> The sad truth is that UIs have gotten gradually prettier
I don't think they've become prettier at all. What they've become is bland and uniform. All basically the same look, apparently trying to be inoffensive rather than beautiful.
If "predictability" is a key principle of good User Experience™, then UI uniformity is the best way to achieve it. Consistent interface patterns translate across applications and make software easier to use, on the whole. Users learn the pattern once and can use it everywhere with lower mental overhead.
I would take a bland-but-consistent UI across all software over beautiful-but-unique. Modern UI design has taken this stance too for good reason.
Also worth pointing out that a "bland" UI of today (let's say macOS or iOS since they are so pervasive) would be stunningly, mind-blowingly beautiful to a user 30 years ago. It's all relative, we've just gotten spoiled by beautiful UIs to the point they are considered bland now.
> Sure, it can be fun at first, but learning a million unique UIs that all look and behave differently is exhausting as a user.
Absolutely. I wasn't calling for anything like that.
Uniformity in behavior is highly desirable. Uniformity in the general location of controls and general workflow is also highly desirable. Also highly desirable (but not in fashion anymore, so isn't really done) is the ability to easily tell how to accomplish things.
But you can have that without being visually bland and without looking essentially indistinguishable from everything else.
> Also worth pointing out that a "bland" UI of today (let's say macOS or iOS since they are so pervasive) would be stunningly, mind-blowingly beautiful to a user 30 years ago.
I'm old enough to remember being a user 30 years ago, and you do have a point. But the most beautiful painting in the world looks a lot less beautiful when every other painting looks just like it.
Also, I would argue that the "beautiful" days of UI design are over. What is in fashion now wouldn't really have been considered mind-blowingly beautiful 30 years ago. Technically impressive, sure, but aesthetically neutral at best.
> we've just gotten spoiled by beautiful UIs
Not spoiled. Habituated. It's the way people are. If you eat nothing but your favorite food every day, you will eventually reach a point where you dislike it.
Variety is an important design goal, too. You can have variety without sacrificing beauty or consistency. You jsut have to break out of using UI frameworks or slavishly following guidelines like "Material Design", or whatever the flavor of the day is.
Regardless, I'll take the UIs of 30 years ago over those of today even though they were uglier. They were also more powerful and generally easier to use.
The sad truth is that UIs have gotten gradually prettier but less usable since their peak in the mid to late 1990s. I honestly don't know how an entire UXR department can be justified if they just keep making things worse. Frankly I am sick of the utter wasteland that touchscreens have created, the giant crater they blasted in people's imaginations. And I'm sick of this endless cycle of redesign.
I do not give two shits about drop shadows or rounded corners or animations. I want to use the frickin software tool to do frickin work. I am not looking to play tiddly winks with an animated brochure.
Bring back the damn drop down menus written in my native language with keyboard shortcuts that are right there in the damn menu. I'm sick to death of iconese. I don't speak it. It's not a language, it's alien hieroglyphics. And stop telling me it's for my own good. It's for their good, so the crap fits and they don't have to go to a translation team. Nothing could be lazier or more hostile to users.
Which brings me to the final sin: if you are a UXR and you are not polling actual users, talking to actual people, sitting down and actually watching them use the thing, listening to actual words coming out of their mouths when they do so, which include an *&#$ of profanity, and you are instead relying on indirect means, then congrats, you are a trying to scale a process that doesn't. fricking. scale.