[HN Gopher] Software should convey a sense of calm
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Software should convey a sense of calm
Author : pajuc
Score : 193 points
Date : 2021-09-13 14:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (patrickjuchli.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (patrickjuchli.com)
| Stampo00 wrote:
| I find reading this in a web browser to be ironic. But then I
| immediately shared it with people via Slack, too, so...
| ruchin_k wrote:
| Absolutely agree. We probably spend more time looking at and
| interacting with software than the real world! Love apps like
| Superhuman which prioritize calmness and serenity in the user's
| experience
| rustybolt wrote:
| I don't know if I'm old and bitter, or that software becomes
| harder to use, but so many software seems to degrade in user
| experience.
|
| HTTP is a relatively easy thing, let's replace it by an
| overengineered clusterfuck called HTTPS. Good luck implementing
| THAT on your homebrew OS. (don't get me wrong, it's good thing
| that it exists, I just don't see why all the sites have to use
| it)
|
| Well, git+github seems to work nicely, lets disable logins using
| your password! Took me about an hour to take care of this (there
| is a nice guide for it, but that doesn't mention what your
| 'github email' is -- there is no such thing, and it doesn't
| mention that you have to change your remote to an ssh connection,
| and it also teaches you to copy-paste commands from the browser
| to your terminal).
| Tainnor wrote:
| > (don't get me wrong, it's good thing that it exists, I just
| don't see why all the sites have to use it)
|
| Because regular users don't know how to distinguish between the
| level of trust they need for visiting "Justin's travel blog"
| vs. their online banking website. If we don't display red error
| messages if a site they visit has an invalid certificate, they
| don't know how to tell it's not safe to enter their credentials
| there.
|
| The web was once mainly used by academics, programmers and
| other geeks, now it's used by marketers, scammers, hackers, and
| a bunch of other malicious actors. I wish we could go back but
| that ship has sailed.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| > I just don't see why all the sites have to use it
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140908/07191228453/comca...
| mdoms wrote:
| A lot of modern software makes me feel stressed, confused and
| aggravated. When I open Youtube Music I never know what I'm going
| to get - sometimes Your Favourites is at the top, sometimes Mixed
| for You, sometimes something else. When I open Netflix it's
| almost always the case that I want to continue watching
| something, but will I find that in row 1 or row 4? How long will
| I need to scroll to find it?
| thedogeye wrote:
| Even Headspace has gotten this 100% wrong. It's so sad.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| I'm not sure "software" is useful as a category in this context.
|
| If you're trying to make a useful tool these principles apply,
| but if you're trying to farm users for ad money they don't.
|
| People will say they want the former, but in practice they often
| choose the latter (and then grumble about it not being more like
| the former).
| gnramires wrote:
| I think it's less users choosing it, but market forces
| pressuring most tools to turn into ad-ridden nightmares.
|
| There are secondary effects like the ad-ridden product may have
| more money for development and deliver better features. But at
| this point we're all wondering if there isn't a better funding
| model that can deliver both good experience and sufficient
| development funds.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Calm Oriented Development, why not
|
| In festina lente
| discordance wrote:
| Going back a bit further, Mark Weiser came up some principals
| around 'calm computing' [0]. As we transitioned into the
| ubiquitous computing age, computers were supposed to disappear. I
| wish that were the case but we seemed to have designed them to
| need more attention than ever.
|
| 0:
| http://quicksilver.be.washington.edu/courses/arch498cre/2.Re...
| jd3 wrote:
| "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They
| weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they
| are indistinguishable from it."
|
| Calm Technology is "that which informs but doesn't demand our
| focus or attention."
|
| for those unfamiliar with Weiser/"Calm Technology":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20180604010109/http://www.ubiq.co...
|
| https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20141022035044/http://www.ubiq.c...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jwLWosmmjE
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080905233018/http://www-sul.st...
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=51
| amelius wrote:
| That's probably why we get a blue screen, as opposed to a red
| screen.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds like fairly bog-standard Usability. Folks like Jakob
| Nielsen have been calling this kind of thing out for decades.
| They have not always been popular.
|
| I think a lot of this depends on the target audience. If it is a
| wide-distribution consumer application, then I like the "swimming
| duck" analogy, where it looks smooth and calm, above water, but
| is paddling like hell, underneath. That's what I strive for,
| myself, in my standard consumer-level apps. Many of my apps look
| quite "boring," but actually have _a lot_ of moving parts,
| invisible to the user. Selecting a screen may result in multiple
| server transactions, and the user only sees a throbber for a half
| second. No progress report.
|
| The other side, is that, if you are marketing to engineers, or
| specific types of professionals (not all "pros," though. That's a
| wide net), you may want to present a very complex and "raw" UI. I
| have done this for admin dashboards.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I remember decades ago building a menu system for a homebrew
| media center to launch game emulators and so on. I wanted it to
| have a loud arcade style feel. All menu text was rendered in 3d
| and would bounce and vibrate. Lots of flashing lights, noise,
| music and high energy. Functionally, it was just a simplified
| file explorer. It was very fun to use.
|
| I agree with most of the opinions in this article, but I don't
| like the idea that all software should convey calm, or the
| conflation between a simplified intuitive interface and calm.
| Video games are a great example of simplified, intuitive
| interfaces which are often the polar opposite of calm.
|
| Elements like calm and intuitive are also extremely subjective. I
| find emacs calm, intuitive and extremely accessible. People with
| different context will have a comically different response.
| Humans need interfaces that cater to their different experiences.
| varikin wrote:
| > Video games are a great example of simplified, intuitive
| interfaces which are often the polar opposite of calm.
|
| Video games are interesting in terms of usability. I thought a
| lot about this the past couple years after a UX course. A lot
| of UX principles are about making things easier, like large
| clickable areas, not moving clickable areas, contrasting
| colors, proving plenty of time to react or undo, and making
| things obvious and as easy as possible. But in a game, many of
| those principles are flipped. In a shooter, the enemies are
| smaller and move. They may be difficult to see. Solutions are
| not always obvious, especially if they are extras or hidden
| power ups.
|
| But at the same time, a lot of the UX principles are very
| important. An enemy about to attack should telegraph that
| attack so you have time to react. Menus should be very clear
| and obvious. Inventory management should not be a chore, the
| map and HUD should be easy to use.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Video games are interesting in terms of usability. I
| thought a lot about this the past couple years after a UX
| course. A lot of UX principles are about making things
| easier, like large clickable areas, not moving clickable
| areas, contrasting colors, proving plenty of time to react or
| undo, and making things obvious and as easy as possible. But
| in a game, many of those principles are flipped. In a
| shooter, the enemies are smaller and move. They may be
| difficult to see. Solutions are not always obvious,
| especially if they are extras or hidden power ups.
|
| The goal of usability is to be able to accomplish your goal.
| In a lot of games, the feeling of getting better or
| overcoming an obstacle is part of the goal. So the UX is not
| surprising, it's following the goal of the product.
| handrous wrote:
| Valve (in particular) even pioneered UX in level design--if
| it doesn't improve gameplay, why let the player wander around
| trying to find the way they're supposed to go (a situation
| common even in relatively on-rails shooters of the past)? And
| just putting in HUD arrows sucks, and those can be
| misleading. Instead, they use lighting, color choices, and
| level layout to direct the player's attention and direction
| of movement, while maintaining the illusion that the levels
| are part of a larger space.
| varikin wrote:
| I've heard that Ghost of Tsushima does this well with the
| direction of the wind. But I don't have a PS4/5 to play.
|
| I've also heard about of platformers giving a couple pixels
| after walking off a platform to jump, like Celeste. It is
| very small thing to give better feel to the controls and
| make up lack of precise timing.
| handrous wrote:
| There's also the idea of the tutorial level masquerading
| as a regular level, so it doesn't feel like a tutorial.
| Earliest example I know of is Super Mario Brothers 1:1,
| but it may not be the first. It's distinct from simply
| ramping up difficulty, because it involves things like
| deliberately presenting challenges & opportunities in a
| certain order, and, at first, in isolation.
|
| [EDIT] incidentally, here (many) games have an advantage
| over other software, because they play linearly rather
| than presenting a large space of possible actions all at
| once. Games that are more similar to productivity
| software (city builders, say, or grand strategy games)
| have trouble doing this without it being obvious that
| you're in a tutorial.
| dTal wrote:
| Portal was designed so that nearly the entire game was
| "the tutorial level". The gradual introduction of novel
| elements such as beams, turrets, and more advanced
| movement challenges kept up the interest, but it also had
| the hidden agenda of preparing the user for the climactic
| finale which brought all of those elements together.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I think "calm" might refer to the user in that context, as the
| opposite of "frustrated to the brink of violence".
|
| A game UI might be wacky and as twitchy as a rodent dosed with
| recreational stimulants, but the user feels calm, capable of
| navigating through it and never doubting they can accomplish
| what they set out to do.
| BobBagwill wrote:
| Ideally, software should help you to enter and maintain an
| activity _flow state_.
| [deleted]
| bgibson wrote:
| He's basically writing about discoverability in UI/UX.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=UI%2FUX+discoverability
|
| There's also the Calmtech movement, somewhat related to the post:
| https://calmtech.com/
| dgb23 wrote:
| Related:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology
|
| - https://calmtech.com/book.html
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Does the "calm tech" movement have much to say? I feel like a
| theory of learning for software is more important. Of course it
| should be done in a pleasant way but I wasn't able to get much
| actionable insight out of calm tech writings.
| dgb23 wrote:
| First, there are parallels to some Software Design
| heuristics. The focus on simplicity, complexity hiding,
| graceful error handling, generalizing and reducing the
| surface of interfaces etc. come to mind.
|
| So the way you structure and write your code has very much to
| do with wanting to reduce the mental taxation of the reader
| (you included).
|
| In the UI, UX and HCI world the concept has obviously a lot
| to say as well.
| Wistar wrote:
| I'd prefer a sense of trustworthiness.
| [deleted]
| question002 wrote:
| Who is seriously clicking on this headline? Really? Come on ,
| it's bots.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > I want to find the same things in the same places
|
| How else will designers justify their jobs?
|
| I wonder if designer should be reworked to be a seasonal or
| consultancy job only, to only hire them when you're making a new
| product/big feature or there's a drastic need to change things
| but never otherwise. Having them as permanent staff leads to our
| present usability and accessability nightmare of everything
| constantly being redesigned and completely changed around for no
| good reason other than padding designers' resumes.
| patternMachine wrote:
| Pointlessly reworking software is the hallmark of a poor (or
| green) contributor. Designers can redesign features that work
| fine, engineers can refactor code that doesn't need
| optimization, PMs can come up with features that nobody needs.
| Designers might do this more often since there is a somewhat
| lower barrier to entry than the other two disciplines, but that
| doesn't mean the whole profession should be ditched. A good
| designer knows when to pull out the big design guns and when to
| leave em holstered.
| sizzle wrote:
| Visual UI "graphic" design, full of fleeting design trends and
| dark patterns, sure I agree, bundle them up and send them to
| the moon. UX =/ UI
|
| Human-centered design professionals who went to school
| for/taught themselves from the field of Human Computer
| Interaction, which involves a multitude of qualitative and
| quantitative research methodologies for assessing usability and
| bringing the voice of the user early into the development
| lifecycle on the otherhand... now that is sorely lacking and is
| historically underinvested in. Their job makes your job as a
| developer easier, not having to redo work and waste time if
| they are plugged into your dev team and focusing on your users.
|
| Ask yourself, as a developer, do you feel you have the
| specialist skillset and expertise to truly validate designs
| with real people (users)? Is this something you would want to
| do, if only those pesky UX "design" professionals didn't take
| them over to justify their jobs?
|
| Let's put you in front of 10 different users of your product
| for an hour each, give you a facilitator guide, and have you
| guide them through a task-based usability review of your
| product. Make sure you aren't asking leading questions or
| biasing their responses, then synthesize the essence of all the
| interviews into insights to improve the product design. Finally
| create a read out report that you have to present to senior
| leadership for another hour on what you learned and how to
| improve the product design. Oh yeah, you now have 0 hours to
| code in your fulltime 9-5 job. Good luck!
|
| Note: I acknowledge a UX researcher is a full-time specialist
| role, however any UX designer worth a damn should be T-shaped
| and able to use qualitative research methods to interview users
| and evaluate their designs.. otherwise they are a UI designer
| and guessing at best.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > from the field of Human Computer Interaction
|
| This is how you get death by a thousand A/B tests a la
| Google, Facebook, and other ultimately user-hostile
| interfaces that optimize for ad engagement.
|
| Give me a compassionate, thoughtful, designer who isn't an
| ass hole any day of the week.
| ElFitz wrote:
| Is this issue here how they optimise their interfaces or
| what they optimise them for?
| 3np wrote:
| Obviously the latter is a major issue but additionally I
| think great detriments are coming from an obsession to
| quantify and reduce everything into arbitrary models.
| sizzle is talking more about qualitative than
| quantitative studies, though.
| sizzle wrote:
| A/B tests are more of a thing in the ecommerce and ad-tech
| space and only a small aspect of the UX research
| methodology landscape, see:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/
|
| The field of HCI (and Human Factors before it) pioneered
| the application of qualitative research methods from
| adjacent fields e.g. anthropology, cognitive/social
| sciences, etc. towards computers and information
| technology. Optimizing for 'ad engagement' seems to be a
| recent phenomenon in the timeline of HCI and arguably is
| being written by the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon,
| etc. and the people on their payroll who sold their soul to
| make this their life's work.
| nbzso wrote:
| You are essentially right. That's why I switched my focus from
| UX only to UI and front-end implementation.
|
| Fighting for 20 years to educate programmers and investors on
| the importance of Human Centered Design and Function over Form
| approach, is hard. And I and everybody in the Design Industry
| have failed miserably.
|
| Now when every startup has a boilerplate, templates and
| libraries in hand and "that's enough".
|
| Designers (or I may say - Decorators) are "thousands a dime",
| they are racing themselves to the bottom of the pit. But I am
| cool with it. After all SaaS design software is here to collect
| and label enough data for big Neural Model to emerge and remove
| design from the picture. So your dream will come true, and you
| will be next in line of removal from production pipeline.
|
| Having programmers as permanent staff when you need the same
| CRUD paradigm is unnecessary, and you can hire as a consultants
| when you're making a new product/feature but never otherwise.
| scollet wrote:
| Designers often have a much more intimate view of the
| application as an abstraction.
|
| I don't think you want to be benching that knowledge very
| often.
|
| Having extended research phases or personal development would
| be great to cycle in between major releases.
|
| In the interim they might develop better tooling or A/B a
| subset of features, or strategize with the analytics dept.
|
| We really all should have a designer mindset, but truly
| professional designers are product gurus.
| ysavir wrote:
| Assuming for the sake of argument that this is at all true, is
| the problem that designers are out to justify their jobs, and
| making changes as a consequence, or that designers are being
| put in a position where they have to justify their jobs, and
| are making changes to satisfy their managers?
|
| If anything, the problem in this scenario is that culturally we
| need everyone to be contributing all of the time, even for
| positions that may experience occasional downtime. Let's not
| assign blame to a particular group when they're simply
| responding to the pressures put on them.
| jrm4 wrote:
| If this is the _best_ argument one can come up with for not
| being critical here, for me it absolutely proves we need to
| be more critical here. Of course, I don 't wish to see anyone
| suffer, but I'm seeing something like:
|
| "Hey, we're paying a guy to dig holes and fill them back up
| with no value whatsoever, why are we doing that?"
|
| "Hey, man, stop attacking hole-diggers, they're just trying
| to make a living."
| ysavir wrote:
| Can you go into more detail of why you think we need to be
| critical of designers? The GP makes no effort to justify
| their criticism of designers, perhaps you can provide some
| reasons for it, and thereby allow people to respond to
| actual arguments.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Not necessarily of "designers," but perhaps of "design."
|
| In my opinion, "design" does two things at the same time
| that are presently fundamentally incompatible without
| being honest about it -- namely "usability" and
| "fashion."
|
| It's absolutely possible to do both, but you can't
| pretend you're doing one when you're doing the other.
| Architecture comes to mind. They do this right, most
| often by putting usability "first." You can make your
| design as pretty as you want, but if the damn wheelchair
| ramp doesn't work as intended, the whole design is
| _broken_ and if that means your pretty thing must die
| because of it, then kill it and start over.
| Zababa wrote:
| A good example that was discussed recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28504573
|
| The justification isn't "It helps users" or anything like
| that. It's "This is not a new idea either -- pretty much
| everyone else is doing it, e.g. macOS, Windows, iOS,
| Android, elementary OS, KDE.". Reducing usability and
| breaking habits to follow trends is a bad thing.
| anchpop wrote:
| This is a purely aesthetic change, it doesn't break any
| habits. In this case, it probably also improves
| usability, because there's less visual noise connected to
| those buttons, which lets you draw attention to buttons
| the user might not already know about using the same
| technique while staying within a certain 'visual noise
| budget'. Users expect that icons on the header bar are
| buttons (what else would they be?), so there's no need to
| call attention to that fact with an extra visual
| indicator.
|
| "Following trends" is a good thing because users
| appreciate when a piece of software looks like software
| they're already familiar with. It is maybe slightly
| annoying to people who already are used to the software,
| but every new user benefits from it.
| Zababa wrote:
| > In this case, it probably also improves usability,
| because there's less visual noise connected to those
| buttons
|
| Yes, because there are no buttons anymore, just icons.
| Icons are not button. Icons are icons, buttons are
| buttons
|
| > which lets you draw attention to buttons the user might
| not already know about using the same technique while
| staying within a certain 'visual noise budget'.
|
| That "visual noice" is the zone where you can click on a
| button. I also don't believe that "visual noise budget"
| thing at all. Maybe it helps a bit first time users, but
| most software shouldn't optimize for first time users.
| I'll add that not everyone has a perfect eyesight or
| perfect mouse control. That new style is bound to be
| frustrating for a few people.
|
| > Users expect that icons on the header bar are buttons
| (what else would they be?), so there's no need to call
| attention to that fact with an extra visual indicator.
|
| Actually, having fallbacks and multiple ways to signal
| something is a great thing. For example, if you only use
| color to indicate something, colorblind users may have a
| hard time using it. Icons and tooltips when you hover
| over it is also a good way to achieve that.
|
| > "Following trends" is a good thing because users
| appreciate when a piece of software looks like software
| they're already familiar with. It is maybe slightly
| annoying to people who already are used to the software,
| but every new user benefits from it.
|
| So they're focusing on new users instead of people that
| actually use their software. I don't see how that is a
| good thing. If this was just one change, I may agree with
| you, but this is a sign of a larger trend of constantly
| changing interfaces for absolutely no benefit to the
| user.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I think, then, that software devs need to be more critical
| of themselves, too. I see people in the comments often
| bemoan that we are too reluctant to call projects "feature
| complete" when adding new features stops adding value.
| Instead, we get new versions and features for no reason
| other than to justify the continued existence of a full-
| time development team.
| pc86 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that designers keep getting paid for work
| they've already done?
| ysavir wrote:
| I'm suggesting that if a company has designers that know
| their product, branding, team members, philosophies,
| values, and that have proven quality of work and ability to
| get along with the team, that they not eliminate their
| position because there isn't any design work needed _right
| now_. When you do need design work, you don't want to have
| to go through the trouble of hiring, on boarding, etc.
|
| The same applies for software engineering.
| pc86 wrote:
| Software requires maintenance and can benefit from
| refactoring. What's the equivalent for design?
| tnzm wrote:
| Royalties, man, yeah.
| pc86 wrote:
| Royalties don't really apply when you're being paid a
| wage for the work in the first place. The cognitive
| dissonance in both railing _against spec work_ then
| demanding a piece of profit in perpetuity is, well...
| impressive.
| magicink81 wrote:
| Design is misunderstood, often by designers, and it seems like
| you also may have some misunderstandings based on your
| assessments of what _should_ designers do (vs what they do).
| Based on your comment it sounds like the designers you work
| with have an over-emphasis on visual UI design. I don 't think
| you are to blame though - I have observed a consistent dumbing
| down of design discourse and practices among people that don't
| take the time to learn the depth of what is available. This
| includes most practicing designers. I have observed that
| designers are less interested in educating the world about
| their practices than perhaps they need to be in order to change
| this situation. Design in most cases is essentially a set of
| knowledge work processes, the best of which is built on solid
| research practices informed by psychology and cognitive
| science.
|
| For anyone interested in up-leveling their own understanding of
| design I recommend the articles, videos, courses and other
| materials available from the Nielsen Norman Group
| https://www.nngroup.com/
| milkytron wrote:
| This is such a great comment that adheres to exactly what my
| SO experiences. She is a UX designer, and she was the first
| one hired at her company. They had no idea what UX design is
| and all the processes, research, etc that takes place.
|
| > I have observed that designers are less interested in
| educating the world about their practices than perhaps they
| need to be in order to change this situation.
|
| She has found her job has become mostly informing and
| teaching others how to go about these practices, and if she
| has spare time does the work herself. But it was such an
| ordeal when they hired her because they didn't even know what
| she was supposed to do. She has acted very much like a
| consultant in this regard, but also does the work involved.
| dtjb wrote:
| I'm sure there are designers making parallel arguments about
| developers :)
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Yeah, there is certainly a parallel argument to be made about
| constantly introducing new tech even if the currently used
| tech is GoodEnough.
| bitwize wrote:
| Indeed, this is how game developers work: hired in legion
| strength to push a game to release, then laid off once it's
| released.
| Transfinity wrote:
| I've heard that DLC has made this less of a problem in
| recent years. Since there's a stable, predictable revenue
| stream and delivery channel for new content, iit's much
| easier to justify keeping devs, designers and artists on
| full time. Presumably this varies by studio / publisher /
| genre, but my impression is it's much better than it was.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I actually think the mid 1990's Mac and Windows GUI programs were
| much better at fulfilling this ideal. We have regressed from
| there.
|
| I am most familiar with Windows, so I will speak from that
| perspective.
|
| Because software was an application, and the path of least
| resistance was to use the OS provided controls and menus, there
| was a sense of uniformity in how you accessed features. Keyboard
| shortcuts just worked and were pretty much the save (Ctrl-S,
| saved the document, etc).
|
| OLE provided a uniform way to embed documents into other
| applications. Cut and paste worked consistently.
|
| There were also a limited amount of frameworks (bare Win32, MFC,
| OWL, Visual Basic, and Delphi probably covered 95%+ of apps).
|
| It seemed that most user interfaces at the time were actually
| made by programmers and not graphic designers. In addition, for
| the most part there was a lot of continuity from version to
| version in how a program looked.
|
| Now it seems that every web app wants to look different for the
| sake of looking different. People want to change how an app looks
| on a regular basis, often for no other reason than that it needs
| to look "fresh.". There are a myriad of every changing front-end
| JS frameworks.
|
| It seems that UI is driven by graphic designers looking to make
| something unique and standout and not programmers that just want
| to make a standard, low friction way the user can access the
| functionality and be done with it.
|
| Also, all you data is siloed a lot more because it is stored in
| the "cloud". Whereas before you could easily have access to the
| raw output from all your programs (and if they supported OLE
| embed documents from one program in a completely different one),
| now it is somewhat of a pain if you want to get raw access to
| your data.
|
| Web based apps do have a lot of advantages, but I feel we have
| given up a lot when we went from native desktops apps to web
| based.
| quelltext wrote:
| A lot of the user interfaces we use today are "better" than
| what we had in the old days. The old generic windows and
| buttons and whatnot don't work on a finger touch input.
| Switching apps via gestures, visual cues by animation, use of
| space, effects to bring things in and out of focus, a lot of
| things have been refined and evolved over the years.
|
| Yes, things are not perfect but claiming that designers are
| making everything difficult while programmers would have just
| made everything better albeit not as pretty looking is really
| not a fair assessment. I mean, preference and general
| nostalgia, I get it, but it's a bit much.
|
| Getting raw access to your data also wasn't a breeze in the
| past with program often having their own binary formats and not
| exposing any programmatic interface at all to get data in or
| out. Not sure how this relates to the cloud.
| cbanek wrote:
| This just reminds me of the composer Soyo Oka, who did the music
| for some great games, like SimCity (SNES), SimCity (NES,
| unreleased), Super Mario Kart (SNES), Pilotwings (SNES), etc. She
| said that in making the SimCity music she wanted it to feel comfy
| while building the city, not hectic or frustrating. And god, what
| a masterpiece of a game and music. I still play it 30 years
| later.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| I'd be glad to check out any examples of software that come close
| to this ideal.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Windows 2000 user interface. Uniform look and behavior,
| very discoverable, clearly identifyable controls, "boring"
| gray.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Maybe Tempo comes to mind? a Minimal and calm email app for Mac
| OS https://www.yourtempo.co/
| phailhaus wrote:
| > Words like simple or intuitive are misleading here. They can be
| attributed to a solution in retrospect, but they don't form a
| principle from which clear recommendations for action can be
| derived.
|
| Fantastic nugget of wisdom here. Saying that you want a product
| to be "intuitive" or "simple" is as useful as saying that you
| want it to be "good, not bad."
| quelltext wrote:
| I disagree. A product might be visually appealing, serve
| hundreds of functions, be inexpensive, be sturdy, etc.
|
| These are all things that affect whether a product could be
| perceived as good vs. bad.
|
| Importantly, intuitiveness is not relevant for some products,
| or not what makes it good or bad. The tradeoffs between other
| aspects of your product could be such that trying to achieve
| intuitiveness would actively reduce value.
|
| Identifying intuitiveness as something you can optimize for or
| not is not pointless. I'd also argue that intuitiveness can be
| measured and strategies for more intuitive designs/patterns can
| be formed.
| brundolf wrote:
| I agree with the goal, I have mixed feelings about the listed
| solutions
|
| I'd like to add one: using consistent metaphors. A user of
| software is constantly trying to form a mental model of how this
| ethereal, formless thing behaves. A state machine. What can and
| cannot happen, what will and will not happen after a given
| action, what can and cannot happen once we're in a different
| state. The shakier and less scrutable and/or reliable this mental
| model, the more anxiety is felt.
|
| As programmers we're partly insulated from this effect. We may
| not know the exact inner-workings of a piece of software we
| didn't write, but we know some general things about software and
| the way it does and doesn't behave that soften the huge void of
| scary unknowns. This helps us form our mental model.
|
| Physical metaphors of objects, continuity, permanence, locality,
| persistence, independence, are often used in GUIs for this
| reason. If I click a tab and then click back to the previous one,
| I expect to return to the same state I was in. If I change the
| text in one field, I expect that unrelated fields won't be
| impacted by that. Etc. This is a good starting point. Desktop
| platforms and then mobile platforms have built additional semi-
| consistent UX expectations on top of those largely physical
| intuitions. This helps too. But your application needs to go
| beyond that: it needs to present a simplified model of its
| internal state-machine to the user, and then it needs to _hold to
| that_. That mental model, once formed by the user, needs to have
| predictive power about the way the system behaves under different
| circumstances.
| qmmmur wrote:
| Well written and a nice way to conceptualise the problem and
| zoom out a bit.
| quadcore wrote:
| I absolutely believe the importance of this specifically because
| the desktop is failing at that in todays standard. In other
| words, maybe there is an apple or microsoft to be created around
| turning android or ios devices into work stations. I think that
| would require a new vm, i dont think you can code html 5 app on
| such a device for example.
| zubspace wrote:
| The thing is, most software starts simple and easy to use. It's
| the introduction of new features and edge cases which slowly
| kills usability over time.
|
| And this applies to desktop, web, mobile and commandline
| applications as well.
|
| A tool needs a strong focus of it's maintainers and the courage
| to say 'No!' to things which are out of scope or not user
| friendly. This seems to be quite rare.
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