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Comment by tinbad | Hacker News Reader

I have an issue with all the designers who claim to have found the X number of design principles to create 'good' design. There's just something wrong with trying to define anything as 'obviously good'. What's obviously good for me might not be for someone else and the current landscape of incoherently designed interfaces/products/OSes/webpages we use every day just proves to me that if there was such a thing like an obviously good design we would not be in the mess that we call UX/UI design today.

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I guess it is like beauty, which is culturally defined. But, as we're heading towards a monoculture (everybody the same OSX MacBook, and thus the same GUI preferences), design preferences become increasingly similar for everybody.

Not for me, however, as I still prefer the CLI in most cases.

Preferring something based on productivity or ease of [power-]use does not necessarily mean you prefer that design.

They're also going with the concept that resources aren' finite.

Between the quest for "the most amazing pixel perfect UX/UI" one didn't have time to properly dispatch NSKeyedarchivers in a queue with groups and synchronise on the main to update the UI or deal with large Core Data writes on a private queue, so now the app is gorgeous but slow as shit until one get some more time.

The problem with most designers who camp in Photoshop is that they become oblivious to implementation details that matters once you run the damn thing.

UI/UX as previously stated, is very subjective although there is always objectivity to performance. But hey, at least we got that amazing custom menu bar that is totally better than the other menu bar that wasn't exactly the same.

Those who've worked in body shops will know this. Take a look at the new Twitter client. Obviously it has some nice style to it. But it's slow, buggy, and crashes.

Factor in that resources are finite and design can be good enough, but performance can't be good enough.

I disagree. UX/UI design has to be obvious, people need to know what to do, without having to ask for help or look at a manual. And 'obvious' is easy.

Certain arrangements that already exist are basically universal. People know where to look, people understand certain symbols. Use those, don't try and reinvent them. Use what people know.

Trying to be clever is what dooms design.

Trying to be clever is the main thing that has led to progress and eventual better design.

Amazon's drop down menu comes to mind - http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-...

Ah, I think you missed the point. Amazon's solution to the menu behavior, yes, is clever. But what it presents to the user is not. It is a dropdown menu, that looks like every other drop down menu ever made. It's not novel at all in that respect. A user sees it, and they instantly know what it is, and how it works.

Yes, Amazon did something clever to make it work as well as it does, but barely anyone even notices that there's anything special about it. It 'just works'.

That's key. The actual design pattern here didn't change at all. It just works better.

Can you make something work better? Do it. Are you trying something because "icons and folders are a dated idea"? Then don't.

Fair enough, but then wasn't the idea of icons and folders considered clever at some point in the way you are describing. It seems that the vast majority of design is not better than the current accepted standard, but every so often someone designs something which is good and becomes the new standard. At some point you have to be willing to do something potentially stupid if you have any interest in pushing the boundaries or am I still missing the point you are making?

I think gmail's redesign from a few years ago falls into what you are describing - trying to design something more "modern and clever" which in some way was to the detriment of the users (at least if you were judging by the reception and all the critique). But at the same time if you don't try to maintain a more modern interface I think you risk being left behind, so you have to balance "clever" with "expected" design.

What is your intended goal in 'pushing the boundaries'? Where is the reasoning? Are you making life better for people, or are you confusing them? What is 'falling behind' in design? Does your product work well? Is it easy to use?

If you believe something has to change, just because it should, then I think you're coming from the wrong place. You have customers that depend on you, your job is to serve them, not some sort of need to invent the next great design revolution.

Most problems already have some sort of solution for them. When you make a claim that your solution is better than the existing solution you often provide a better UX in some respects. For this you have to make design decisions some of which don't have an accepted standard. This is where you are pushing the boundaries.

On the other hand, UI style and UX naturally improves over time. Compare Windows 95 and Windows 7. There are certainly style and UX changes in the latter that are superior. A lot of people may not like Window's Ribbon interface but I think it was definitely an interesting new design, one which I think will in the long term prove to be better than plain drop down menus.

So I guess I am making the claim that if you are really invested in your product you probably have ideas on how it could be improved and a lot of those ideas are uncertain but deserve time to be attempted.

Rocks and sticks are simpler than computers. By your logic, we should still be using rocks and sticks.

Learning is a necessary part of getting efficient with complex tools.

There can be obviously good principles while design still remains hard. Chess, for example, has plenty of simple principles (like "control the center of the board") that are hard to execute.

However, designers writing articles tend to be looking for insights that advance their knowledge. They don't write about things that are obvious to them, even though those are the most useful for the rest of us. And most non-designers are really looking for typography and color selection advice, which has a similar relationship to design as programming has to computer science.

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