What I Learned About UX Writing from a British Prog Drummer and David Lynch

I am impressed that UX and Usability can reach such lofty philosophical considerations, yet it's 2020 and I am still trapped by UIs that keep shifting around the content I'm about to interact with and trick me into clicking or tapping where I didn't intend to.

Not a day passes by that a partially-loaded screen moves that button or textarea just a couple milliseconds before I click on it (so now my click goes elsewhere), both on web apps, phone apps, and to a lesser extent, native apps.

There should be a hardcoded Rule #0 of User Experience: don't move anything on screen unless the user directly initiated an explicit action for the specific thing to move.

Just from the title I knew this article would involve Gavin Harrison. He's an incredibly talented drummer, not just technically but musically as well.

His clinic videos where he explains how he came up with various rhythmic designs and how they work with what the rest of his band plays are insightful on so many levels.

"But clarity is also this", followed by a screenshot of a booking that says "$73/night" even though the actual cost is $92/night (which it doesn't say - you have to work it out yourself).

I guess the author really _did_ work in advertising if they think that's clarity.

The quote I found most interesting here was:

  So, don’t feel bad about procrastinating when you need to
  write. Humans put the whole thing of for a couple of
  hundred thousand years. By a conservative estimate, we’ve
  had writing for 4 % of the time we’ve been humans.
  Chatting is easy, writing is an arduous chore.

  — Erika Hall, Conversational Design

Seems like a good rule of thumb for any form of procrastination that's putting you off doing something creative.

(Sidenote) Although it is true that Gavin Harrison has been most visible playing with Porcupine Tree and Pineapple Thief (also King Crimson), both describable as "prog" with some level of accuracy, he doesn't really like to be thought of as a prog drummer at all.

He grew up surrounded by and listening to jazz; he is very vocal on the need for any professional drummer to be able to play as wide a variety of styles as possibles; his own albums feature distinctly non-prog styles.

I feel that the article is reaching, a lot. Seems like the author wanted to talk about something, and needed to wrap it around UX to get more clicks.

I took this article to advocate for explicitly considering the emotions of your users as they work through your interface. The underlying idea would be that interfaces, like words, communicate at two levels, with both denotative (explicit) meaning, and connotative (associative, emotional, implicit) meaning. So, the argument here is that UI language should serve the user experience at both levels. I thought the Slack example was a good illustration of the point, though personally I avoid using interfaces like that. I took the bits about listening to be really about finding ways to understand your user's emotions in relation to the tasks your interface supports. It's for me easier to think about connotative language in ad copy and in rewards for completing actions than in other parts of interaction, but that's why I found the article worthwhile. I have no idea what a "ghost note" might be in an interaction, but it's an interesting question.

Some stupid MBA with a bow-tie was probably pitching how this is going to be a "game changer" for the product. This is already thanksgiving, so probably he collected his nice bonus for "innovative contributions to the company" in reality it's just a disgusting weapon for management to bring it up as part of your 1:1s with your bosses or when you ask them for a raise.

Thanks for fucking everyone up kiddo.