> The dirty secret of web apps is that we’ve mostly gone backwards in usability compared to native desktop apps from 25 years ago.I wasn't aware it was a secret! Though it certainly isn't just web apps: the desktop has taken steps backwards too, and not just where bad web apps are hosted in simple desktop wrappers.
Back in the 90s and 00s I remember a strong push for consistency and discoverability, where now that often takes a back seat to aesthetic matters and shiny new things. And it isn't just the apps: whole OS UIs have fallen apart, with levels of inconsistency well beyond that which Mac and Windows people used to poke fun at the Unix world for. It is amazing how hard it can be sometimes to see at a glance which app currently has input focus on a Windows desktop, particularly with multiple screens.
There are several parts to the consistency problem, and the overall UX-is-more-shite-these-days problem, including:
1. The conflicting priorities of the range of devices (trying to make something work on a small touch-based mobile and a large desktop environment, often creating something that is imperfect on both).
2. The desire to be subtle and pretty, even where this makes things less obvious (some flat designs are particularly bad for this: little indication of what is actionable, scrollbars becoming single lines of pixels or invisible entirely, title bar text being slightly-whiter-than-mid-grey when active and slightly-darker-than-mid-grey otherwise and sometimes the reverse).
3. The desire to have an app that is easier to monetise where a plain web-app would be better (so you get something that is trying to optimise for four distinct UX arenas: web, mobile web, mobile app, desktop app).
4. The desire for everything to be online-first, so you can more easily justify charging for a subscription (and so you don't have to worry about sync issues inherent in offline-first design) even in cases where entirely offline would be the better choice for the user.
5. The desire to be hip and new with UI design completely overriding years of earlier UX research because form sells better than function. Yes, some of those research results may have been questionable, and some that weren't are less relevant to today's environments, but they all seem to have been thrown away in many places.
It isn't all bad though, some things are still well-designed from a UX standpoint, or if not well-designed at least not brain-dead. I live in hope that people will learn from the few good examples, and we'll have a swing back towards caring about properly optimising for UX instead of just looks & monetisation.