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Comment by gchamonlive | Hacker News Reader

People have different ideas of what's good UX, because everybody comes from their own tradition of using desktops. Some people don't see anything wrong worth evolving from with mouse, point, click. The kind of thinking from the article, from someone that only worked on big companies, is the thinking from someone looking for the next big product, which I look with suspicion. At some point this stops being about good UX and starts being about a good product that makes good profit.

True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible, so everyone can decide what's best for them without losing their minds in endless customisation rabbit holes or having to rely on big and clumsy organizations.

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The difference between big-company and FLOSS UX design, including profit-motivated behaviors (a bit indirectly, but it's definitely there), is specifically addressed in the article, so I don't think that's a very fair characterization.

I actually agree about customization, but that's only part of it, and seems to be pretty orthogonal to what the article is talking about. You can only customize to features that are actually implemented by the system, and coming up with those seems like the harder problem.

I hope I'm mistaken with my unfair characterization, but until I'm proven wrong I'll take these addresses as suggestions rather than core principles.

> You can only customize to features that are actually implemented by the system

> (Customisation) is only part of it, and seems to be pretty orthogonal to what the article is talking about

It's not orthogonal because implementation without ergonomics is meaningless, which is what customization accessibility is all about. It needs to be a core design focus on the end user and not some obscure API only maybe Redhat will use to implement business support.

We have lots to work on already. Hyprland on archlinux is crazy customizable, but it's a far cry from what we should expect from a customizable and accessible system intended for a more mainstream audience.

> True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible,

just like 20 years ago.

"SW version 2028.01: Look man, i just discovered fire. SW version 2029.05: Look man, i just invented the wheel."

Will the same fire and wheel that worked 20 years ago continue to work now? If not we have no choice but reinvent them in our terms. Or keep eating from the trash can, there is no shame in that, at the end of the day you just need to get work done.

True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible

...like it was back in the days when Windows actually had a very customisable UI[1], and then the "skinnable" UIs of the early 2000s (most of which were extremely gaudy, but then again, maybe that was what the majority of the population wanted.) Now it has devolved into little more than this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/experience/perso...

[1] and one of the included color schemes was indeed crazy, but a good demonstration of what was available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247605

Hot Dog Stand is really illustrative of the change in attitude. Previously: "It's your computer, of course you're allowed to make it look ugly." Now: "It's our computer, that's not on brand."

Hot Dog Stand is mostly a reminder of how important a good name is.

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/windows/windows-3-1-include...

It's sad but it's the expected evolution of any closer for-profit system

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