I liked interfaces designed by autistic geniuses for other autistic geniuses, they were intuitive and consistent to high IQ people, people who think quickly and structured and hierarchically and of more than one thing at a time, and not design for mediocre people who think slowly and flat and jumbled and painfully and only ever want one choice, the most popular one.
I like designs that acknowledge difference and are configurable. I come from a different culture than designers, and I'm really not interested in them or what they have to say, and I'm not offended that they are not interested in me or my interests. I just don't see why they get what they want but they don't even acknowledge that I might want what I want.
it started with "skinz" for desktop music players: who wants their computer desktop music player to look like an in-dash aftermarket sound system for a car with flourescent segmented displays and many interface compromises for compactness? that does not whip my llama's ass.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yawjaSD__70/hqdefault.jpg
i know i know i give you the urge to downvote me because i don't just say the same things everybody else says because i like diversity of choice.
Me not being a "traditional or natural" designer, I like to have a set of best practises recipes or laws. These laws might be difficult to constantly hold in your head. I think this is a PERFECT starting point for AI to "bulk check" some screens.
Honestly I would map it to a short-cut, like I map "format source code" to a shortcut. If you building business software a set of laws or (shortcut mapped to them) can be really useful as a sanity check.
In fact I just did that:
- Downloaded the UX Laws as a screenshot
- Downloaded a screenshot of a dashboard (a userform might have worked better)
- Asked ChatGPT and Claude to do a review with those laws in mind and then to create a new mockup based on those recommendations
Project 1: CMMS Dashboard For Maintenance (fast food chain)
- Dashboard old: https://imgur.com/a/R3wrMpr
- Dashboard new (Claude): https://imgur.com/a/cYq4gE8
Project 2: https://swellslots.com (Surf Forecast App, arcade look and feel)
- Forecast old: https://imgur.com/a/W3daZrP
- Forecast new: https://imgur.com/a/kNi2Nvg
The problem with a set of mutually conflicting laws like this is that good designers are able to intuitively understand which ones to ignore and which ones to use for a particular project.
Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom"
"Cognitive Bias - A systematic error of thinking or rationality in judgment that influence our perception"
That's not a law! It's barely even a useful concept in the form presented here!
Instead of being a useful collection of rules a UI designer/dev can apply, this just feels like the author picked some terms, looked up their definition in the dictionary, and threw it all together so he could sell posters.
The better solution is developers and designers taking a sense of pride and craftmanship in this sort of thing. So many of my least favorite interfaces are presumably designed and implemented in an environment with a gigabit connection to their apps backend so they never catch it.
I would recommend reading another headline on this forum in regards to idiomatic design: [[https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-desig...][#4: Bring Back Idiomatic Design - by John Loeber]]
This is why I strongly prefer smaller models for programming.[0] They're fast enough that the activity stays real-time.
It also forces you do to split the work into smaller chunks and verify it continuously. So you stay active and engaged, and your mental model never gets out of sync.
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[0] I once gave three simple code changes to a big model and a small model. They both completed the tasks successfully. The big model took 3 times longer and cost 10 times as much.
In that moment I switched my definition of Best Model from "tops the benchies" to "the smallest, fastest, cheapest one that can reliably do the actual job."
However, per item #2:
> Choice Overload
> The tendency for people to get overwhelmed when they are presented with a large number of options, often used interchangeably with the term paradox of choice.
There's 30 "laws" which are all text-based content buried under 30 irrelevant pictures that up half the visual space on the page.
It looks pretty, but it isn't an effective way to study these.
Present information in a linear flow rather than a tree where users are forced to open every box.
Don't present opinions as facts.
