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Comment by tingletech | Hacker News Reader

when I started doing user interface testing on websites in the mid/late 90s, all the literature I could find about user testing in the engineering library was related to industrial design / testing consumer products.

EDIT: it was probably more accurately the late 90s

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In many ways, the industrial realm is still where the forefront of interface design is, and covers an area far wider than anything software hopes to do right now. In fact, I'd consider the industrial flavor of interface design to be far truer to "interface design" than what we see in mobile/web, which is often just "graphics design" in camouflage.

In industry, UI has consequences. A confusing readout may crash a plane and kill hundreds. A warning that doesn't trigger under expected circumstances can slice a man in two. A button that doesn't require enough force to push can accidentally decapitate. The list goes on. What you get from that side are incredibly usable, incredibly easy to understand, incredibly fault-tolerant interfaces... that are ugly as hell.

Whereas from the mobile/web side we often see pointlessly obtuse, absurdly minimalistic, confusingly designed interfaces that are works of art. We often confuse these with "good interface design" because they are different, new, and beautiful.

I really wish those of us in web/mobile can get off our high horses and learn a bit from un-sexy things like metal presses, diesel locomotives, and airplane cockpits.

In industry, UI has consequences.

Good point. High stakes make for deliberate interface design.

Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things [1] and Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles [2] are must-read classics about human interfaces in both physical and "computer" realms.

[1] http://www.jnd.org/books.html#33 [2] http://www.jnd.org/books.html#34

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