[HN Gopher] Why Do We Interface? (2020)
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Why Do We Interface? (2020)
Author : Destiner
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-09-03 08:53 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (whydoweinterface.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (whydoweinterface.com)
| akira2501 wrote:
| Interface design is, to me, purely an exercise of human
| compromise. I'm always a little bit amazed and baffled by the
| people who see it as a fundamental operation that can be
| understood in it's own terms.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Confusing book, that ironically has the subject on interfaces -
| something that almost by definition should convey information as
| clearly as possible.
|
| Confusion as the title of the book, why do we interface? evolves
| to a perhaps more interesting: why do we design? but it then
| leaves that question unanswered. Then is goes on to explain the
| alphabet and I bounced.
| cobertos wrote:
| Nitpick, "The core purpose of graphics in a GUI is not to be
| pretty" - Maybe for programs where it is for user reading and
| modifying data. But I'd argue that is only a fraction of
| interfaces. Small business websites are very much made to look a
| certain way, to make you feel the business is competent and
| trustworthy. You only really need the data that is their phone
| number or contact details or inventory specifics.
|
| But yes, data-based UI is just assembling data in the shape that
| a human brain can download faster, which can be more efficient if
| tailored to be brain-specific (e.g. a notes app is laid out by
| the user who will consume the data).
| toinewx wrote:
| The reading experience is mediocre. It looks like he went a bit
| overboard with the site. As for the ideas mentioned, it's more
| fluff and designer hype/dogma than anything solid.
| cobertos wrote:
| There are some interesting gifs of interesting interfaces, a
| couple of it's core ideas were solid, but the examples werent
| short or concrere enough.
|
| The supporting links also made it hard to get _why_ they were
| linked without reading the whole article.
|
| Felt more like a blog post.
| nottheengineer wrote:
| Good read, but it focuses a lot on conveying information to the
| user. The issue nowadays is often the other direction:
| Interacting with GUIs often feels clunky because there are
| unnecessary steps, moving buttons on websites or weird mouse
| rituals that require dragging something a very certain way.
|
| Improving on that should be more of a focus imo.
| BlackFly wrote:
| I share your feeling. It feels like design almost became a goal
| in and of itself due to the fact that--for some users--a good
| design will be a decisive factor in making a purchase. This is
| much more measurable than user satisfaction and efficiency
| since the influence happens at the purchase point which is
| observable to the business. Good designers know this, hence the
| related mantra of, "The customer is not the user," but when you
| have gotten that far, McNamara fallacy often is your default:
| you know all the metrics are biased, so you use the only thing
| available.
|
| Touch pads in automobiles feels like the prototypical example
| of this. Terrible for functionality, shipped due to... it being
| fancy? People purchasing it because there was no alternative or
| it took actually using it for quite some time for the defects
| to be apparent.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, companies adopt design fads for rational reasons.
|
| Yes, we have "Fisher Price" UIs because people buy (or at
| least brought) them. We have touch screens everywhere because
| that's what was on scify and makes people think it's advanced
| technology.
|
| But the same way that fads come, they also go. Currently it's
| chic to have physical buttons, and a lot of people already
| pick the "VB6 looking" software instead of the "Fisher Price"
| one. Large companies are always late to fads, so expect them
| to only move after those decisions are universal. Those also
| almost universally lack good taste, so expect them to push
| those new trends way beyond any reasonable amount.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I think the article has some valid (but not new) points, like
| "design is communication", but is otherwise handwavy and full of
| water. I couldn't bring myself to wade through
| trite/imprecise/self-contradictory passages ("interfaces are for
| information", "we interface because we are human", then "the
| purpose of information interfaces has always been to communicate
| more quickly, more deeply, to foster relationships, to explore,
| to measure, to learn, to build knowledge, to entertain, and to
| create"--so turns out not all interfaces are for information and
| instead the purpose of interfaces is communication? idk). The
| timeline of "information mechanisms" serves, like most of the
| text, unclear purpose and seems to be a hodgepodge of vaguely
| related concepts ("music", "Walkman", "Snapchat", "Small
| Speakers"). IMO the author can do better, this did not deserve
| unearthing from 2020 and I'd rather read Medium is the Message
| for example.
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