Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar [LWN.net]

Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

Posted Aug 23, 2012 18:48 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar by jedidiah
Parent article: Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

> No. The "best practices of UI design" are pretty worthless.

As I said in other topic, people who say stuff like this do not know anything about UI design. And this is PROVED by your next phrase:

> The main focus should always been the end user and the use case.

THAT is the FIRST best practice of UI design. Design for the user, thinking about the user, prototyping, iterating, testing with the user, etc.

> Otherwise you get nonsense like Ribbon and GNOME3.

Well, actually... user tests show that the Ribbon can actually be good when it's well designed, and lots of people around the world use Office 201x without lots of problems. Some people actually conducted PROPER testing on it.

GNOME3 does not have anything like that AFAICT, so, you are putting two very different things (united only for your dislike of them) together. Anedoctal evidence == No evidence.

> You end up with UI disasters that go into the release of a project without even getting decent end user feedback first.

Repeating what I already said: *real* UI designers don't do that.

> Even the much over hyped interfaces created by Apple suffer from this kind of foolish ivory tower approach to real problems.

At Apple, there was one engineer responsible for the calls on UI design. They had a lot of good eye for details -- and that's why it is where it is today -- but not a lot of best UI design practices like user testing. Specially in the last interactions. And they are lost in the controversial skeuomorphism fad (the jury is still out if it's good, bad or just plain ugly -- no conclusive user testing AFAIK).

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Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

Posted Aug 23, 2012 19:57 UTC (Thu) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

>Well, actually... user tests show that the Ribbon can actually be good when it's well designed, and lots of people around the world use Office 201x without lots of problems. Some people actually conducted PROPER testing on it.

An user interface which takes lots of vertical space which is at premium instead of being on the sides which are much less used, "PROPER testing"?
Somehow I doubt it!

Speaking about failure, I remember the Gnome's decision to use "spatial browsing" which was backed supposedly by usability research, they had to revert it in the end.

Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

Posted Aug 23, 2012 20:38 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> An user interface which takes lots of vertical space which is at premium instead of being on the sides which are much less used, "PROPER testing"? Somehow I doubt it!

The MSOffice201x ribbon actually takes less vertical space than LibreOffice's menu plus two (or three, in some cases) lines of toolbars. It is also spatially better distributed, and the size relations between the icons reflect their "use count" in user testings. See Deborah Hix's usability works... IIRC lateral toolsets have a problem because the distance the mouse has to travel is bigger. Anyway, people who do a lot of DTP or other "give me my vertical space" application IME make use of a rotated display, whenever possible!

> Speaking about failure, I remember the Gnome's decision to use "spatial browsing" which was backed supposedly by usability research, they had to revert it in the end.

I have heard those rumors, but I have never seen any real research.

Kamp: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

Posted Aug 24, 2012 20:08 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

Lots of "anecdotes" == overwhelming evidence.

No. You only get meaningful, much less overwhelming, evidence if you have a representative sample, and listening to whomever yells the loudest is not a reliable way to get it. Improper sampling is exactly why the plural of anecdote is not data.