand fruit cookies what were they thinking?
There is both ux and and graphic design and they both have their place. Saddly far too often one wins out over another instead of finding balance.
Most UX designers seem to come from a graphic design direction, and they generally do a better job than developers - but not as good as the old school people who did research and wrote detailed guides and such.
this is an understatement.
i remember the studies used to design windows 95
nothing modern ux amateurs do can compare to the oldschool HCI professionals
The research and guides went out of fashion because actually methodically studying users costs money. I worked at a place that allegedly prioritized design and was really trying to launch more redesigns but also somehow kept losing positions for designers.
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I was so frustrated 1995-2005 that the designers I worked with had a print mindset. Now I'm frustrated that designers are no good at all.
It's no help at all that people expect Apple to be fashionable, like if you read a review of an "operating system" in Arstechnica you'd think it's all about little details on the scrollbar, not about filesystems and microkernels and namespaces and stuff.
To that point:
Bad Dye Job:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191194