Why Gorgeous User Interface Design is Important - MyColorscreen Blog | Hacker News Reader

Why Gorgeous User Interface Design is Important - MyColorscreen Blog

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18 pointspeachananr20 comments

Yes of course gorgeous user interface design matters. But pitching two calculators up against each other is missing the point.

Beauty matters when everything else is equal. It's very easy to make something a simple as as calculator look good if you got the chops, because the UI have been solved for you.

But interface design is not just about how it looks. It's about how it works. And I will take something that works over something that looks good any day.

To resonate on your comment : when thinking about UI design, I personally never dissociate visual and behavior.

The UI behavior has to comply with the visual metaphor it manipulates. This is quite hard to do properly for people (like me) that does not master one of the discipline : UI behavior is controlled by code, and with a slight lack of care, it slips easily in a spaghetti nightmare if you want something finely tuned, and UI visuals, well, also needs great skills.

A team that manages to set up a cooperation for those two competence will bring you great UIs.

Exactly. But there is one area that I wish more developers would explore and that is the ability to code proper transitions. To actually sit down and do some research into motion graphics.

Right now that area is primarily explored by flash developers and there are many really cool geeky things you can do to optimize transitions. If you really wanna shine as a developer with these kind of interfaces, learn how to optimize your transitions.

Why is this important?

Because it's what happens between the clicks that going to create the feel of the product.

The winning todo app looks to complicated to me.

I like how the "work" icon is a wine glass!!

And for my taste, I like the metronome on the right better, and the calculator buttons on the right calculator better (but the little display on the left calculator is nice).

You may want to view the Calcbot demo here:

http://tapbots.com/software/calcbot/#overview

It's nothing revolutionary, but they did go above and beyond the typical calculator app with their tape history.

In other words, I'd agree with you if all the app was could be seen in the comparison screenshots, but the fact is the attention to detail in Calcbot went well beyond just the aesthetics. It works and looks good.

I am not saying you can't have both. Just that claiming that as long as your app is gorgeous you will win is missing quite a lot in the argument. I say this as a designer btw not as a developer.

Ah, good point, I thought you were dismissing it because it was a simple app. My mistake.

I hate the term "User Experience". Especially considering that most people think that user experience is about making the crap as shiny as possible.

A good user experience has nothing to do with looks....make the crap fast (especially on mobile) and as easy as possible to use. That's "the secret".

Looks are definitely a "part" of the user experience, but not "the user" experience. If you don't believe that font selection, color, white space, layout, and image selection palys a significant role in communicating information clearly and quickly, then your tool box is missing a few tools.

Yes, things being fast and easy to use are part of a user experience as well, but they don't make up the complete user experience.

I totally agree with you here, speed also plays a great role into this, but don't you think using SDK buttons seems a little too lazy?

Good design doesn't always mean as shiny as it could get. Minimal approach such as Windows Phone 7 UI design is also consider as a good design.

I understand what you are trying to imply here. I just realized that I also should have given some comparison on shiny and minimal designs as well. Thanks for mentioning about this. :)

Aren't you overcompensating? Looks are quite obviously not everything but are you really suggesting that looks don't matter at all?

(I'm unable to use apps with imperfect looks. An ugly icon is enough. It just drives me crazy. I have to delete them. I'm strange that way and most people are probably not like me but still … I can't really believe that looks don't matter at all.)

Edit to add a little tangent: That's not to say that custom "beautiful" interfaces are always desirable or easy to pull off. If you don't have it in you the end product will be a horrible mess. (Especially for all those poor picky people like me.) Sticking to the stock UI is probably the best idea in the vast majority of cases. Going custom requires serious talent and an unquestioning attention to detail. At least if you want to please me.

This article is entirely lacking analysis and relies purely on subjective assumptions to back up its judgments. A little digging around and pulling out a few "whys" would have been appropriate here. As it is, it might as well be blog-spam.

I must be an engineer. I liked the three losers better.

At least compare equal products. On the list Awesome Note VS Ultra Notes I, are the only comparable ones (even though iPhone app vs Android App).

"Calcbot VS Calculator", is like comparing HP-48 vs Mac inlcuded Calculator. "Bjango VS Musical Pro", the former is a disk scratching app, while the latter features a metronome and tempo.

Edit: UI and UX reflect the functionality, features, plans, mission, identity (the one people identify and wear shirts about), etc. If the application and its functionality itself is not comparable, why should the UI be?

what's wrong with SDK buttons? or how does it matter on a calculator? Google uses "SDK" buttons and everything. Hacker news hardly makes an effort in the UI direction. yet its the best I know. If all things being equal, UI wins? if all things are equal between your product and someone else's then I think you have a serious problem on your hands.

You've just given examples where a great UX has made up for any apparent UI-deficiencies. SDK buttons are "good enough," in that they're UI elements that won't negatively impact UX on their own (implementation obviously matters here). "Good enough" is all you need when you have a superior UX.

Someone actually took the Metronome example code from Apple and made it an app? Really?

Somewhat nitpicky, but I think sometimes UX matters more than UI, and there are elements of both in these examples.

From Wikipedia: User Interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface) - The aggregate of means by which users interact with the system (e.g., all the means of input and output)

User Experience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience) - The architecture and interaction models that impact a user's perception of a device or system ("all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product").

UI is the "how" of creating an interface (implementing shiny controls, that sort of thing) and UX is the "why" (creating a good experience for the user).

What's interesting is that there are many counter-examples... for example Craigslist. Terrible UI/UX, yet it is wildly more popular than it's closest competitors. For a while Plentyoffish was the most popular dating site, same thing there.

Totally agree! Another example is Reddit and Dig. But I believe the trend will eventually give weight to UI to be as equal importance as UX as web styling technologies evolve (CSS3). I am not saying that UI will overthrown UX, but I think It will goes together.

Thanks for commenting by the way. :)

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