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0 pointsecon6d ago0 comments

If you have two candidate ui designs you pick the best of the two. If you have an established ui and a candidate the new design needs to be dramatically better. It has to scream superiority. If it isn't that you are just ruining ux.

I install Gimp one time. I like to casual draw on autopilot, usually while doing something else, talking, watching a movie, listening to a podcast etc. For some reason half the icons were missing and the existing set was replaced with the hipster horrifying flat single color monstrosities. This would have been a waste of their time if it was only an option for no one who wants this some place buried deep in the settings where it would only clutter the nesaserily complex options.

With MS it feels more like intentionally trolling the user

The best spot for the applications sub menu is to not make it a sub menu. The second best is to leave it wherever the fuck it was before. I want to struggle remembering what an application was called and wonder why they are organized so poorly. (Not by file Association) In stead they have me wonder where they even are???

0 comments

Induane6d ago

I'm actually not sure what you're saying about GIMP. I mean - I understand the frustration, the "button groups" or whatever they did to declutter things made things (imo) worse; I don't think it's a good default.

BUT

I don't actually understand your sentences for the most part. I really had to work to glean what you were talking about.

I'm not trying to be insulting here; sometimes I write in inscrutable ways too. But - could you reword a few things so I know what you're trying to say?

econOP6d ago

I've never been sentenced to repeating myself. I'm sure people normally hope for improvements in silence without informing me. Thanks!

The general point was that "Improvement" that ruin muscle memory usually aren't. It should be the most basic UI design principle.

One should be able to instinctively click on the Gmail icon while focused on the task at hand. If the icon isn't where one expects it to be you are no longer doing email things. Same goes for having the user search for the inbox inside the application. If they can't find it they are unproductive and feel dumb but they aren't to blame. Some bad designer came up with the brilliant idea to call it "all mail". The inbox is expected to live at the top of the menu. You can't improve it.

It's such basic stuff. It's like someone used your tools or your kitchen and put everything in a new spot. Eh, I mean the wrong spot.

I could give 1000 example inside windows but it seems everyone is trolling their users. They all want to create the new and improved slashdot, now without threaded discussions! - Hurray!

iknowstuff5d ago

Here’s a great example of UX that needed changing despite breaking muscle memory:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38&vl=es-US

1 more reply

rmunn6d ago

> This would have been a waste of their time if it was only an option for no one who wants this some place buried deep in the settings where it would only clutter the nesaserily complex options.

I'm not sure what this sentence means. Perhaps you already knew that Gimp's monochrome icons can be replaced by colorful ones by going to the Gimp settings under Theme -> Icon Theme, and unchecking the "Use symbolic icons if available" checkbox. That may be what you meant by "some place buried deep in the settings". But if you didn't, at least now you know how to get the colorful icons back.

The reason I'm making this comment, though, is to contrast it with Windows. A comment by chasil, left shortly after your own comment, said that "[a]n attentive steward of Windows would allow older gui themes (xp, Win7 Aero, etc.) to be applied for the nostalgic." Gimp has done just that: in Icon Theme, you can choose the "Default" or "Legacy" icon theme, so if you got used to the older icons, you can get them back. And you can still use the newer icon set if you like, but get the icons' colors back by unchecking a (confusingly-named, the name definitely needs improvement) checkbox. Windows doesn't have any built-in way to get the older themes back; if you want Windows 11, or even 10, to look like Windows 7 or XP or whatever version you trained your visual memory on for years, then it takes third-party software to make that possible. (And it may not even be possible, I haven't checked).

When even one of the most infamous-for-confusing-UI pieces of open-source software (I mean Gimp, of course) is doing a better job of providing good UI than Microsoft is, Microsoft has a problem.

econOP5d ago

I'm happy the old icons are still available. I consider the flat icons (by default) a bad idea because one can't use them with peripheral vision. Even after getting used to them i have to look much longer to see which does what.

gzread6d ago

There's another pressure: each major release has to look different from the last one, otherwise it feels like a minor release. In this regard XP, Vista and 7 were successful. 8 also succeeded here, but at the expense of usability.

It doesn't have to use different window layouts, just differently themed decorations. Changing the default wallpaper is a simple way to do it.

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