Tired of Bad UIs: Design Guidelines to the Rescue?

[berkeman]

I program basic button-type UIs for my manufacturing test programs, so I'm not expert in desiging popular program UIs. But I get so annoyed each day dealing with software interfaces to various web UIs that it's getting really bad. I need to vent a bit, but more importantly, are there UI design standards and other guidelines that folks should be designing to? Why are so many web UIs so bad?

For example, why would you place a pop-up notification about new messages over the same location where the user would need to click into to deal with the notification (Outlook in Firefox browser)?

Why would you bump the UI notification list in an e-mail application down when a message is sent, and displace the next e-mail notification that you are trying to click on? Why send me off into the weeds like that?

When I do something in a UI, the immediate results should not change the very next target that I'm obviously going to click. Is that rocket science?

Can you feel my pain? How many bad words do you blurt out at work when working with UIs?

 

[berkeman]

I considered applying for a patent through my current employer for the technique of disabling clicks for <<a delay>> after a change in the UI to prevent these kinds of bad misapplications of clicks...

 

[Vanadium 50]

Are there any Standards for UIs?

Sadly, as many as you'd like.

 

[FactChecker]

Having worked in an industry where there was an entire group dedicated to designing the UI, I am always shocked at how poorly some major product interfaces are designed. I don't think that they put any effort into it.
I file that in the same folder with the user instructions that have obviously never been proofread by a person who speaks that language. Can't they hire just about anyone to check these things?

 

[Borg]

It doesn't help but just imagine how bad the underlying software is that supports a bad UI. If they can't get the frontend done right, the backend is probably just as bad.

 

[Klystron]

What are standards for designing user interface?

I asked the same question almost forty years ago when tasked to design the GUI for NASA Ames wind tunnel software system. The sensitivity of UI issues, the fact that the UI may be the only segment of a software system visible to the end users and the strong dependence on proprietary OS and pointing devices inhibits creating a standard UI design criteria.

Critical thinking abilities seem to diminish when otherwise sensible reasonable managers specify a UI. Arbitrary color schemes and button placement become more important than ease of use and functionality. Managers who barely comment on thousand of lines of production code suddenly develop intense interest in the appearance of the UI.

Proprietary pointing devices acquired and sold by a few large manufacturers may preclude standard design criteria. The difference between mouse / touchpad interfaces compared with touchscreens appear trivial in design but profound in operation. Touchscreen user's finger and hand obscure the display requiring different timing and recovery protocols than less obscuring input devices.

The long running OS 'wars' particularly in regards to personal devices stir the pot just as standard UI criteria emerge. Blame Apple suing Xerox PARC or Google preferring Android for handheld devices for perpetuating the situation. Perhaps the lack of standards is just the nature of the UI beast.

 

[phinds]

UI problems? Hell, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we have so many different date formats in the US !

 

[anorlunda]

Ergonomics is a much abused field. I recall a complaint I had about something as simple as a car radio.

A button on the radio could toggle AM/FM if the channel was showing, but after a delay the display switched to time, and the function of the button switched to toggle 12/24 hour format. Naturally, I was slow and several times I pushed the button just at the delay time instant. Therefore, the button did not do the function I wanted.

I complained on the risks forum that if we can't design something as simple as a car radio, that the whole science of ergonomics was bogus. Replies to my complaint pointed out several ways to design the interface to avoid my problem, but they were all so complex that one needs to stop the car and read the manual before changing the station.

Even the PRNDL transmission shifting UI (which is mandated by law) still manages to have variations from different car manufacturers and sometimes people have trouble. Also, I always resented the PRNDL law because it eliminated the Chrysler push button shifting that I thought was the best possible shifting UI.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that too many UIs are terrible. I'm just skeptical that we could eliminate bad UIs with standards.

p.s. I just remembered the QWERTY standard that almost all of us use.

 

[berkeman]

** The "snap" feature/bug for frames is on by default in Windows now (incredibly aggrevating)

** There is no standard for the default placement of the "Print" or "Save" button in Windows (depencs on the application) -- sometimes on the right, sometimes at the top left of the page, sometimes at the bottom right of the page, sometimes...

** There is no standard for whether the logical next step button is on the left or right of the Cancel button, and whether it has color or is clear

C'mon people, let's get together somehow on this to make things easier for everybody!

(I'm probably preaching to the choir)

 

[Borg]

I remember a car from the fifties or sixties where you could change the radio station from a button on the floor. That was a weird design.

 

[pbuk]

Sadly, as many as you'd like.

Indeed.

• Apple https://developer.apple.com/design/
• Google https://material.io/design
• Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/

C'mon people, let's get together somehow on this to make things easier for everybody!

Sure:

• XKCD https://xkcd.com/927/

 

[Mark44]

Having worked in an industry where there was an entire group dedicated to designing the UI, I am always shocked at how poorly some major product interfaces are designed. I don't think that they put any effort into it.

Two examples come to mind of multiple competing UI designs: Movies on DVDs (my wife and I still get Netflix movies mailed to us, in addition to streaming them), streaming services, and auto windshield wiper controls.

The various movie studios can't seem to agree on how the DVD user interface should work. Basic functionality of starting, stopping, pausing, fast forward, and fast backward are fairly well standardized, but additional features such as subtitles and other niceties may or may not be present. Of course, there are a plethora of remotes out there, so that just compounds the problem. I've also found that the various streaming services have wildly different UIs for choosing which movie or series to watch. Some of the services are pretty clever: if you stop watching in the middle of one movie/episode, they "remember" where you left off, and default to resuming from that point. Other services aren't as sophisticated, so you have to fast forward to the approximate place where you stopped watching.

With regard to windshield wipers, there doesn't seem to be any standardization -- my three cars, two of them from Ford, have completely different mechanisms for turning on the wipers and the intermittent controls. One Ford has the wiper function on a stalk on the left of the steering wheel, and the other has the same function on the right of the steering wheel. For the intermittent feature, you rotate a knob on the stalk in one direction, but on another car of the same make, you rotate the knob the other direction. My German car has four stalks, one of which controls the wipers, but has a separate knob on the dash for the intermittent feature.

 

[FactChecker]

Two examples come to mind of multiple competing UI designs: Movies on DVDs (my wife and I still get Netflix movies mailed to us, in addition to streaming them), streaming services, and auto windshield wiper controls.

And we could talk about Microsoft, which seems to enjoy changing the Windows interface to give the illusion of progress. Also, the Tesla Model S Plaid, which has a different steering wheel shape that everyone complains about. Why the change? No one knows.

 

[berkeman]

And we could talk about Microsoft, which seems to enjoy changing the Windows interface to give the illusion of progress.

Don't get me started!

 

[Mark44]

And we could talk about Microsoft, which seems to enjoy changing the Windows interface to give the illusion of progress.

A change that I really disliked was the "Metro" UI introduced in Windows 8. The goal was to make Windows look the same whether you were working on a desktop computer, or tablet, or smart phone. Unfortunately, there might be different types of users who are using these devices, and a one size fits all approach doesn't satisfy everyone. It's still present in Windows 10, but a third-party app called Classic Shell, makes the UI look more like Win 7.

Also, the Tesla Model S Plaid, which has a different steering wheel shape that everyone complains about. Why the change? No one knows.

Blame program managers, who have different goals than engineers, and who need to show their managers that they are doing something.

 

[Klystron]

A change that I really disliked was the "Metro" UI introduced in Windows 8. The goal was to make Windows look the same whether you were working on a desktop computer, or tablet, or smart phone. Unfortunately, there might be different types of users who are using these devices, and a one size fits all approach doesn't satisfy everyone. It's still present in Windows 10, but a third-party app called Classic Shell, makes the UI look more like Win 7.

Concur. Classic Shell made Windows 8 more compatible with prior versions, at least on my laptop device.

Blame program managers, who have different goals than engineers, and who need to show their managers that they are doing something.

Though Chuck Palahniuk worked as a diesel engine mechanic before becoming a novelist, his most famous novel "Fight Club" aptly describes the plight of a UI software engineer subject to the whims of a program manager.

"Can we change the user interface to 'cornflower blue'?" matching the PM's favorite necktie.​

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Don't want to derail the thread, but since we are talking about UI design:
https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12

And here is an interesting video:

 

[berkeman]

And here is an interesting video:

Classic! Thanks for the laugh.

 

[DrClaude]

The Onion had a similar idea:

 

[Borg]

The Onion had a similar idea:

Love the quote at 2:27:

It remains to be seen if the wheel will catch on in the business world, where people use computers for actual work and not just dicking around.

 

[Algr]

And here is an interesting video:

Fake laugh track is obvious.

I sometimes wonder if the reason so many product interfaces are so bad is because other companies have patented any common sense arrangement of controls - and sue any smaller developer who doesn't either pay up or make their interface stupid. More perverse things have happened.

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Nothing was ever as easy and well thought out as Mac OS 6.