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Comment by dunkelheit | Hacker News Reader

My main grievance with modern designs is low information density. Fonts are getting bigger and lots of whitespace is added between blocks. This works great for articles (as an example, medium articles look gorgeous and are a joy to read) but just about anything else is less usable when fewer bits of actual information are on the screen.

Ironically, one can also speak of UX-isation of design. I would define it as misguided thinking that the designer knows my problems better than myself. Take "you should take your umbrella" weather app. The information density is exactly 1 bit per screen which is abysmal. What about my jacket? Or what if I want to play badminton? Just give me the temperatures and wind info dammit.

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Yeah, that's a big problem. I've worked with many UX people over the years, implementing their strongly held ideas and watching the metrics of user behavior afterward. My reluctant and painful conclusion is that they don't really understand users, it's all self deception. Though they do have good visual design skills.

Maybe the UX designer's job should include more statistics and analysis? It's not enough to draw mocks for engineers and do a usability test now and then.

If the UX people you've been working with haven't been doing post-implementation statistics and analytical measurement leading to refinement, then they are not UX people. They are visual or interaction designers playing at being UX people.

Unfortunately, the hard truth of it is that most "UX people" are in environments where the post-implementation cycle is ignored. For as many companies out there that claim to embrace the "UX process," I'd say that well over 80% of them don't actually embrace it beyond feature release.

I think one of the reasons here is that a lot of UX people don't work on products, they work on projects. And once you've handed in your deliverables, you move on to the next project and never ever look back.

That's fair. But that goes back to my original statement - you can't reasonably call yourself a "UXer" if you're not doing the whole bit.

> Ironically, one can also speak of UX-isation of design. I would define it as misguided thinking that the designer knows my problems better than myself.

It's not that the UX guy knows it better than yourself, but he strives to be able understand it and then to state it more clearly, in an actionable manner. I don't know the call-center operator problems better than he does, but I was able to identify the pain-points and improvements more clearly. While the user will know the problem way better than I do, I can't expect him to systematize and conceive solutions, as well as ways of measuring them.

That's actually what most UX methods tend to to, nowadays. Instead of asking the users, the UX guy will observe (e.g. do job-shadowing).

Ok, I think we all agree that UX design when done properly leads to a better product ;) Maybe the problem is that the field as a whole became more mainstream in the recent years and thus more susceptible to Sturgeon's law. Hence the negative experiences that I am talking about.

I agree. I don't wish to sound overly unkind to an entire discipline here, but I think in recent years there has arisen a perception that UX is a job which pays well and doesn't require any particularly hard skills: software development involves programming which is plainly quite challenging (and maybe requires being good at maths), design is very subjective, brutal (client feedback can be soul-crushing) and often laborious, but UX is this nice fuzzy domain that anyone with an interest in the web and apps can launch themselves into without much prior training or experience.

At least, I've spoken to a few people who feel like that. And I've worked with quite a number of UX people who didn't really seem to have any skills I could easily discern as being useful (but definitely could produce reams of wireframes that made absolutely no sense whatsoever - I remember one hapless UXer who made 10 pages of wireframes describing how he wanted a file upload dialog to work before a developer gently informed him that said dialog was entirely governed by the OS and we would have no control over it).

There's an independent certification being rolled out in London right now. Free udemy course and links to more info here: https://www.udemy.com/certificate-in-ux/

This is exactly the point. Your problem isn't the fonts or spacing, but the focus on prettiness to the detriment of usefulness.

There is always a balance between the two. There's room between the pain that is design without consideration of the information and the user, and information accessibility with no consideration for visual aesthetic.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. As an example of what I am talking about - one of the internal apps at my workplace recently got a visual overhaul. The functionality is exactly the same. The previous version also had a designer working on it and he too tried to make the thing beautiful (according to what was fashionable then). But because the new version is made according to the current fashion so much less information fits on the screen. I suspect the same thing will happen if someone tries to fit the application into current UX paradigm of dumbing down the interaction.

Then the designer hasn't done his/her job. It should start with an understanding of what the user should be able to do. The story of the user interaction for every screen is vital. Without it, you end up with what you've described - something that may well be beautiful, but is deeply annoying to use.

And although the design doesn't display as much information, what are the needs for thi tool? Could some of the previously displayed information simply not truly be useful anymore? Was it adding visual noise and distracting from the main purpose of the visualization?

"Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information."

Edward R. Tufte

There are already countless weather apps, so people look to differentiate with variants that play on simplicity (rain being one example) or particular angles (one delivers weather with a humorous bent).

App developers will create whatever they think might stick. Further, if there were not merit in simplicity, such apps wouldn't be successful.

The various weather app screens are used to make the point - that the "take your umbrella" app is somehow superior to others. I disagree with that.

Superior only for a specific group of people. People who want a tiny chunk of binary info. A niche market, but one that exists.

You are claiming a universal inferiority. Deriving a universal principle from your own singular experience.

That inability to recognise the existence of other viewpoints, and other markets, is why you need a designer's empathy.

It's an amazingly common thing with developers in general and especially on here. Kind of a narrow focus on some superficially logical "best solution" along with complete dismissal of anything else based on arbitrary metrics they came up with.

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