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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's lack of interest in UX is well on its way to killing Windows. In fact every previous version of Windows and Office from 3.1 onwards had a lot of UX/usability/design input.

Google care so little about design they've just spent the last few years trying to get everyone to use their Material guidelines, and Google's doodles are legendary.

Facebook is a lost cause, so I'll give you that.

UX isn't just user experience - it's customer experience. And if your customer experience is bad, you don't have customers for long.

You can deal with this with hyper-aggressive bully and thug marketing and legal lock-ins. And as a plan, that totally works - until it doesn't any more.

Good UX is cheaper and creates less friction for everyone.

Ultimately, it's just much easier to deal with customers who don't hate you or your products.'

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> Microsoft's lack of interest in UX is well on its way to killing Windows. In fact every previous version of Windows and Office from 3.1 onwards had a lot of UX/usability/design input.

Please don't state that Apple does a better job. Please don't be one of those UX guys.

I couldn't disagree more sir.

Microsoft just started giving a shit about design with all the flat stuff and clearly it's failing harder than ever. They should focus on engineering and solving hard engineering problems more than ever if they want to survive, not design.

Google does now seem to care about design but its core product still has one input box and button and that's still the main way they make all of their money, and engineers still run that organization. They hired the hipsters when they made their money.

In the end design is not indicative of shit in high tech companies, I think my opinion is valid.

I think your opinion is misguided and it comes across as immature. Design can be indicative of a variety of important things, like a company's commitment to its users/customers. Google's simple search experience was a conscious design decision that helped it stand out and build a following early on. Although Facebook has changed considerably, when it first launched, it was a design inspiration compared to MySpace. For all the dismissing you do of design, it's interesting that, at least with these two examples, you've picked companies that made very smart and very conscious design decisions early on, helping them rocket to the success stories they are today. For pioneering companies that are tackling hard engineering problems and bringing these breakthroughs to the public, I would agree that design might not be as important initially. This is one of the advantages of being first to market with something people want. You get to set the bar and you can get away with a lot of things (Although it's not an example of breakthrough tech and more an example of a first mover advantage, Snapchat's UX is horrible [it has improved!] but since they popularized disappearing content, users were willing to deal with a poor user experience.). As markets mature, as technology spreads, or as established players attempt to enter new markets (Google with Google+), it can be harder to stand out on engineering alone unless you continue to push boundaries and break new ground (Hangouts!), but even then, it might not be enough (Hangouts...). In other words, in scenarios where technology is getting commoditized, you could argue that design (how it looks and feels) can become even more important than engineering (how it's built). Is the iPhone's success due more to it's revolutionary engineering or it's thoughtful design? (Personally, I think it's both + brilliant marketing, but you get my point).

I'd disagree with both you, I use all 3 of the most publicized OSes on a daily basis and I don't see MS as laggig. My experience is this:

Linux is improving on a daily basis (but there are too many DEs/WMs which adds to barriers of entry for new users [1].

OS X has dropped the ball, I see too many services being pushed that I do not want and they are getting in the way of me using my Mac.

Windows are actually ahead of the times. The every device with one OS was such a good idea on paper, but they jumped the gun. It's the legacy windows support that hold them back. The lack of start menu in Win8 is a priime example, it wouldn't have mattered if everyone had gone over to touchscreens on Jan 1 2014, but they didn't.

[1] Recently the good people at Bodhi Linux forked E17 calling the fork Moksha, because they want stability over new features, I would have preferred Jeff and the team to contribute to Enlightenment, but that would mean the Enlightenment team would need ears and continued support of E17. Now I'm not sure I want to swap my DE to Moksha or just keep using E19, forking is the FOSS plague, and its saviour.

Good UX comes from good performance. Everything else is subjective.

If it's sluggish, buggy and anything else that the Engineers usually deal with, it doesn't matter how Material their design is.

The design can be iterated on and experimented with as long as you can ship. A psd isn't shipping.

You can have the quickest, cleanest backend in the world, but if it's laid out badly at the frontend, it doesn't matter.

I remember having to use a SAP-like bit of software called MFG/Pro years ago. It was reasonably quick to perform any action, but the workflow was baroque. In order to consume a part from stores, no matter how trivial (a washer? a nylon screw?), in addition to actual data entry, I had to click 'next' 27 times and 'back' about 6 times, and at the right points in the workflow or it would have to start over. Literally 27 times, working through various inventory wizard screens. It was the poster child for bad UX.

The same company's paid support patch process went like this: we give you credentials to the FTP site, and it's up to you to check it for updates. No, we won't send you an email when this happens.

Similarly, good design can make up for mediocre engineering. It's really not as black-and-white as you're painting.

> The design can be iterated on and experimented with...

All you're arguing here is that engineers should do design. Do you think it's likely that an engineer (at an equivalent salary no less) would be better than a designer at design? Outside of small start-ups, your argument holds no water unless you want to say division of labor should be avoided.

> ...as long as you can ship.

You don't need a shippable product to learn and develop. Iteration and experimentation can be done more efficiently with design methods such as prototyping. Why should an engineer build something before gathering evidence that it will work?

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