[HN Gopher] Our interfaces have lost their senses
___________________________________________________________________
Our interfaces have lost their senses
Author : me_smith
Score : 225 points
Date : 2025-03-16 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wattenberger.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wattenberger.com)
| soared wrote:
| There is a certain beauty of a webpage about user interfaces
| failing to load under strains from traffic volume. I couldn't
| read much, but it would appear the best interfaces are the ones
| that work!
| aftbit wrote:
| It loaded for me!
| yuliyp wrote:
| It's probably because there is 90MB of unoptimized images on
| it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Our new applicant for user interface guru has tripped on the
| first hurdle.
| vkazanov wrote:
| This is a nice and visually pleasing manifesto.
|
| It is also hard to read.
| smitty1e wrote:
| It was a pleasant break from the Mark 1, Modification 0 top-to-
| bottom web page, yes.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Hence the whole point of the article. We've reduced our UIs
| down to minimal friction ("easy to read") where, like creating
| a drawing, a higher friction ("harder") interface could well be
| more rewarding.
| int_19h wrote:
| I think it ends up proving the opposite. I did not feel like
| scrolling through all this pointless flair was in any sense
| rewarding. Quite the opposite, it's distracting enough to be
| annoying, so if anything, it feels like a counterpoint to the
| message in the text.
| mint2 wrote:
| also ironic - an article lamenting the way things are so flat
| and lacking physicality yet it's jam packed with AI generated
| art
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is a beautifully designed and illustrated page.
|
| But I couldn't disagree more with the premise. It complains that
| computers have been reduced from physical, tactile, hulking
| mainframes to neutered generic text interfaces, but I've watched
| the _opposite_ happen over the past two decades.
|
| My phone is physical -- I swipe, pinch, and tap. It buzzes and
| dings and flashes. I squeeze my AirPods, I pay by holding my
| wrist up to a sensor, I tilt my iPad to play video games and draw
| on it with a pencil.
|
| Everything the article complains about, we've already solved. All
| of its suggestions, we already have. It wants "multi-modality"
| but we already have that too -- I can change the volume on my
| iPhone with physical buttons while I dictate. I can listen to
| music while I scroll.
|
| Our interfaces haven't lost their senses. Our interfaces have
| more senses than they've ever had before.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| There has been a number of attempts at making screens create
| tactile bumps and provide direct feedback which haven't yet
| worked which might improve physical interaction somewhat so we
| can get buttons and switches and knobs in a programmable way
| that isn't hardware specific to the task but we aren't there
| yet.
| intrasight wrote:
| Having no tactile interaction on computers saddens me very
| much. A couple decades ago, a colleague and I did a mind
| experiment on pixel-level tactile interfaces and imagining
| all the affordances that would provide - including of course
| for those that are sight challenged. All humans have a very
| very strong tactile aspect to their neurophysiology. Cortical
| Man shows that clearly.
|
| It would be sad if in 10,000 years we evolved to lose our
| tactile senses.
|
| I'll also add the buttons and switches and knobs are not all
| that tactile. They are a modern human creation.
| int_19h wrote:
| This, by the way, is partly why MacBook trackpads are so
| good - they have excellent haptic feedback for clicking
| that is superior to most (all?) physical trackpads.
|
| > buttons and switches and knobs are not all that tactile
|
| But they are, though. You can touch them without pressing,
| and, once you get used to them, they have different
| textures.
| fred69 wrote:
| Our interfaces have more modalities than before but they are
| disconnected from both physical and emotional reality. Buzzes
| and dings and flaps are nothing like hearing a happy shout from
| a friend or feeling the 'clunk' of an actual motor starter
| engaging.
|
| I totally agree with OP that the 'flat' visual style is
| appalling. (And gray-on-gray text is an obscenity.)
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't _want_ my computer 's interface to be overtly
| "emotional". I don't want it to have the same effect as "a
| happy shout from a friend". I want it to be unobtrusive and
| functional, so that I can pay attention to the message my
| friend recorded with _their_ happy shout that is actually
| real. And I prefer my cars quiet because I want to keep my
| focus on the environment.
|
| And what do you mean, disconnected from physical reality? I
| listed the examples where I pay with my wrist, squeeze my
| earbuds, draw with a pencil. I also snap photos and take
| videos, record with voice memos, send a pin with my location.
| I track AirTags, I identify plants by pointing at them, I
| learn constellations by aiming at them. Computing is more
| connected to physical reality than ever.
| skydhash wrote:
| The two best experiences I had with touch were the the Sony
| WH-H900N [0] and Procreate on Ipad. The headphones had a
| touch surface where tap was play/pause and swipe up/down
| manipulate volume and swipe left/right change track. Due to
| the large surface, it was easy and quick to do these
| actions and natural.
|
| Another good experience was shaking my phone (an Android
| Motorola) to turn the flash light on and off. Another great
| natural movement is taking my iPhone and transfer the
| playing music to an Homepod by tapping on the two together.
|
| For almost everything else I loathe touch devices. While
| older ones may be clunky visually, they are far more
| ergonomic. Yes, my phone can do a lot of stuff, but the
| whole process for a specific one is always clunky and
| companies go out of their ways to block you from altering
| the UX.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| > This is a beautifully designed and illustrated page.
|
| Hard disagree. It's incredibly distracting and the constant
| movement of text, the introduction and disappearance of images
| within the medium makes it incredibly difficult to concentrate
| on the message.
|
| It screams 'look at me, I'm really smart with all these neat
| effects'. But you know what interface for articles like this
| has served us pretty well for > 1000 years? Just the words.
| Please, just display the words rather than this conceit.
| jacobolus wrote:
| This complaint is like visiting a flower garden and
| complaining that it is an inefficient use of space because it
| doesn't grow enough root vegetables.
|
| The style and emotional feeling of the page _is_ the message.
| An article consisting of only words is not an "article like
| this", and if you are starting from that premise you already
| totally missed the author's point.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They might have gotten the point but disagreed. In
| particular, if the style and feeling of the page is the
| message, and they are saying they don't like the message
| and page feels bad... then, it seems like the premise was
| understood and rejected.
| int_19h wrote:
| > The style and emotional feeling of the page is the
| message.
|
| And for many people, that message is, "go away, this is not
| for you".
|
| Which is a valid take if that's what the author intended,
| but generally speaking, when people take time to pen
| manifests, they expect them to be read and heeded.
| nntwozz wrote:
| "A word is worth a thousand pictures".
|
| -- Apple HIG
|
| In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled
| icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group
| took on the motto "A word is worth a thousand pictures.
|
| https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html
|
| Linked from Daring Fireball back in the day.
|
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/12/tog-word
| gcau wrote:
| This is advice many modern designers need to know - I don't
| like seeing an icon and having no idea what it does without
| clicking it, and having to guess what the icon might mean,
| where a label could easily fit, or replace the icon, and be
| a vastly better UX, but "looking good" is more important to
| most designers.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I always assumed it was to avoid translation work?
| zerocrates wrote:
| I've seen some contexts where this is what's happening.
| IKEA instructions would be one, or I've also seen it in
| some board games, where things like cards will use icons
| so only the instruction book needs to be translated.
|
| But in UIs you usually have to have some text equivalent
| somewhere, on hover or long-press or in a menu or just as
| text for screenreader users, so you don't generally get
| to avoid translation even if you take visible labels
| away.
| nvllsvm wrote:
| Fully agreed.
|
| I'm currently stuck on LTE due to a power outage. The page is
| horrible to try to read due to most of the images being
| either in the process of being loaded or not loaded at all.
| Animats wrote:
| Some of those pictures look like Stable Diffusion output.
| Zoom in and see junk characters.
| tapland wrote:
| It mostly seems to be slop
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I was pixel peeping as well. But as far as AI generated
| images go it seemed pretty good.
| gcau wrote:
| It's hard to believe this is the interface for a page titled
| "our interfaces have lost their senses", and the author not
| being aware of the irony.
| intrasight wrote:
| That struck me as well. Whatever interesting message the
| author may have been trying to convey was lost on me, and
| probably many others, because of the visual distractions.
| Visual distractions are precisely the problem that we're
| facing with modern interfaces.
| vvillena wrote:
| I have great news for you. The article is also perfectly
| structured, which means it shows flawlessly on reader mode.
|
| Reader mode is a standard feature on all major browsers on
| both desktop and mobile. Given you're so vocal about how
| articles should work by just "displaying the words", I'd
| suggest that you acquaintance yourself with the one feature
| that does exactly that.
|
| Thanks to reader mode, you get to concentrate on the message.
| And we get to keep our joy.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I have bad news for you. This is cut-and-paste directly
| from reader mode in Firefox mobile.
|
| "Then came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs
| turned into typed commands--more powerful, but our digital
| world became less embodied. Then came terminals and command
| lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands--more
| powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then
| came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned
| into typed commands--more powerful, but our digital world
| became less embodied. Then came terminals and command
| lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands--more
| powerful, but our digital world became less embodied. Then
| came terminals and command lines. Physical knobs turned
| into typed commands--more powerful, but our digital world
| became less embodied. Then came terminals and command
| lines. Physical knobs turned into typed commands--more
| powerful, but our digital world became less embodied."
|
| I stopped reading after that. There are also missing full
| stops, which means it's difficult to understand what's
| happening.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| The images are also irritating and jarring when you notice
| that the bokeh is fake and that they're all AI generated (and
| AI generated images have really headache inducing depth of
| field effects).
| torginus wrote:
| Honestly using GenAI slop pictures to illustrate the article
| about the soullessness of modern computing clashes with the
| message in a way I don't think the author intended.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| As far as GenAI goes, this ain't slop. Guess people wouldn't
| be so hostile to GenAI used as stock footage if it were of
| this quality and consistency. But this sort of output is
| hardly "type a prompt and press a button", not sure what was
| used but I imagine style transfer or LoRAs were involved - or
| at least few rounds of prompt refinement
|
| Edit: or even img2img of rough sketches.
| godelski wrote:
| > Our interfaces haven't lost their senses. Our interfaces have
| more senses than they've ever had before.
|
| Hard disagree. Let's take a very simple example, Wikipedia[0].
| Took way too long to build in a dark mode and when they do they
| have the options "light", "dark", and "automatic". YET the
| default value is "light". WHY THE FUCK IS THERE AN AUTOMATIC IF
| THIS ISN'T THE DEFAULT!? Obvious stuff like this is everywhere.
|
| I find a lot of interfaces INFURIATING. My car wants to do
| things with touch screens while I want to feel because I want
| to keep my eyes on the road. My iPhone won't capitalize the
| letter I and will change not just the word I'm typing but the
| word previous to it making swipe style texting painful to use.
| Speaking of the iPhone, it's 2025 and there's no universal
| back. I still don't know how to exit the YouTube popup asking
| me to activate my free trial of premium other than swiping
| close the whole app and reopening[1]. Or I scroll through an
| app with threads (e.g. Twitter) and I move slightly left or
| right and bam I'm on a different tab and when I move back I'm
| not where I left off but somewhere completely new.
|
| You may say "well that's a 'you' problem, I'm happy with the
| way things are" and my point is that humans are all different.
| There's no one size fits all. Maybe that swiping thing happens
| because our thumbs are different sizes or our phones are
| different sizes. Maybe you like light mode and don't open any
| websites with the lights off. But that difference is what makes
| us human. The problem is that things are converging to things
| that are bad for everyone. Design matters a lot and getting
| used to a design is very different than designing things around
| people. A well designed product needs no instructions
| (obviously not absolute), just see the "Norman Door."[2] We
| shit on backend developers for making shitty UIs (as a
| 'backend' person, I agree, this deserves criticism) but I don't
| think the front end people are at all concerned with design now
| a days either. There's a special irony with Apple, considering
| the magic was the interaction between Jobs and Woz. The magic
| is when the good backend meets good frontend. Yet now we're
| just doing both like it is a competition of who can create the
| worst thing the fastest.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
|
| [1] I now use Orion browser. The video quality is lower but it
| is better than dealing with this bullshit.
|
| [2] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-
| kno...
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think you might be misunderstanding.
|
| This is about "senses" as in "the five senses".
|
| Not "senses" as in "they've lost their senses/mind".
|
| The author is making a pun on the latter, but the article is
| about the former.
| godelski wrote:
| I don't think these are so different. The reason a lot of
| UIs feel like they've lost their minds is because they are
| not adapting to humans. Which that is the argument for
| using more senses. I mention Norman Doors because this is
| that intersection. I could definitely have communicated
| better, but I think these things are fundamentally related.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The article reads like a description of personal computing in
| the late 90s to early 2000s. It also reads very similarly to
| Apple's early marketing around multitouch displays.
| nradov wrote:
| Beautiful? It looks like utter garbage to me. I really can't
| abide that twee visual style. The designer is trying way too
| hard and completely lost the plot.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm very impressed with the visuals here! Wow
| pona-a wrote:
| It seems from the finer details, a lot might be AI generated,
| which at least to me would defeat the message about how our
| interfaces are less human. I'd be very glad to be proven wrong,
| and it's just the style.
| taurath wrote:
| As an evocation of adding "texture" to a "flat" experience, I
| think it does the job quite well, and is pleasant to look at
| - it feels well thought out and crafted to me!
| pona-a wrote:
| It just feels strange to muse about the embodied experience
| of drawing while having a computer spit out a semantic
| average of your general idea with little creative control.
| throwaway150 wrote:
| Aren't these visuals just AI generated fillers?
| daemonologist wrote:
| I agree with other commenters that it seems AI generated
| (patterns/noise in fine detail, nonsense text, and
| inconsistency in style, particularly in the faces of the
| "dolls").
|
| The first few images are impressively well curated and
| consistent though. I think the "rotoscoping"/"compositing"
| helps quite a bit to make it feel more cohesive and intentional
| - certainly it's a step above the usual "blog post header
| image" slop.
| godelski wrote:
| Yeah I'm having a hard time telling as well, but I think it
| is AI. Following threads has a surprising amount of
| consistency and coherency that we don't commonly see in AI
| art. I would expect AI art to be VERY bad at felt imagery.
| The image here[0] looks too consistent though there are
| definitely parts that are edited. And here[1] the blurring is
| very consistent (other than the stitching you cans see when
| scrolling). Although this one[2] really makes it look like
| the text on the computer screen is AI generated. A lot looks
| good but the coat on the main character flattens out. But
| here is a really good one where you can see the AI errors pop
| up if you look at the bow[3] (the blurring is also
| inconsistent here)
|
| There are definitely issues that pop up but I find it weird
| people are calling this "slop". "Slop" is that bullshit
| people are posting where they take the first output and don't
| pay attention to details. Clearly this person played around
| with the parameters a lot. The problem with AI Art is taking
| the art out of the art (and the data theft). But if you're
| using AI, iterating, focusing on details, then I'm not sure
| how it is different than any other medium where you do the
| same things. Art takes time and makes you feel. Considering
| how it added to the message here and how clear it is that
| this person put time into the details, I find it hard to call
| it "slop" just because AI was used.
|
| [0] https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-
| lost-t...
|
| [1] https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-
| lost-t...
|
| [2] https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-
| lost-t...
|
| [3] https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-
| lost-t...
| dantheta wrote:
| It's a lovely set of sentiments. I think another aspect of UI
| that has been lost is discoverability - finding out how to do
| things in a new interface seems harder than it used to be when
| there was one app-level menu bar. Too many things are hidden in
| context menus, found only by right-clicking or long pressing on
| just the right spot. A set of multi-modal interfaces might just
| make discoverability even worse.
| andrepd wrote:
| But don't you love buttons with ad-hoc icons and no text and no
| explanation of what they do and they don't even have any visual
| indication that they're buttons? :)
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we used to call that
| "mystery meat navigation." Now, we call it user interface
| design.
| layer8 wrote:
| Consistent use of context menus would actually be a boon,
| because it's a single mechanism that can be applied everywhere,
| and just opening a context menu is a benign interaction (no
| fear of triggering some undesired action). The disappearance of
| context menus is one thing that I lament about modern UIs
| (another is tooltips). There may be "share" or "ellipsis" or
| long-press menus, but they are highly inconsistent, and you
| never know where to look for desired or possible actions.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Hm, no reference to Bret Victor?
|
| https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Fantastic design. Normally pages with funky scrolling behavior
| and boxes whizzing all over the place and all that are annoying
| but it really works here. Not to mention the adorable visuals.
|
| That being said I think it misses what made the old physical
| interfaces so appealing and useful. It's not that there's
| something inherently superior about multimodality; it's that
| physical interfaces are permanent, with defined edges and
| definite shape. Unlike screens you know exactly what's where,
| building muscle memory every time you use it. There are no hidden
| menus or moving parts.
|
| Multimodality - such as being able to see the position of a
| slider at a glance, or feel its position by touch - is useful
| because it reinforces the absolute existence of a control and its
| state across multiple senses. Interfaces using voice and gestures
| like suggested are the exact opposite of that, because each point
| of interaction becomes even more disconnected and vague.
| josheva wrote:
| I got agitated looking through that due to the excess of
| flourishes. Fancy elements should punctuate focal points. If
| there's too many, the focus is lost.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Yes, flat design is too flat, and AI chat is too devoid of
| friction.
|
| But mobile and tablets are better at certain things [1], and we
| shouldn't get rid of that either.
|
| I saw somewhere (Bret Victor?) that tools have two parts: the
| part that fits the problem, and the part that fits the human. The
| example was a hammer; the head fit the problem (the nail), and
| the handle fit the human (the hand).
|
| Notably, the two parts must fit their respective things, but they
| also _have to work together._
|
| That is what we should be doing: creating harmonious tools that
| fit the problem and the human. What that looks like will be
| different for _every tool._
|
| Our interfaces currently have two problems:
|
| * Because they can have any appearance, appearance gets more
| attention than being a good tool. Example: flat design (good
| appearance) overriding skeuomorphic design (human fit).
|
| * No one wants to redesign _everything_ , so we all reuse the
| same base stuff (Electron, Qt, etc.) even if the result won't fit
| (one or both ends) or harmonize.
|
| I would love to fix both of those problems, but because people
| are lazy, it essentially means creating a GUI framework that is
| flexible enough to fit almost any problem and _any_ human
| (accessibility included) while making sure that flexibility does
| not destroy harmony.
|
| While I am working on that, it is a tall order, and I am almost
| certain I will not succeed.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43350339
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > AI chat is too devoid of friction.
|
| You want an AI that argues with you?
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I don't want AI at all, but please read the article to
| understand what I mean by "friction."
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Compare the feeling of doomscrolling to kneading dough,
| playing an instrument, sketching... these take effort, but
| they 're also deeply satisfying. When you strip away too
| much friction, meaning and satisfaction go with it._
|
| Kneading dough sucks if you do it a lot. It's monotonous
| and tiring. That's why frequent bakers use mixers with
| bread hooks.
|
| Instruments are designed to be as friction-free as
| possible, given physical constraints. Friction makes
| expression more difficult. A violin is the most expressive
| because it has the least "friction" of valves and hammers
| and buttons getting in the way.
|
| Sketching similarly is low-friction. That's why it's so
| much easier than oil painting. You can express yourself
| hundreds of times more easily, which is why oil painters
| start with tons of preparatory sketches.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with the premise that friction is
| desirable. It's not.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| > I fundamentally disagree with the premise that friction
| is desirable. It's not.
|
| I agree that too much friction is _terrible_.
|
| But what I was saying, and the article seems to be
| implying, is that too little friction is terrible too.
|
| Using Stable Diffusion is lower friction than sketching
| or painting. But the latter two are better.
|
| The difference is that there is friction that leads to a
| good outcome, and friction that does not. Mixers with
| bread hooks are eliminating bad friction, whereas Stable
| Diffusion is removing good friction.
|
| And in fact, there's actually _more_ friction when using
| Stable Diffusion if you have an end in mind; trying to
| get it to output what you want is high in bad friction.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _too little friction is terrible too._
|
| I just don't buy it.
|
| > _Using Stable Diffusion is lower friction than
| sketching or painting. But the latter two are better._
|
| No, the latter two aren't "better". All three are totally
| different tools for achieving different purposes. I'm
| going to use Stable Diffusion to raise engagement on my
| blog with a hero image and a relevant thumbnail, I'm
| going to sketch to explore visual ideas and improve my
| skill of seeing, and I'm going to oil paint to carefully
| craft something designed to hopefully hang on someone's
| wall for a long time. (Well, not _me_ because I don 't
| know how to oil paint, but you get the idea.) I'm
| certainly _not_ going to oil-paint something to
| illustrate my blog. Oil painting isn 't "better".
|
| And when I use ChatGPT to ask questions about math or
| physics or history or culture, the _last_ thing I want to
| do is to make the process more difficult. I already spend
| enough time typing a prompt the AI can clearly
| understand. There 's no way in which it would be made
| better with "good friction".
|
| I mean, I literally don't know what you mean by "good
| friction". I don't think I've ever encountered it in my
| life. Life in general is challenging enough without
| having to add more challenge for no reason.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Friction without growth is bad friction.
|
| Friction with growth is good friction, so long as the
| friction is minimized for the amount of growth.
|
| And by "growth," I mean anything that helps people to
| "level up," such as learning, gaining a skill, becoming
| more Christ-like, whatever.
|
| Growth cannot happen without friction. Your use of AI is
| stunting whatever growth you could have gained from those
| processes.
|
| "So what?" you may say. However, someone who applies
| friction to growth consistently in their
| blog/code/whatever will find that growth compounds like
| interest, and though they may be less "productive," their
| productivity will be better in the long run because they
| will have the skills to go beyond anything you could ever
| dream of doing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Then I'm just gonna say, my life has more than enough
| "good friction" and growth already. The last thing I need
| is more.
|
| Since you use the example of a blog, just writing blog
| entries has _plenty_ of friction inherent in thinking and
| researching and writing.
|
| I don't want more friction in generating hero images.
| That's not something I _want_ to level up in. AI is not
| stunting anything, because if it weren 't for AI, my blog
| wouldn't have images _at all_ , or they'd be stock images
| that were even worse. But images help your posts reach an
| audience, so they're necessary. So Stable Diffusion is
| great.
|
| I'm not living my life to build _all_ the skills. Skills
| are a means, not an end. If I can choose between spending
| quality time with friends vs. building skills
| illustrating hero images by hand, I 'm going to choose
| the quality time with my friends, because I _already_ don
| 't have enough of that.
|
| Also, the very first example of supposedly "good
| friction" was kneading dough. That's not leveling you up
| each time you knead. Just use a dough hook if you've got
| one.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I specifically said that kneading dough was bad friction.
|
| Anyway, as someone with a blog, people actually have
| conplimented me for _not_ using images unless they
| support the point in the post. I see plenty of negative
| comments about blog posts with header images.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| > A violin is the most expressive because it has the
| least "friction" of valves and hammers and buttons
| getting in the way.
|
| A violin is most expressive because it is the one that
| uses friction (rubbing a bow on strings).
|
| Also, moving the bow just right is harder than slamming
| keys.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It'd be slightly more funny if your user name was LLM...
| r_klancer wrote:
| Actually that would be kind of awesome.
| uaas wrote:
| Yes, Bret Victor:
| https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Oh my goodness, thank you! I've been looking for that for
| AGES!
| Terr_ wrote:
| Disagree: Our malaise is _not_ boredom from simplicity, but
| _fatigue_ from inconsistency.
|
| "Flat" interfaces aren't bad because they lack an ineffable
| whimsy of embodied human experience, they're bad because they
| threw out the baby the bathwater, tossing decades of conventions
| and hard-learned accessibility lessons in the name of supporting
| a touchscreen.
|
| Compared to 20 years ago, everyone is shipping half-website-half-
| desktop abominations (e.g. with Electron[0]) and reinventing UX
| wheels. Too many apps/sites impose "their own look" instead of
| following what the user has already learned. [1] Often users must
| _guess_ whether certain things are even clickable, how a certain
| toggle looks when enabled, whether certain settings are a single-
| select option or a multi-select tickbox... And _memorize_ those
| rules with per-app or per-website granularity.
|
| > You can talk while clicking, listen while reading, look at an
| image while spinning a knob, gesture while talking.
|
| Those are all things people do _after_ "make computer do what I
| want" has become automatic.
|
| Now when--for example--trying to find the 21st item they just
| added inside a list that is vertically limited to 20 and the
| custom grey-on-grey scrollbar is always hidden _unless_ you 've
| currently hovering a mouse exactly in the right 5-pixel-wide
| strip between two columns of the interface.
|
| [0] A sample listing of software readers may be familiar with:
| https://www.electronjs.org/apps
|
| [1] That may be due to deliberate "remember us" branding,
| whatever was fastest-to-ship, because things to _look_ new to get
| somebody a promotion, because they want to create a switching-
| cost so current users _feel bad_ trying to use a competitor 's
| product... Or because someone like the blog-poster has
| misguidedly tried to make a "richer experience."
| skydhash wrote:
| I'm currently using Gnome and their UI may not be the most
| beautiful or complete, but they've gone all in on consistency.
| I don't mind software like Blender, Audacity, and others having
| their own design systems as their domain is much more
| complicated. But a lot of software only needs a few controls
| and the native ones should suffice.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I don't think it's a coincedence that out of the Linux DE
| ecosystems, GNOME has probably the biggest presence in little
| third-party utilities made to match the environment. The DE
| itself is quite flawed in my opinion, but its consistent and
| opinionated design system catches the eyes of devs and would-
| be devs and motivates them to build things.
|
| A similar effect I believe is what's been largely responsible
| for the healthy botique indieware scene on macOS too.
| int_19h wrote:
| I think what motivates people to patch over Gnome
| deficiencies is its position as the de facto standard
| "enterprise" DE, where you basically have no choice but to
| use it.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| There's a handful of third party apps that serve that
| function, but that's really more the domain of GNOME
| shell extensions.
|
| What I'm talking about are apps built not because there
| weren't serviceable options in their categories prior,
| but because there weren't any that made an effort to be
| at unity with the larger GNOME desktop. Apps like
| Errands[0], Folio[1], Shortwave[2], and Newsflash[3].
|
| [0]: https://apps.gnome.org/en/List/ [1]:
| https://flathub.org/apps/com.toolstack.Folio [2]:
| https://apps.gnome.org/Shortwave/ [3]:
| https://apps.gnome.org/en/NewsFlash/
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| To add insult to injury, not only is everything inconsistent
| thanks to incessant wheel reinvention, nearly all of the
| reinvented wheels are halfassed at best and missing
| functionality compared to what they're replacing. When a
| company writes a new widget to match their theme they only
| build the bare minimum necessary to visually match mockups. UI
| controls have become vapid and devoid of function.
| whstl wrote:
| Agree. The constant UI reinvention of lately is super strange
| to me. Companies want to save money but most developer time in
| simple apps is spent on it.
|
| I remember 20-25 years ago mostly using Windows widgets to make
| Enterprise apps. It was fast to make, fast to run, and users
| back then knew how to use. Didn't look the best, but at least
| was consistent.
|
| The next 5 years we sort of tried to do our best, but most
| things were still sort of standard-ish.
|
| Then for about 5 years or things like Bootstrap, Material, etc,
| dominated. It was nothing special, but at least consistent
| between apps.
|
| But in the last 10 years pretty much every company I worked on
| had a custom UI built ENTIRELY from scratch by a designer and a
| small army of developers to implement it. It looks "the same
| but different" in an uncanny valley way.
|
| I honestly feel like this is the worst possible use of frontend
| developers, period. Not only from a financial perspective but
| also from an end result.
|
| But hey jobs are generated so what do I know...
| skydhash wrote:
| If most software were following DDD, UI should be a generic
| domain. But they bind themselves to Electron and bring the
| whole kitchen with them. And then a note app bring a whole
| audio and video ecosystem among others.
|
| Before software only needs to be useful. Now the C Suite
| thinks it needs to be engaging and isolating like a casino.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| There is also a big elephant in the room that we are sort of
| ignoring with the whole AI stuff, which is when flat design
| came about, a lot of the designers who weren't really good now
| suddenly had jobs because everybody could put a flat thing on
| the page and call it a "button".
|
| Good designers still exist but they are simply crowded out.
|
| The same is happening today with the AI generated apps. Most
| front ends now in another 10 years will be filled with AI
| generated apps. But good design and applications will be around
| but they will be crowded out.
|
| And you see this in almost other industries as well. For
| example, architecture has simply gotten worse. A building from
| today looks much, much worse than let's say a building from
| even 300 years back.
|
| So we will simply have worse software and worse performing
| software which breaks down all the time in the near future and
| we will all suffer but there is no solution out of this.
|
| Things don't always get better.
| throwaway150 wrote:
| It might just be me but I find the thesis of the article to be
| very confusing.
|
| > but we should have made typing feel like painting.
|
| Maybe painting should should feel like painting and typing should
| feel like typing? I don't know about others but when I type, I
| just want to type, as efficiently and quickly as possible. I
| definitely don't want typing to feel like painting.
|
| By the way, loading 92 MB of images to make me read 6 KB of text
| is brutal!
| userbinator wrote:
| _By the way, loading 92 MB of images to make me read 6 KB of
| text is brutal_
|
| That's what I get for wanting to read the article before the
| comments here. Waited minutes only to be greeted with mediocre
| AI-generated images too, to add insult to injury.
| nomdep wrote:
| These beautiful images (AI generated, perhaps?) make for a great
| showcase, but I find myself disagreeing with almost everything
| here - except for the core desire to make interfaces more
| engaging.
|
| The real challenge is that UI designs are ultimately constrained
| by their hardware. This means major interface innovations often
| limit where the software can actually be used.
|
| Take tablet-optimized apps, for instance. They can fully embrace
| touch interaction, but this leaves desktop-only users completely
| out of the loop.
|
| So unfortunately, truly revolutionary interfaces tend to require
| equally revolutionary hardware to match .
| godelski wrote:
| Did we read the same article? > The real
| challenge is that UI designs are ultimately constrained by
| their hardware.
|
| Sure, but part of designing _a product_ is recognizing this and
| the author seems to be making that point. Surely they aren 't
| saying you should have sound and haptics in devices with no
| speakers or motors. Certainly I think the author would argue
| that cars should have physical knobs and not touch screens.
|
| The problem is what you mean by "UI"
|
| UI means "User Interface". It does not mean " _Software
| defined_ User Interface ". User interfaces are
| composed of one or more layers, including a human-machine
| interface (HMI) that typically interfaces machines with
| physical input hardware (such as keyboards, mice, or game pads)
| and output hardware (such as computer monitors, speakers, and
| printers).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface
| schneems wrote:
| > truly revolutionary interfaces tend to require equally
| revolutionary hardware to match
|
| The prime examples given were about mixing and matching
| capabilities that most hardware already has. Most computers and
| tablets already have a microphone and some kind of tactile
| input (touch or keyboard).
|
| So, I wouldn't say that you're wrong in tying UI innovations to
| hardware, but it feels like perhaps you didn't read the whole
| article. We can innovate by remixing existing functionality
| without having to wait on entirely new paradigms being adopted
| and universally available.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Definitely AI generated.
|
| https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-lost-t...
|
| What are those floating letters? Does the keyboard have 3 rows
| of keys, or 4? What's going on near where the esc key should
| be? Why does the screen look like the back of a park bench?
| haswell wrote:
| I was reflecting on something similar to this this while
| photographing the recent lunar eclipse with a Fujifilm X-T5, a
| highly tactile camera that is just an absolute joy to operate.
|
| I was on my roof in the dark at 1:30 in the morning in the cold
| and wind. I'm tired, can't really see much, but still need to
| actively work with the camera's controls. Thankfully, the X-T5 is
| covered in physical dials, switches and buttons. Without looking
| at the camera's screen, I can quickly change shooting modes and
| the majority of the settings I care about and be confident that I
| changed the right things.
|
| The same cannot be said about a large number of modern cameras,
| which opt instead for a more digital approach.
|
| In terms of modern "computing" devices, my cameras are an
| absolute joy to use compared to most of my other hardware.
|
| So much so that I've recently been finding myself looking to
| recreate this tactile experience on my general purpose computers.
| I've been looking at weird bespoke dials, switches and various
| input hardware to make _processing_ the photos (among other
| tasks) feel more tactile.
| _wire_ wrote:
| When you think that your primary relationship with a machine is
| "telling it what you want" you've already taken the first step to
| an inevitable hell.
| mac-mc wrote:
| There is a niceness to more kinesthetic input devices, to dials,
| knobs, and pens. I'm always experimenting with trying more. The
| unfortunate thing is they tend to be niche and unsupported. Try
| finding a nice dial to control things like zoom or volume, it's
| harder than it should be and costs over $100 or is not a great
| experience.
| greybox wrote:
| I very much liked this:
|
| > We made painting feel like typing, but we should have made
| typing feel like painting.
|
| I think this quote is worth ruminating for a few while. It
| reminds me of some Bret Victor talks.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design [1] was great.
| The comments in this thread are my first time hearing about that
| blog post. Send me more blogs/books/videos/etc. like that,
| please.
|
| [1]
| https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...
| wiley1454 wrote:
| See "Inventing on principle" also by Bret Victor on YouTube.
|
| Great watch.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Thanks
|
| Inventing On Principle: https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII
|
| A couple other Bret Victor resources I gleaned from other
| comments:
|
| Humane Representation Of Thought:
| https://youtu.be/agOdP2Bmieg
|
| Dynamicland: https://dynamicland.org/
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| I'm imagining this post as a 360 VR experience with on demand
| narration and heavy on ASMR. I'd like to spend time in that world
| quite frankly
| mnky9800n wrote:
| It lost me when it encourages websites to have sound.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This is a beautiful article with great visuals, like many other
| comments have said. But the actual point being made is worth
| paying attention to:
|
| > Computers used to be physical beasts.
|
| > We programmed them by punching cards, plugging in wires, and
| flipping switches. Programmers walked among banks of switches and
| cables, physically choreographing their logic. Being on a
| computer used to be a full-body experience.
|
| It's about working in a physical environment and not just
| isolated digital interfaces, which is how many different jobs
| work today (not just programmers). The personal touch is lost.
| But I'm not sure it can be fixed. There is no commercial
| justification for making using computers or phones "enjoyable".
| intrasight wrote:
| Computers were never "physical beasts" in terms of their
| connection to the human senses. If anything computers are
| vastly improving in the way they interact with the human
| senses. I'm an optimist. I think we're in the early days and in
| 100 years the current computers will seem terribly primitive
| from a sensory standpoint.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I can get behind the vision of computers being more physical.
| That's a potent vision.
|
| The claim that current technology is a regression compared to
| past technology is hard-to-swallow, though. I have a family
| friend who took CS classes in the early 70s. Punching out 0s
| and 1s, waiting a day to have a chance to run the program, etc.
| I do not get the impression that she views this as the pinnacle
| of enjoyable HCI.
|
| My mom also has a funny story about visiting this friend during
| the chaos of finals. The friend showed my mom the computer
| area. My mom vividly remembers seeing students frantically
| trying to get their final programs done and punch card papers
| being scattered EVERYWHERE.
|
| Back to the main point, I don't see a lot of extensive,
| enjoyable physical interaction in this past paradigm. Punching
| holes in paper would probably get tedious. Carrying the stack
| of papers over to the mainframe operators would also get
| annoying. And then you read out the results of your program one
| page at a time on physical paper. Sure, it's more physical, but
| is this really more enjoyable in the long run?
|
| So exactly what point in the past is the author reminiscing
| about?
| graypegg wrote:
| Maybe if I can make a counter-point: a lot of these patterns are
| common place right now! And much more so than whatever golden era
| we want to imagine existed long ago.
|
| - Gestures in a lot of applications have made things more
| confusing by hiding functionality that you now need to stumble
| into to discover.
|
| - Sound cues are used all over the place. Anyone who's ever
| worked in a kitchen hears the godforsaken ubereats alert sound in
| their nightmares.
|
| - About ten minutes ago, I got startled by my phone deciding that
| the "you should stand up" vibration pattern should be three long
| BZZZZ-es... amplified by it sitting on my hollow-sounding
| printer.
|
| - If another fucking god damn website asks me to chat with an AI
| agent in it's stupid little floating chat bubble, only appearing
| AFTER I interact with the page so it's allowed to also make an
| annoying "chirp!" sound, I WILL become a chicken farmer in some
| remote forest eating only twigs, berries, and improperly-raised
| chicken eggs.
|
| All of these things annoy me, and actively make me hate
| computers. A silent glass brick can go in my pocket because I
| know it's not going to bother me or beg me to talk outloud to it.
| If it was some sensory-overload distraction machine (which, by
| default, it is) it would find itself over the side of a bridge
| rather quickly. It's getting in the way of my human experience!
| The one where I'm the human, not the computer!!
| hinkley wrote:
| When iOS had a couple gestures to get away from needing
| physical buttons, things were pretty good.
|
| However once you realize that you can add new gestures without
| having to defend adding a physical or screen real estate
| button, it takes a lot of discipline to avoid adding more. I
| like to think that Steve would have told most of their people
| to fuck off and we'd have one or two new gestures now, instead
| of twice as many. They would have found some other way.
| whstl wrote:
| Good points...
|
| For me personally a similar thing was when Ableton Live
| transitioned from having a more "direct" interface to having
| popup menus for absolutely everything, and it took time for
| me to adapt to it for live performances. To be fair I never
| really adapted and just moved to something else.
|
| Rather than coming up with creative solutions like they did
| before they just kept adding things to those popup menus. The
| app went from magic (by enabling me to perform live
| effortlessly) to frankly difficult (by having the interface
| become difficult to memorize and getting in my way).
|
| Coincidentally was when they also started racking up bugs so
| much that they needed a couple years without new features
| just to clean up bugs.
| graypegg wrote:
| Also, just to add to that because it's on my mind now, I think
| there's a ratchet effect to "UI that screams at you" or at
| least "UI that tries to tap into my senses". The more of it
| becomes common place, the more people expect to be able to
| annoying you, via your devices.
|
| It doesn't matter that I can force my phone's vibration motor
| to only output an anemic "buhhhh..." no mater what coeffienct
| of bothersomeness some app sends to it. The person causing my
| phone to make that API call still expects the cacophony of pain
| to emit from it. We all become numb to how annoying this all is
| because it becomes the standard TO BE annoyed and distracted.
|
| The uber eats sound is annoying because it conveys nothing
| except "whatever you're doing is unimportant!!!! PAY ATTENTION
| TO UBER!! UBER THINGS ARE HAPPENING!!!". There's a million
| other better ways to do that, so *I* find the information. *I*
| go to the stupid glass brick when *I* can take on a new order.
| But because we already set the expectation that the user is
| allowed to set off an alarm in any kitchen in the city for the
| low-low price of overpaying for food, the stupid glass brick
| tells ME when it's time to deal with it.
|
| Spatial computing (like the example of a note taking app) now
| introduces all of the extra work of cleaning to a digital note.
| The computer wants me to sort my own notes now. It opens up the
| potential of being an e-slob for no reason other than my
| ability to make it as equally messy as my desk.
|
| I don't know why we would expect this even-more sensory-focused
| model of computing to not also ratchet up the stress and dread
| of being alive.
|
| I'm 27 going on 95 I guess, just send me to the old folks home
| now lol
| kaycebasques wrote:
| In _The Great Flattening_ section of the post the author
| literally argues that the way we interacted with computers back
| in the 50s-70s was better because it was more of a full-body
| experience. That 's a silly argument to make. As far as the
| status quo HCI paradigm goes, we've obviously made a lot of
| progress over the last 50 years.
|
| However, I think the post is striking a chord because it's
| pointing to a deeper truth: after 70 years, we are still only
| scratching the surface of all the ways that humans and computers
| can potentially interact with each other.
| jazzcomputer wrote:
| This feels like a article against the fur trade that was written
| on a rare animal skin.
| wiley1454 wrote:
| Reminds me of Bret Victor's article,"A brief rant on the future
| of Interaction design".
|
| https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDes...
|
| I guess one on the reasons why he's building Dynamic Land.
| skadamat wrote:
| Obligatory & highly relevant: Humane Representation of Thought by
| Bret Victor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg
|
| And of course: https://dynamicland.org/
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Seems to be a call for the return of skeuomorphic UI, and
| combining it with things like haptics (actually, fairly classic).
|
| TBH, I'm not especially against the idea, except that, if you
| make something _look_ like a real-world object, it 's important
| to make it _behave_ like one.
|
| There's a hell of a lot of digital interfaces (not just
| touchscreen stuff -digital dials and switches can also have the
| issue), that _look_ like they should behave a certain way, but
| don 't actually do it.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I think of this trend every time I try to connect my bluetooth
| headphones to a third device. They'll tolerate two just fine but
| if you want a third you have to puzzle out which other two
| they're connected to, go find one of them and disable bluetooth
| on it. Then you can power cycle the headphones and your third
| device will now be your second.
|
| I want some kind of magical piece of string which I can touch to
| both devices as a way of saying:
|
| "you two, communicate now"
|
| And then later, to break the spell, I'll just touch the ends of
| that string together.
|
| I don't want to have to dig through settings, I want to
| manipulate physical objects around me.
| getnormality wrote:
| This kinda reminds me of how, in the wake of the smartphone, for
| a few years every company thought they needed to boost engagement
| with their product. Even if their product was something in the
| background that people are happiest not thinking about. Do we
| need to engage with our oil filters? With our clothes washers?
| With our insurance policies?
|
| Some things are best if they stay simple, efficient, reliable and
| stable. Not needy, demanding, high-maintenance, attempting to
| ensnare us through as many of our senses as they can get their
| claws on.
|
| Some things are an experience, other things should just be
| quietly useful. Do we ask ourselves which we should be, before
| adding another colorful icon, with a red dot in the corner, with
| a number inside the red dot, to the poor user's screen?
|
| And I _hate_ haptic feedback. I keep my phone on silent 24 /7
| just to not feel my phone creepily zapping my fingers, and for
| some reason silent mode is the _only_ way I can accomplish that.
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