[HN Gopher] 41 Years in UX: A Career Retrospective
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41 Years in UX: A Career Retrospective
Author : ravirajx7
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-01-29 06:55 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uxtigers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uxtigers.com)
| amykhar wrote:
| His book made a big impression on me back in the day. And, to be
| honest, I still prefer the minimal and predictible style of web
| site that he recommended.
| christophilus wrote:
| Which book? There seem to be quite a few, and I wouldn't mind
| picking one up, if you have one to recommend.
| kleiba wrote:
| The one he mentions in the article: "Designing Web
| Usability".
| dcminter wrote:
| Amusingly that book had very poor usability. I forget
| exactly what it was about it; possibly printing the text
| too close to the binding?
|
| In practice I recall it being mostly a digest of his free
| content on useit.com
| micheljansen wrote:
| Nielsen's usability heuristics, arguably his most impactful work,
| still hold up surprisingly well after more than 30 years. It's
| hard to understate the impact he has had on my own career, as
| well as the UX field as a whole (together with Don Norman, of
| course).
|
| Also sobering to read how much of his career seems obvious in
| hindsight, but also was shaped so much by randomness and chance
| (such as taking not taking the job at Apple).
| lakpan wrote:
| Nitpick: interesting how a UX website doesn't let me resize it
| since the font is likely set via viewport units.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Looks like px if my inspector isn't lying to me. Ctrl-+ and
| Ctrl-- work fine for me on desktop/chrome.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Firefox has always been even better because you can easily
| scale only the fonts.
| amatecha wrote:
| Huh, which browser? Scales flawlessly for me in Firefox.
| Actually one of the smoothest-scaling websites I've encountered
| in ages, wow. Nice!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> The opportunity cost of going without industry experience for
| multiple years will hinder your advancement for decades._
|
| I suspect that goes for most creative/engineering vocations.
|
| However, one aspect of formal education, that is often missed, in
| OJT, is a very broad base, and an early understanding of "the
| basics."
|
| Also, people with formal education, are often able to work in a
| very formal, structured manner, early in their career. This
| (IMO), is pretty important, in engineering and research.
|
| That said, I'm a high school dropout, with a GED. I ended up
| doing OK, but YMMV.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| 20 ish years ago I ended up with a UX gig.
|
| Best experience of my work history. Detouring into site
| structure, information design, and doing actual USABILITY (behind
| a 2 way mirror watching real people use your app) was amazing.
|
| Jacob Nielson was blowhard even then. His "all links must be blue
| and underlined" mantra was tired even then. It takes a lot for me
| to say this, but his pedantry at the time puts peak Richard
| Stallman to shame!
|
| They are apparently still dancing around the edges of this topic:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/clickable-elements/
|
| Now older and wiser, candidly a lot of folks would be well served
| by default blue links, og html submit buttons and tables for
| layouts. A fair bit of modern UI is complete trash: it's the
| product of a designer and a product person putting the next
| bullet point on their resume.
| wharvle wrote:
| > Now older and wiser, candidly a lot of folks would be well
| served by default blue links, og html submit buttons and tables
| for layouts. A fair bit of modern UI is complete trash: it's
| the product of a designer and a product person putting the next
| bullet point on their resume.
|
| If I were emperor of the world I'd make every consumer program
| pass a battery of tests that included demonstrating sufficient
| usability for a panel of users from a nursing home, a panel of
| users with sub-90 IQ who were in a stressful environment and
| trying to complete other tasks at the same time, blind users,
| deaf users, et c.
|
| I expect the outcome would be a hell of a lot less twee "on
| brand" UI elements and a lot more leaning on proven design
| systems and frameworks, including _fucking crucially_ for
| appearance. And also a lot less popping shit up on the screen
| without user interaction (omg those damn "look what's new!"
| sorts of pop ups or focused tabs--congrats, some of your users
| are now totally lost)
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >>> users from a nursing home, a panel of users with sub-90
| IQ who were in a stressful environment and trying to complete
| other tasks at the same time, blind users, deaf users, et c.
|
| Or we could just give the Product manager, designer, and JS
| engineer a 5 year old laptop with 8 gigs of ram at least 10
| browser plug ins and every corporate security package...
|
| We have gone from "go fast, break things" to moving at the
| speed of stupid. Slowing these three groups down might help.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Funny that you think that 8 gigs of RAM would be low end 5
| years ago...
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Make it 4 and have a 1st gen i3 and we got a plan. Most of
| my family has old Toshiba Satellite laptops from the early
| 2010s that they don't throw away because they cost a grand
| when they bought it.
| tbitrust wrote:
| > a panel of users with sub-90 IQ who were in a stressful
| environment and trying to complete other tasks at the same
| time, blind users, deaf users, et c.
|
| For me, the first task would be to make absolutely sure that
| I block any apps designed by you. Such lack of empathy in
| your wording proves that you cannot possibly be a decent,
| half-decent, or even mediocre UI designer.
| wharvle wrote:
| ... lack of empathy? Where?
| zer00eyz wrote:
| "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize
| half of them are stupider than that."
|
| -- George Carlin
|
| You get that when I was on the other side of that 2 way
| mirror one of the qualifications to be a user was "can you
| use a mouse". As late as 2005 people being able to navigate
| a basic web form was quite the challenge.
|
| Find someone far removed from tech and ask them if they
| have used ChatGPT.
|
| That IQ 90 user stressed out of their mind isnt that far
| from reality. Go look at the "bad/poor/low quality" content
| on Facebook, or YouTube or if your brave tick tock. That is
| the person you're writing an app for.
| tbitrust wrote:
| I don't think that people "far removed from tech" are
| "sub-90 IQ" (a "delicate" euphemism for "stupid").
|
| And I don't think that people on facebook, youtube or
| tick tock are "sub-90 IQ".
|
| Thanks for making clear that it's what was implied by the
| original commenter.
|
| That's lack of empathy coupled with sheer, crass
| ignorance.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| I know people with PHD's who can run rings around you on
| "their topic" and can't cross the street without support.
|
| I know teachers who are smart, and phenomenal at their
| job who I had to arm twist to go play with chat GPT cause
| it's not in their wheelhouse/on their radar.
|
| The not so bright person, who is stressed out is likely a
| user of your app. The same as the absent minded PHD or
| the teacher who is too over worked to care about your new
| tech widget.
|
| These are real people. And there are a LOT OF THEM (for
| there to be an average 100 intelligence there are a fair
| number of people UNDER IT). You can go look on
| FB/YouTube/Ticktok and find them. "Stupid" people exist,
| there are a lot of them. Making sure your app works for
| them is good for them, for your company, for your
| customer support costs... The whole point of usability is
| to get average, less technical people in and get them
| testing your app.
|
| To put a fine and final point on it, after 90 IQ, the
| author went on to talk about blind people. Candidly your
| app working for everyone with a disadvantage is just good
| business and shows a LOT Of empathy. A point you seem to
| have missed in your indignation.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I'm with you on all these examples but why is it wrong if
| someone is not interested in chatGPT?
| karaterobot wrote:
| If you aren't making a consumer product for nursing home
| patients with sub-90 IQs, then you'd be wasting your time,
| and the feedback you got from the exercise wouldn't be
| useful. In fact, any decisions you made based on it could be
| wrong. The point isn't to design for the lowest common
| denominator, but for the users you will actually have, and
| usability test participants should be recruited with that in
| mind.
|
| There is some merit to what I assume is your underlying
| argument, but the way you phrase it isn't helpful.
| wharvle wrote:
| A whole lot of us will be mentally impaired sooner or
| later.
|
| Our experience with software when that happens is sad for
| everyone but bad UI designers. For them, it's justice.
| brailsafe wrote:
| A UI designer does a good job if the person who's paying
| them thinks they did a good job, not whether or not they
| actually followed best practices, unless that's how the
| work gets approved. A frontend developer does a good job
| if their tickets are done and their boss likes them,
| which may or may not include actual quality work that's
| accessible or usable. That's the secret I wish I'd known
| when I started working, could have avoided the extra
| personal cost of trying produce quality results despite
| there being no incentive structure for it.
| esafak wrote:
| So what if we will? That does not mean we will be users
| of the products we are designing the UI for at that
| point. Design for actual disabilities that you can
| reasonably expect your users to have, such as color
| blindness, not the full spectrum of the human condition.
|
| That said, I do think products should be as simple and
| clear as possible for a given level of essential
| complexity.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >The point isn't to design for the lowest common
| denominator, but for the users you will actually have
|
| Keyword: situational disability
|
| Even a perfectly fit and educated target audience sometimes
| suffers from certain conditions or in an environment that
| significantly reduces their mental or physical capacity.
| Stress, injury, pregnancy, too many beers, very long nails,
| terrible weather, a toddler trying to grab your phone, non-
| native speaker etc etc. You may know the user even
| personally, but you never know what's going on in their
| lives when they use your app. So general advice: ALWAYS
| follow accessibility guidelines. Even bad copy may drop
| your usage by a significant percentage, because there are
| plenty of people with dyslexia.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| Too strict. I implore you to reconsider.
| zubairq wrote:
| I kind of like this idea of making sure that any UI passes
| some sanity checks before it is released
| aorloff wrote:
| So many critical websites are horribly broken, especially if
| you have an older computer
| hdaz0017 wrote:
| Congratulations Jakob on your Liberation Day :)
|
| Are you saying the UI is your fault ;-)
|
| Serious question though: how come over the last 15 to 20 years
| UI's have got considerably worse?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| IMHO a lot of this comes from :
|
| 1.) The move to the Web, where the browser's interface gets in
| the way once you start doing something more fancy than just
| viewing basic HTML documents.
|
| 2.) Trying to make a program work well both on a small
| touchscreen and on a large screen + mouse + keyboard : this is
| literally impossible without the result being a worse
| experience for both.
| m_2000 wrote:
| Regarding 1: I remember the internet of the 90s and find our
| current internet comparatively boring in terms of UX. Back
| then, websites were created manually, without using
| "abstractions" like wordpress or wix. This forced us to think
| freely about UX and to hack HTML+CSS as much as possible. The
| browser's interface you mentioned is quite powerful. And with
| HTML6 on the way it becomes even more powerful.
|
| Regarding 2: A paramount program utilizing responsiveness at
| it's finest won't take compromises for different screen
| sizes, but it takes longer to develop. Compromises like these
| usually emerge through the economic circumstances of software
| development.
| karaterobot wrote:
| They haven't, the median application or website is
| significantly better today than it was 20 years ago. Without
| any additional information, my guess is that you're thinking of
| some specific examples of good apps from 20 years ago, and bad
| apps from today, and incorrectly generalizing from a selection
| bias.
| quantum_state wrote:
| Nice! Thanks for sharing your wonderful journey in UX.
| Findecanor wrote:
| 41 years ago, "UX" did not mean what it means today:
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BdtGjoIN4E&t=9s>
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >The background is that Terry Winograd, a professor of Human-
| Computer Interaction at Stanford University in Silicon Valley,
| had invited me to lecture on some of my work in 1998. After my
| talk, Terry invited me to tour his lab and meet some of his
| graduate students. One of the Ph.D. students was a bright young
| fellow named Larry Page, who showed me his project to enhance the
| relevance of web search results.
|
| Many of those lectures are online. I was not able to find the
| 1998 one he mentioned, but here is one that Jakob Neilsen gave on
| May 20, 1994 called "Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces,
| Jakob Nielsen, Sunsoft".
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/vj346zm2128
|
| He gave another one on October 4 1996 entitled "Ensuring the
| Usability of the Next Computing Paradigm", but I can't find it in
| the online collection, although it exists in the inventory of
| video recordings, however I can't find any 1998 talks by Jakob
| Nielsen in this list:
|
| https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82b926h/entire_tex...
|
| Here is the entire online collection (it's kind of hard to search
| the 25 pages of the extensive collection, thanks to bad web site
| design!):
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5...
|
| The oldest (most interesting to me) ones are at the end (page
| 25):
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=a1...
|
| Here are some of the older ones that I think are historically
| important and especially interesting (but there are so many I
| haven't watched them all, so there are certainly more that are
| worth watching):
|
| R. Carr, GO, "Mobile Pen-based Computing", October 21, 1992:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/jm095fy2355
|
| Cliff Nass, Computers Are Social Actors: A New Paradigm and Some
| Suprising Results [November 4, 1992]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/jh333ht2903
|
| Unistrokes: Pen computing for experts, David Goldberg, Xerox PARC
| [November 5, 1993]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/gw943dj4628
|
| Putting "Feel" into "Look and Feel": Interaction with the Sense
| of Touch, Margaret Minsky, Interval Research [October 1, 1993]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/kk938rh3332
|
| Harry Saddler & L. Alba, Apple & Albert Farris, "Making It
| Macintosh: Interactive Media, Interpersonal Design" [October 15,
| 1993]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/gs214qy7233
|
| Design of New Media Interfaces, Joy Mountford [May 12, 1993]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/rm437wv9779
|
| Animated Programs, Ken Kahn, Stanford CSLI [December 3, 1993]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/fk686sy4072
|
| The Magic Lens Interface, Eric Bier, Xerox PARC [December 9,
| 1994]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/ss855db5288
|
| Proactive and Reactive Agents in User Interface, Ted Selker, IBM
| [April 29, 1994]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/pv655pr7635
|
| Computing in the Year 2004, Bruce Tognazzini, Sunsoft [February
| 18, 1994]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/nf237zt2615
|
| Andy Hertzfeld, General Magic, "Magic Cap and Telescript"
| [January 21, 1994]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/mp885xf4366
|
| An Academic Discovers the Realities of Design, Don Norman, Apple
| Computer [December 2, 1994]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/dd753rg7554
|
| Interfacing to Microworlds, Will Wright, Maxis [April 26, 1996]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
|
| I was working with Terry Winograd at Interval Research at the
| time of this talk, which he invited me to attend, and I asked
| Will some skeptical questions, and his amazing in-depth answers
| convinced me to go to Maxis to work with him on the "Dollhouse"
| game he demonstrated. I uploaded the video to youtube and
| proofread the closed captions, and updated my description of the
| video:
|
| Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
|
| >Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds"
| presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford
| University, April 26, 1996.
|
| >He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and
| SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release
| prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The
| Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior,
| and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable
| objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many
| interesting questions from the audience.
|
| >This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User
| Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will
| Wright's talk to Terry Winograd's User Interface Class at
| Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked
| together on The Sims at Maxis.
|
| Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games
| (1996) (2023 Video Update):
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
|
| >A summary of Will Wright's talk to Terry Winograd's User
| Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins,
| before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis. Now including a
| video and snapshots of the original talk!
|
| >Will Wright, the designer of SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, and
| other popular games from Maxis, gave a talk at Terry Winograd's
| user interface class at Stanford, in 1996 (before the release of
| The Sims in 2000).
|
| >At the end of the talk, he demonstrated an early version of The
| Sims, called Dollhouse at the time. I attended the talk and took
| notes, which this article elaborates on. [...]
|
| Bringing Behavior to the Internet, James Gosling, SUN
| Microsystems [December 1, 1995]:
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/bz890ng3047
|
| I also uploaded this historically interesting video to youtube to
| generate closed captions and make it more accessible and
| findable, and I was planning on proofreading them like I did for
| this Will Wright talk, but haven't gotten around to it yet (any
| volunteers? ;):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrNeyuwA8k
|
| This is an early talk by James Gosling on Java, which I attended
| and appeared on camera asking a couple questions about security
| (44:53, 1:00:35), and I also spotted Ken Kahn asking a question
| (50:20). Can anyone identify other people in the audience?
|
| My questions about the "optical illusion attack" and security at
| 44:53 got kind of awkward, and his defensive "shrug" answer
| hasn't aged too well! ;)
|
| No hard feelings of course, since we'd known each other for years
| before (working on Emacs and NeWS) and we're still friends, but
| I'd recently been working on Kaleida ScriptX, which lost out to
| Java in part because Java was touted as being so "secure", and I
| didn't appreciate how Sun was promoting Java by throwing the word
| "secure" around without defining what it really meant or what its
| limitations were (expecting people to read more into it than it
| really meant, on purpose, to hype up Java).
| radres wrote:
| How can you be happy that you did not join Apple in 1990?
| dave333 wrote:
| All you need is Nielsen, Norman, and Tufte.
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