I realize I’m probably the odd one out here but my ideal UI is a cross between early web 2.0 and like. Analytical instrumentation software, like a LabVIEW program running a $200k potentiostat.
You may not like it, but that’s just because you’re weak. This is what high performance UI looks like:
The over all trend from the last 10-15 years is that UI went from a tool you used to do stuff, from being an interface with the underlying software, to being something that is supposed to look pretty.
Instrumentation and productivity software is ugly. Logic Pro, Adobe Premiere, Blender, Autocad, SolidWorks, OBS: even for premium, expensive software, the UI design is always going to be extremely cluttered and messy to someone just starting out. That’s on purpose: the tools you’re likely to need should always be nearby, easily accessed and visible. As you learn the UI, you learn to process the visual noise faster and it stops feeling nearly so cluttered, and having everything available becomes a blessing.
UI has evolved in the opposite direction, into making everything simple, pretty, and polished. Each of these are on their own great virtues. All else equal, simple is better, pretty is better, polished is better.
But I can’t open the post editor without it overlaying the entire screen and stopping me from interacting with the rest of my dashboard. Conversations on this site break up into a sprawling tree structure! I’m not always responding to just what is being said in this exact thread, or even the notes of this particular post. But I can’t access the rest of tumblr while the post editor is open, making going back and forth between reading and writing a pain in the ass.
This is, to some extent, a power user problem. It’s a friction I run into because I’m an internet poisoned lunatic who’s been here following the other talkative internet poisoned lunatic for far too long. The benefit of certain potential UI features just don’t apply to someone who logs on for half an hour in the morning over coffee and just likes/reblogs a few posts without comment, and those people are in the majority. To much UI also scares off new users, which would be a death knell to an advertising dependent platform.
There is some sense in keeping the UI simple, pretty, and polished. I just hate it. I want my cluttered UI that does everything under the sun and comes with a 324 page manual that doesn’t even cover all the features. I want 3 different feeds and a pane of a post’s notes open, while I write two different posts at the same time, all while my messages and activity pane are in full view, and none of them should overlap at all. The screen real estate is there if you’re willing to tolerate more than 3 UI elements on the screen at any one time.
really good post. here’s some more analytical instrumentation software
Good post but I never expected to need to add labview to my list of filtered tags
Hey, LabVIEW sucks for a lot of reasons, UI just isn’t one of them.
Imo the real thing about labview is if you need a new piece of UI it’s like a quick 10 minute thing to add it
