Bring Back Idiomatic Design

Posted by phil294 11 hours ago

Bring Back Idiomatic Design(essays.johnloeber.com)

400 points | 196 commentspage 4

andyfilms1 9 hours ago|

And while we're at it, stop with the popups and notifications.

I don't care about the new features in a browser update. Ideally, nothing at all has changed.

I don't want a "tour" of the software I just installed. I, presumably, installed it to do something, and I just want to do that thing.

I don't want to have to select a preference for how a specific action is performed in your software. If it's not what I expected, I will learn it.

And for the love of GOD, nobody wants to subscribe to your newsletter.

bccdee 1 hour ago|

I actually might want to subscribe to your newsletter, provided I read & enjoy your article. So why does the pop-up always interrupt me before the page has even finished loading?

If you inset an unobtrusive newsletter button 60% of the way through the article, perhaps I'll actually click it (or, more realistically, follow your RSS feed).

sph 7 hours ago||

Shows a picture of Office 2000 and says "The visuals feel a little ugly and dated: it’s blocky, the font isn’t great, and the colors are dull."

Are you serious? Nothing has come close to it. Yeah we have higher resolution screens, but everything else is much less legible and accessible than that screenshot.

satvikpendem 9 hours ago||

Not sure how you can put the genie back in the bottle, every app wants to have its own design so how can you enforce them to all obey the same design principles? You simply can't.

zetanor 7 hours ago||

Day-to-day usability doesn't bring much "wow" factor to a sales pitch.

basilium 6 hours ago||

Am I the only one who doesn't know what that "Keep me signed in" checkbox is for? I mean, I was a web developer for many years and I rarely encountered this checkbox in the wild, don't remember implementing it even once. I mean the choice itself is very ambiguous. It is supposed to mean that the login session will only live for the duration of the current browser session if I uncheck it. But for a user (and for me too) that does not mean much, what is the duration of the session if my browser runs open for weeks, what if we are on mobile where tabs never close and tabs and history is basically the same thing (UX-wise). If I decide to uncheck it for security reasons (for example when I'm on someone else's device) I want to at least know when exactly or after what action the session will be cleared out, and as a user I have zero awareness or control there.

I don't advocate for removal of this checkbox but I would at least re-consider if that pattern is truly a common knowledge or not :)

ryandrake 6 hours ago||

I've never seen one that actually works. It seems like whether or not I check them, the next time I log into [every site] I have to re log in.

zahlman 5 hours ago||

Really? I don't think I've ever seen one that doesn't work. What sites are you using where you encounter this? Have you checked your cookie settings?

userbinator 3 hours ago||

Seconded. Your browser is probably set to clear cookies on close.

userbinator 3 hours ago||

It's basically the expiration date on the cookie that keeps you logged in. Very common on forums and the like, and some even let you select how long you want the session to last.

readitalready 8 hours ago||

This is a really huge and a fundamental flaw in AI-driven design. AI-driven design is completely inconsistent. If you re-ran an AI generated layout, even with the same prompt, the output for a user interface will look completely different between two runs.

ceejayoz 8 hours ago|

You can steer it towards reusable components, though.

Find a run you like, and build off that.

userbinator 2 hours ago||

You definitely need to filter if you use AI. Looking at all the vibe-coded creations that are showing up these days has changed my mind from "AI-generated code is bad" to "the one using the AI is doing a bad job of it".

ufocia 9 hours ago||

UIs are inconsistent even in the same app. Nevermind plugins or suites. It would be great if menus were customizable so you could plug in your own template.

jfengel 9 hours ago|

I prefer to avoid customizing apps. I want to be able to sit down at a fresh install (or someone else's) and not spend time learning their preferences.

When someone asks me for a checkbox so they can have my app work their way instead and everyone else can do theirs, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. The check boxes are hard to discover unless you put them front and center, in which case they remain there forever serving no purpose.

I would rather redesign the entire interface, either to find the right answer that works for everyone, or to learn what makes one class of users different from another. The check box is a mode, and nodes are to be avoided if I possibly can.

I realize that this puts me at odds with a whole class of users who want to make their box do their thing. It's your box and you should do what you want. And I really love style sheets for that. Rather than cobbling together my own set of possible preferences you should have something Turing complete. Go nuts with it.

carlosjobim 8 hours ago||

I think most non-Linux users haven't made a fresh install in 5-10 years. Preferences files and apps get transferred when you buy a new computer or update your os.

jfengel 7 hours ago||

I was pleased how much was passed over from my last phone. I got the same brand so it's not surprising, but wow it is so much better than The Good Old Days (tm).

kjkjadksj 7 hours ago||

I remember the old days being surprisingly smooth. There was some verizon tool that transferred all my contacts from the dumb phone to my first smart phone.

msie 6 hours ago||

That windows 2000/win 95 interface was peak windows design.

allthetime 8 hours ago||

Apple was doing a pretty good job until whatever happened with v 26.

On the web, the rise of component libraries and consistent theming is promising.

SoftTalker 8 hours ago|

They were not. Their own apps on iOS are wildly inconsistent.

jgalt212 1 hour ago|