I have a desktop Windows only product that I sell (10s of thousands of clients). It does not have the most eye pleasing UI design but it is very functional and ergonomic. All possible actions are clearly visible and / or discoverable. And every action can be accessed in less clicks then in any of competitor's products. I actually get some praises for it.
Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that the product sucks "cause it is ugly". Most of those complaining were Apple users who installed a product using Parallels. One of the emails actually was written by pro UX designer (at least this is who the author claimed to be). This got me curios to find out what is really wrong in my GUI that irritates some users so I asked for short interview on Skype/Phone. We had a discussion. Among the things he showed me the example of light gray text on white background and told me that is very eye pleasing an mine are too contrast. For fuck sake I could not read the example he showed to me without glasses and when I complained he said that the beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. I just bailed out. Maybe he is right but I'll stick to what I believe works.
I have had conversations with several "designers", some from FAANG, and all have held the general belief that having strong authority over how the UI looks and getting eye-candy at the cost of usability and ergonomics was 'without doubt the right choice'.
In my frank opinion, many designers hold a position of subjective judgement and thrive on the power that comes with that. This is like a developer making arbitrary decisions about a product because they like the technical implementation better.
Data, and actual user preference, should always be the key decider. Not some arbitrary rule-decider.
Be careful with data-driven design, you can easily end up fooling yourself into seeing evidence in the metrics for whatever you want to be true, I've seen it happen plenty. Accidental p-hacking by well meaning but misguided "data driven" programmers is not at all uncommon.
Furthermore, in my experience the data doesn't necessarily mean what it's believed to mean, with the favored explanation for the data being assumed to be the correct explanation. (e.g. "We want more engagement. This data shows users are staying on this page longer, that's a measure of engagement." It may instead be a measure of your users getting confused, lost, etc.) My point here is that an earnest attempt to be data driven doesn't eliminate the matter of bias. Being cognizant of possible bias when evaluating the data is important, otherwise you'll have a false sense of confidence.
The danger with data is it can keep you trapped in a local maxima. Also there's the whole thing with a lot of users seeming to be more and more annoyed with telemetry.
Maybe, instead of either just declaring what is the "right" way or observing users like some kind of behavioural scientist, we could just go back to, I don't know, asking them.
This is a subtle problem of incentives and information. The designer has the problem that the product will ship with only one of the possible designs. And the feedback process is patchy at best. There's no way to get a good overview of a bunch of forums where some people love it, but others hate this or that function.
What you can get feedback for is how eye popping or outrageous (no F keys!) your suggestions are. People in the office will react, and they are the ones who will decide what actually gets shipped.
Who could be right, the multiple designers who do this every day, or my opinion about data (which I don't see backed up by any data)? If Steve Jobs had followed user preference he'd have made a faster flip phone.
On another topic, putting someone's job into quotes just isn't a good look for any argument. If you have to straw man to get your point across, it might not be that great.
The reason I put air quotes around "designer" was to convey the fact that I believe _good_ designers would base their decisions on logic discovered via some form of the scientific method. Studying what makes user interfaces understandable, and why.
Data doesn't need to be "track everything the user does and do A/B testing", it can come from many sources: user behavior studies done in the past, cognitive psychology, experience gained from mentors, etc.
Would you make the same "they do it every day so they must be right" argument for engineers? Product managers? Stock brokers before data-driven trading? Doctors before the rise of modern medicine?
"Who could be right, the multiple designers who do this every day..."
Those designer might actually be very good one's but they might have different goals. Their design might be all about eye pleasing hoping that mos potential customers will glance at it, like it and buy it. Ergonomics might not be their concern at all.
There are other UX designers though, making GUI for pilots, nuclear station operators etc. etc. They have somewhat different goals. I feel that my brain digests what they do way better then the stuff coming from a first group
I come from a different background where I learned to value reaching the goal in most clear and shortest way
If you read The Design of Everyday Things, you'd gladly remember that to each user-unfriendly design, the author sarcastically added "but it won a lot of design awards". Which implied that the givers of those awards had one-track mind. And since the book's author co-wrote the article that we discuss, aesthetics at the cost of usability is a major sin for him.
On the other hand, since (insert obligatory joke about $1000 monitor stands), losing customers is no longer their worry.
This is a take that I had never considered. Given our apocalyptic predicament, perhaps faster horses would have been the better choice... What a twist.
Also... are self-driving cars smarter than horses yet? I've wondered if it would be easier to train a dog to drive a car than a computer. Working dogs are just so crazy smart.
> he said that the beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. I just bailed out. Maybe he is right but I'll stick to what I believe works.
I’m with you. Speaking personally, I think he is wrong. My definition of true beauty is both appearance and design. Something that is pretty to look at but not very ergonomic is ultimately not truly beautiful, in my mind. For something to be truly beautiful, it must be both sexy looking and ergonomic (and high quality, etc.). When something cute looking has usability problems, it starts to annoy me, it begins to look cheap and not well thought out, and ironically ultimately ends up looking rather ugly. Once I see bad design, it affects how I feel about the looks.
Stuff around my house has ended up in this category. Throw pillows on the bed look great when the bed is made, but they’re not for sleep and they’re always in the way. Ugly. Cute glass jars in the kitchen that I can’t quite fit my hand into because they were made elliptical instead of round to have a low profile and be cute... they seemed like a good idea in the store, but it only takes trying to use them a few times before they really don’t look cute anymore.
I love industrial design. Because it mostly exposes function and quality. Stuff made for home use, sure it is pretty but they can have that plastic for themselves ;)
I bet that beauty wouldn't have trumped usability (in terms of Apple's preference and an elite buyer's purchase decision) if it also wasn't positioned and marketed as an aspirational / cool product.
There's a lot of people that just want to own it because it's the goto for aspirational / luxury electronics.
That aside, I always buy only Apple because other products just deteriorate in terms of performance at an unbelievable rate. Have owned windows and android products and after using them for like a year, it's hard to believe that it's the same shiny machine that you thought would be a good buy.
"...other products just deteriorate in terms of performance at an unbelievable rate. Have owned windows and android products and after using them for like a year, it's hard to believe that it's the same shiny machine that you thought would be a good buy"
I use Windows and somehow my laptops and desktops do not deteriorate. Works like a charm. Same goes to my Linux setups. I do not use Android much beyond plain phone calls so can not really judge that one.
I've had my Windows computer for like five years and it still works about as well as the day I purchased it, as far as I can tell. My iPad of a similar vintage is not really that good for surfing the Web anymore (though to be fair I think we can probably blame the explosion of complexity of Web pages) and I can't seem to make any purchases in the App Store anymore. I think it's hard to make much judgment here without more serious data than one or two people's experiences.
It's windows and not the hardware. I've never seen an issue with android though, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. In that case it has been hardware, both Samsung and Google, usually with overheating chips. I still prefer the Android world though, I find the products more intuitive.
That can not possibly come from a UI designer. Usability is always first, and it’s possible to make it look good while maintaining a11y/usability properties.
Maybe putting engineers in charge of UI design isn't all that bad. We may not be good at making a UI work but at least (trying to) make things work is what we do. With designers, it's hit and miss.
I only make configurable things that MUST be configured. I've long learned that my audience when it comes to handling software for better or worse has the average intelligence approaching that of my cat.
Not trying to insult here. Just general observation
I've observed something not too different. I suspect it might be that I and my users are at different levels of zoom with respect to the product.
They really don't think about it at all except for when they need to get specific tasks done that the product does well. They are max zoomed out.
I necessarily am zoomed in to the entire product, from every lowly line of code all the way up to the aggregate product. I am max zoomed in.
This leads to a sense of alienation when I observe the relationship between my users and my product. Sometimes it's simpler to think that I actually don't know my own product, so different is the perspective.
Really it's a matter of how much the product occupies in my mind versus theirs; they are using it opportunistically and would prefer to spend as little time as possible thinking about it. Which I suppose is a good argument against over-engineering; for a mass market product, core features beyond the third will only be used by the developers.
Anyhow, all that is to say I can understand your comment, and I often think that I'm lucky the emacs developers or GvR don't look over my shoulder when I use their software because they would give their cats Nobel prizes. :)
> Not trying to insult here. Just general observation
Sorry, still an insult.
But ok. So your users have the intelligence of a cat and are generally really helpless with your software. Then the obvious way forward is to include non-discoverable features, hard-to-read text and extra-confusing mouse gestures...?
Sorry I believe it is not because I did say "when it comes to software". I freely admit to being an imbecile in Quantum Chromodynamics. Same goes with my users. Many of them are actually lawyers, dentists and other rather well off people. I am sure they're intelligent in many fields. But for many of them the software is not their cup of tea. That's just life and I do not see too many Leonardo Da Vincis walking around.
"Offering them hard to read text will help" - well I appreciate your sarcasm but allow me configurable option to ignore it ;)
Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that the product sucks "cause it is ugly". Most of those complaining were Apple users who installed a product using Parallels. One of the emails actually was written by pro UX designer (at least this is who the author claimed to be). This got me curios to find out what is really wrong in my GUI that irritates some users so I asked for short interview on Skype/Phone. We had a discussion. Among the things he showed me the example of light gray text on white background and told me that is very eye pleasing an mine are too contrast. For fuck sake I could not read the example he showed to me without glasses and when I complained he said that the beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. I just bailed out. Maybe he is right but I'll stick to what I believe works.