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from the designer-egomania-vs-user-ergonomics dept.
In a not so recent (2015) study Flat Design vs Traditional Design: Comparative Experimental Study scientists measure the performance of current and past interface styles. They reference multiple past articles and studies (some freely avaliable like Ref 3 or Ref 11) so they are not walking new ground, just measuring some more.
Some interesting background:
The density of screen information [in flat design] is often extraordinarily low [10].
...
The main criticism was that flat design ignores the three-dimensional nature of the human brain, which is extremely sensitive to visual cues linking interfaces to the real world. The removal of affordances from interactive interface objects means that users regularly perceive interactive elements as non-interactive, and non-interactive elements as interactive.
Despite these limitations flat design is becoming more and more common, and criticism of experts in HCI [Human-Computer Interaction] and usability is generally ignored by the software industry and graphic designers.
They used different tests: finding a word in text, finding an icon among others and finding clickable objects in a webpage. The process included eye tracking and recording of mouse motions. Subjects were students below 30 years old and already using similar interfaces, so effects in older or disabled persons were not studied. Font tests showed similar times, but worse cognitive load (derived from eye motions) for flat style. Icon tests showed worse times and mental load for flat style, a more complex task pushing the brain out of semiautomatic mode. Webpage tests were also against flat style, with high miss and false alarms indicators.
The conclusions were clear:
Our experimental study supports the opinion expressed by many HCI and usability experts that flat design is a harmful tendency in area of user interfaces, and should be replaced by interfaces based on the design principles developed over decades of research and practice of HCI and usability engineering.
Now we have more proofs that "flat design is inferior to traditional design", we aren't just whiny users opposed to change that don't understand what is going on. Based in personal experiences, and those of older persons around me, my conclusion is that any "UI/UX expert" that keeps parroting the modern interfaces is just a fad-following graphic designer at best (I expect more from those too... but they keep on disappointing me), and in any case should not be allowed into the HCI field. There were other studies, and this one is around 4 years old, so maybe it's time to get back into saner styles. Not that I hope things will improve quickly, after realizing that — since this study — things have slid more and more into simpleton mode.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @04:38AM (5 children)
There's a good reason why iphone jailbreakers have been producing a shitload of themes and skins, most of which aimed at reproducing, with more or less success, the skeuomorphic design pre-ios 7.
I recently pulled out my old iphone 4. It was still on ios 6. My God, the instant you start interacting with the interface, you immediatly realize how superior it is to the new flat design post ios 7. Your eyes are litterally drawn to the proper visual cues, your fingers instantly fall in the right place. I had completely forgotten how ergonomic the skeuomorphic UI is. The experience is simply impossible to describe. And then, you realize immediatly how the modern flat user interface sucks. Big time.
I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with Apple's design team. The only explanation I can offer is that they never actually use the interface they created.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @02:11PM (4 children)
Flat looks like Star Trek TNG UI. Looks nice on the big screen, sucks to actually use. Kinda like being a Trek red shirt; handy to have them around on screen to soak up incoming rounds; being one IRL would suck.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @02:13PM (2 children)
There's a lesson I forgot to mention that usability and appearance are uncorrelated or possibly anti-correlated in UI work. The ideal UI to actually use is a nice incredibly unflashy and unimpressive CLI. Hollywood UIs always look cool but are essentially unusable in practice.
Note that the people making UI decisions are the same idiots that cut productivity by 75% by implementing open office work plans to be stylish. Given that you can assume UIs are also designed without any adult supervision.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday February 11 2019, @06:10PM (1 child)
Ah, no. I'm a CLI user, and a fairly heavy one at that. It took me years to learn all that stuff, and what I know isn't a 1:1 overlap with the next CLI user, either.
A good user interface presents relevant choices in an obvious and accessible manner. A great user interface covers all the use cases that way. Either one should be learnable very quickly. That is not a metric that will apply to any CLI.
The CLI hides everything that you don't actually bury in the prompt.
I'm with you in that the CLI is the most powerful and flexible UI; but ideal? Not even close.
--
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It's a mystery!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @07:00PM
Historically it seems proven based on examples that discovery can be much better with CLIs. CLIs are usually more consistent and less surprising. Certainly to be usable at all it has to be localized and internationalized.
Certainly CLIs are more reproducible and easier to talk about, being in the form of words rather than pictures and shapes and abstract art and movement. We simply can't talk precisely about how to do stuff in CKII (a GUI game) but we can at least in theory talk about how to do stuff in Dwarf Fortress CLI (vaguely similar game... in a VERY vague sense)
CLIs, much like written language, seem more intuitive and easier to learn. Anybody can talk about words and use words. Anyone can write a BASIC program to count to ten; I don't think anyone off the street can build an eight bit binary adder in minecraft redstone. Its kinda like how everyone can use MSword at some level but only a tiny minority of the population can constructively use CAD programs.
Imitating a human conversation works well for CLIs we're programmed to communicate that way. GUI are a little too abstract and imprecise. How would we translate this entire conversation into GUIs if we couldn't use text? Emojis are just a cheat code for text. I suppose the above paragraph in GUI would be rotate some 3-d object to an abstract art depiction representing my points, then cycle thru as many symbols per minute as I can read, while hamsters perform an interpretive dance of my punctuation. Even meme pictures with words on the bottom are cheating the concept. I'm sure there's some widget on the app ribbon that accurately represents my feelings in the above paragraph; good luck finding it.
It may be a side effect where GUI of similar quality to a CLI takes 1000x more effort and historically managers / developers have only put in 20x the effort, leading to awful GUIs.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 11 2019, @04:59PM
Very interesting thought.
Consider even newer Hollywood craptastic movies.
They design some fantastical UIs that look amazing on the big screen in a movie -- where nobody actually has to use them. Those UIs just have to look good. Like Apple, like Fashion, like many artificial things.
Now imagine: Some manager realizes "hey this designer designed that great holo-3D floating movie UI, and won an award for it . . . we need to hire that designer for eight figures to redesign all our products!"
Is that inconceivable?
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