Minimalist Affordances: Making the Right Tradeoffs

Re:Minimalist Affordances: Making the Right Tradeoffs by JohnFen on Wednesday November 08, 2023 @01:17PM (#38194540)

> Usability and aesthetics usually go hand in hand. In fact, there is even what we call the “Aesthetic Usability Effect”: users perceive beautiful interfaces as easier to use and cut them more slack when it comes to minor usabiity issues.

This can be true, sure.

But the UI trends in software over the past few years have been so aggressively hostile to usability that I've come to associate pretty user interfaces with hard-to-use user interfaces.

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Re:Minimalist Affordances: Making the Right Tradeoffs by kwhitefoot on Wednesday November 08, 2023 @04:31PM (#38197383)

> users perceive beautiful interfaces as easier to use

But what a one user regards as beautiful is regarded as ugly by another and they both disagree with the creator about how useful it is.

And some interfaces that outsiders regard as very ugly are beautiful in the sense that they are supremely useful to a skilled user.

Over the years that i worked on applications for designers we had to repeatedly explain to incoming computer science graduates that the user interface was deliberately crammed full of information, that it was no accident that the type size was the smallest that was readable. The users could glance at one screen and see without thinking about it that the design was good.

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