When you're reading one of these myths, there is no link to go to the next one ; you need to go back to the index. But since visited links are not differentiated, it's difficult to know which item you've just read, and where to go next.

Just using "a:link" instead would yield a more satisfying design: http://i.imgur.com/oz6Hznw.png

No hover on mobile.

I suppose some sort of icon (like an arrowhead) next to each link could help them to afford clicking.

I doubt it, blue and underlined is pretty much a standard. I think it looks perfectly fine and clear. There's a reason most browsers' default stylesheet will make links look like that.

Underlining links (particularly where there are many of them) can harm readability, which is why many popular websites do not do it, including the major search engines, Wikipedia and even Hacker News.

Not having a followed link style in this context degrades the usability of the website because you have to rely on your memory of which links you have followed on the list and which you have yet to see. This is an important and little remembered point in the current interaction design "dark age", as Bruce Tognazzini puts it, and Norman et. al. <a href="https://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-des... recently written about</a>.

(It is of course also true that the unfollowed link style is not very clear)

But I absolutely agree with you that visited links looking like unfollowed links is a usability issue.

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Edit: Added an example.

Of course, you could call the heading 'Links', but that shouldn't be necessary -- the links themselves should afford clicking. It would be like putting a label called "push" above a door handle when the handle itself should afford pushing.

The trick is to always override the color options in Firefox settings

p/s: I'm starting to follow people in HN through this way too, and keeping up with my weekly reading materials (xkcd, manga, etc)

But I took it one step above by disabling colors altogether & sees the web as (mostly) wall of light text on dark background

Is there a way to opt in to the site's color choices per domain?

I suspect it can be done via Firefox's userchrome.css file, but I never dabble in it

But be careful, Electrolysis (multi-process firefox) broke userContent.css, if you are running it you'll have to either disable Electrolysis, or use Stylish. Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1046166

I like userContent.css, it's a single css file, easy to understand/sync. Hope a fix will arrive someday.

But there's the other extreme. Like in Google mobile search, you can't do custom date ranges... they've removed one menu item just on mobile.

On SoundCloud mobile you can't delete your own uploads. On reddit mobile you can only do text posts. Or that new version of gas buddy or Google maps or in Google photos on mobile they removed the download option (but then put it back in).

What this process has morphed into is supporting a narrowing and increasingly specific user narrative.

Instead of seeking genericity, it's specificity. This is manifested as removing ports, keyboard keys, headphone jacks, save as menu options, disabling highlighting of text, or an ability to edit the spelling of a word without having to retype it, or an assumption that you want to tag a person and want a drop down menu of your friends instead of type something...

This is done supposedly in simplifying the product but it would be like making a paintbrush that only strokes vertically and only in primary colors...or a microwave with the number pad removed and only 6 auto cook buttons...

I mean what on earth

And another good example are the horrible 'mobile' styles for forum scripts and wikis.

Look at the SMF one for example. Or the similar one used on Proboards. On mobile devices, you literally can't tell simple stats like what topics have been recently posted in, which members are online or what the last post was in a section. In other words, all the basic things that make a community usable.

But hey, it looks clean, right?

Media Wiki is even worse. On mobile, you can't see any talk page links, any edit histories or any category lists/infoboxes for articles. So if you don't want to search everything or follow random links in articles, then you have no simple way to browse the site or keep up with what's going on in the community.

Taking away useful information and features like this doesn't make the site easier to use, it makes it more annoying. It makes it simpler for random 'guests' while making it more difficult for anyone who actually uses a site or service on a regular basis.

Which would also be an assumption that power users don't want to do things on the move using their smartphones. Sounds like a pretty bad assumption to me.

The Google keyboard on Android offers text recommendations and let's you tap backspace after typing a word with the swipe-style keyboard to delete it in every other app except the native Google search app interface.

Searching on Google with the Google keyboard is painful. This is all on Android 5.1.1 at least. Searches for this bug turn up lots of equally frustrated people.

I imagine some convoluted thing where they're passing authorization nonces around and getting normalized data so they have to make separate requests for each object id. (Eg: /business_name/:id, /descriptions/:id, /ratings/:id ... ) and bring it together client side... This isn't a request, it's a long conversation.

Too many UX designers fuck everything up.

I just use my smartphone now to sent SMS, make and receive calls, and read HN. Because the user experience of doing anything else on it makes me want to throw it in the river.

I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain...

I envision whenever I see these redesigns that there's some Im-so-smart person on staff from like mit media lab that was given dictatorial power over the interface and features, had no actual idea what they were doing, but had too much of an ego to ever admit to it.

The real "most clever" thing you can do is be useful and get out of the way.

Then those aren't designers, those are artists. Artists have the option of creating a singular vision and defending it against all comers. Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing. If your "designers" are artists (or, just as common, you rely on your programmers implicitly being designers), then, yeah, you've got a problem, because they're focused on the product and not the process.

Incidentally, the sort of UX concepts you see on Dribbble are usually art, not design; most of them are created in isolation and outside of actual design methodologies, which is why they look great but are completely impractical for daily use.

If we didn't have this current culture and the older style continued, this mobile phone would have a physical slide out keyboard.

There may have been a physical scroll wheel on the side of the phone that could go through programs, scroll this page And do volume - not just that.

Maybe even buttons on the back of the phone like on the PlayStation controller to take selfies, dim the screen... If the phone was dropped, the replaceable industry standard battery would eject to absorb the impact. Cracked screens would be even more rare on top of that because the device would be a durable absorbent plastic.

The interface itself would have global text and keyword search, the color scheme would change at night, There'd be an sd slot and a dual band gsm/cdma chip etc...

I look at the trajectory we are currently on and I'm envisioning everything to be a toddlers interface in 10 years that's enormously infuriating and useless where you're cattle prodded into doing some very precisely planned flows with intentionally no room for deviation.

Nothing stupid is off the table. Replace the url input box in a web browser with a "share" button to post it on Facebook or Twitter? Google nagging you about new results to some random search from last week? News sites using third party cookies to only present articles on the front page that agree with your biases? A merging of sms and email so you have no idea how things are being sent?

I can see these happening in the Name of Design.

No need to wait 10 years, you've just described what we have now. Sure, it'll be worse in 10 years, but what we have now is already so simple that toddlers do use smartphones.

What's infuriating is that there is no pro- or power-user version. I'd pay AU$1200 for the device you described above but not for a flagship smartphone from Gooapple.

I think we've conflated user desires in things like the iphone as the clever marketing from Apple Inc. I think the effect of their marketing really eclipsed the quality and features of their product line and we've drawn a false equivalency that the methodology of their product line is what consumers actually want.

I have no empirical evidence to support this wacky theory however and I remiss that it's likely 80% wishful thinking.

I think this approach is actually part of the problem of the UX today. It ignores the fact that most of the time, users have no "desires" about the product, and that instead what user does and wants is directly shaped by their interaction with the product. It's discovery by looking it the mirror - you don't see what your users want (because they don't want much, UX-wise), you only see reflections of your own preconceptions.

My belief is you should focus on understanding the problems your target users want to solve with your tool, and then design UX around making the product a powerful and convenient tool for solving those problems. And if you think UX is your product, then I don't want to waste my time even checking it out.

I agree! And, when I talk about "design," UI and UX are only one facet (because strategy, content, and technology are their own components in the larger design space).

When I talk about "desire," I'm following Gause and Weinberg in Exploring Requirements, where they say, "[W]e don't know how to figure out what people need, as opposed to what they desire. ... We do observe, however, that by clarifying their desires, people sometimes clarify what they really need and don't need." In that sense, they are in agreement with your approach: determine the desires your users have (what do they want out of the product, what will the product help them do, etc), and then use that to inform their needs (here's what the product should specifically do or afford). Your experience designers then work with you on how to create experiences that effect the needs to address the desires.

What I'm saying is, I think, that you're already thinking at a very sophisticated level in terms of design, it just sounds like your experience with design has been with organizations at a lower stage of process maturity.

There's this anecdotal story about how people in the early 80s couldn't figure out that the mouse should be intentionally rolled around on the table without a demonstration but once shown it was clear.

We shouldn't have some visceral animosity against something if it takes non-zero time to learn; especially if we are talking about under 30 seconds.

Many major common things take months of time to figure out; literacy, basic arithmetic, cooking, any mode of transportation, relationships, temper, finance, and time management; infants even take a significant time to figure out sleeping.

Anyway, what we have is fine - no further simplification required.

I've had many non technical people ask me how to create folders in those systems...

People can live with a flat file structure; Early versions of DOS were like this. Maybe we should go back to line editors too... So much prettier and simplified! No menus or dialogs! You don't even see a pageful of content at once! Just a blinking cursor and some brief commands. No messy interface...

(I can unfortunately actually see this happening)

For example, I'm making a 'Newsfeed for Twitter' right now (top tweets people you follow have liked/shared) and people I show it to want keyword muting so the feed isn't dominated by Trump news. From a UX perspective I really resist adding keyword muting. Instead I added a 'Tailored' mode that shows top items your friends are talking about that aren't being talked about across the network.

Similarly I had "Top -> 12 Hours | Day | Week" and to remove the "12 Hours | Day | Week" submenu, I created a feed that algorithmically balances popularity and recency.

So I'm saying these choices are ever-present when making software. Some moves like Apple removing the 'Escape' key seem like random silliness but some hard choices are important when making a good product.

Stupid and direct interfaces that "any rank amateur could do" seem to catch on pretty well.

Regardless, I sincerely wish you the best in your project. Send me a link when it's ready and I'd love to take it for a spin.

Yes, an explorer.exe interface for Google Drive would be a huge win. That's also why I avoid using it, and keep everything I can in Dropbox instead.

I think they changed because search became affordable enough to become a valid strategy, not because some genius figured out people are confused by folders.

To compensate, of course, users can invest a greater upfront effort in NAMING and TAGGING.

Several decades ago, I made filing mostly go away by creating files in the directories in which they would eventually be filed. This requires the ability to create nested subfolders, without which no substantial filing system is viable.

There's probably an order of magnitude at which hierarchical filing systems become the only rational approach (depending on the material). It might be 1,000 in some cases, or 10,000 in most cases, and maybe 100,000 in a few cases.

At least, that's how it works for me.....

* Too many themes

* Which of these 10 apps would you like to open the text file with?

* New Word document, what kind of document (lists 40 choices)

What you are really talking about is #34. Designers trying to make it simpler for mobile end up reducing functionality.

In fact you can. Just swipe the menu bar to the left to access Search tools. (I admit it took me a while to discover this)

And I'm truly tired of clicking ellipses to 'see more' Just load the damn page, load the damn comments and paginate. Abandoned Gawker for this reason long ago.

> I know how to manage information

But you really don't, though. If I replied with a 20 lines efficiently-packed wall of text with no paragraphs or linebreaks, you'd complain. If you were looking at a UI that was simply packing UI elements like the lego set for a giant cube, you'd be the first one commenting on its poor usability.

This is what it's like to have no whitespace: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

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You know, this exact attitude pisses me off. The #1 complaint in open source software is how poor the UX is in most of it. Famously, the software is "designed for its programmer", with the interface built to be as simple to code as possible.

It doesn't change because the community is full of devs arrogant enough to think that their users "know how to manage information" and will make sense of it all. They "don't need to be treated like children" because, obviously, intuitive interfaces are for kids.

OK, I get it, you've had bad experiences with whitespace. The G+ homepage is an abomination. Author isn't arguing a tiny column of text surrounded by two giant white columns is good design. Doesn't mean it's always bad.

> But you really don't, though.

No, I really do, you know. Sure, if there's a logical structure in information, you'd do well to highlight it - as well as any relative relevance of pieces of info (IFF you know what task I'm solving). But I'm not 3 y.o. anymore, I can handle more than 5 lines of text on a page. Please don't hide information from me just because you think it's not relevant to the most basic use case.

I'm strongly with Tufte on this one. Presenting information is about dumping it all on the person with minimum artsy bullshit, and helping the viewer make sense of it efficiently. Modern UX paradigms however go in the completely opposite direction - hide everything, remove features, decrease information density.

There's a reason NASA mission control look like this:

http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-090313a-lg.jpg

and not this:

https://i.imgur.com/4CqzSb4.png

even though the latter is exactly what modern UX guidelines would call for.

If you want to build tools to help people solve problems efficiently, make tools. If you want to make a safe-for-work mental masturbation art piece, which is what most mainstream UX guidelines boil down to, then by all means. I just don't want to have it anywhere near me when I have problems to solve.

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> intuitive interfaces are for kids

There's only one intuitive interface in the world, and that's the nipple. Everything else is learned.

As for months/years or training - sure, there maybe (or maybe not even training in the tool per se, but more like general education; you need to know what the data shown actually means). But in a typical tool, 10 seconds or even 5 minutes of training won't kill anyone and would vastly improve efficiency. Want a proof? Video games. Each one has a custom, specific UI. RTS games have so many stuff on screen that they often have tutorials and in-game help. And 8-year-olds have zero problems with understanding all that in under 5 minutes. Outside of gamedev, people seem to have forgotten the concept of introduction, tips and tutorials.

Please backtrack a minute: What we're trying to debunk is that "Whitespace is always bad". The rant you're going into, here, is that some tools are oversimplified or don't give you immediate access to functions you need. That's the tool not doing its job - it's bad UX. Nobody will argue against that.

It also has nothing to do with whitespace.

> Outside of gamedev, people seem to have forgotten the concept of introduction, tips and tutorials.

SMB 1-1 is often praised as having outstanding video game level design. One of the reasons is exactly because it doesn't use "tips and tutorials". It intuitively teaches you to run towards the right, to jump, how to kill enemies and discover secrets without ever popping a tooltip on the screen. Not that those are always bad, mind you, but intuitiveness is game design by excellence.

If you want a delimiter then use a delimiter, perhaps a line? One of my main gripes with "modern" UI are UI elements which have no defined border on them. For example, how do I know where's the border between two buttons, or whether there's any inactive space between them, when I see only text separated by whitespace (or for that matter, whether they're buttons at all or just text labels, which I argue should have no border)? It's quite disorienting.

The thing is, you're talking about very specific examples. My point is that especially in UX design you can't use absolutes like that, such as "whitespace is always bad" or "whitespace is always good". This was also the author's point and this idea that "instead of whitespace we should use lines", "instead of whitespace we should pack things tighter" and so on is absurd.

Now here's UX Myth #35: "Modern UIs have good, established UX". Desktop, web, most everything I've seen are UX disasters blindly following trends. And just because you throw UX designers at a problem doesn't mean they will do a good job at it.

UX design is very much a "ƒfake it till you make it" industry. It's based on good principles and mostly the scientific method, but it has a lot of reproducibility issues because it deals with a lot of subjectiveness. Also, some good UX principles may not apply in all situations.

And think about this: Most people are actually bad at their job. The majority of devs and web designers aren't working at Google/Facebook, they're making awful wordpress sites. This is less visible in UX design but it's still true - the majority of UX devs aren't good.

The second point: that's incredibly annoying and to me the motive looks more like increasing eyeballs on the ads directly below the content and not really about the experience. I understand on Wikipedia, where a particularly long article may kill render times and scrolling experience.

Best thing to do is understand your audience. A 60 year old researching dental implants will need a much different experience than a 21 year old learning Java or a 5 year old reading fairy tales.

Praising flash is dangerous, ignoring all of its security flaws and the fact it's a cpu hogging, battery draining security risk. the fact it's easy to get up and running means little when it can actually hurt your users.

unless it's not as evil anymore? can anyone help me out here, did flash become secure while i wasn't paying attention?

The post seems out of date. Even in the post, the paragraph right before the section on "fun facts" emphasizes lack of mobile platform support.

Edit: Humorously, they address this with the Myth #0 reminder :-)

> ...and myth #0: If you read lists like this one, you don't need to do research

but that #0... cheeky.

"The majority of Flash content cannot be made natively accessible to screen readers. At this time, only modern versions of the JAWS and Window-Eyes screen readers that are using the Flash 6+ player within Internet Explorer on Windows can provide even marginal access to Flash content." --WebAIM

Thus, people remember "stock photos enhance user experience", and not "stock photos harm user experience".

The secondary takeaway is mobile users are more likely to be at home or work than roaming around. I'm not sure what affect that has on UX, maybe as counter to the above, giving users the option to put more time in to a task and/or do one that's more complex.