Objectified documentary — Thoughts
Principles that should apply to UX/UI
Yesterday I watched a documentary called Objectified, a pretty interesting one. Here are some thoughts and ideas the footage left in my mind.
Bad design should not even exist.
You don’t have to be a designer in order to distinguish a bad design from good one. If a design is too difficult to use, it gives you the impression that you may be stupid.This can be considered bad design.
Simplicity is the key for good design. But you may ask yourself, does simplicity have to influence the aesthetics? No, simplicity can only affect functionality in order to optimize the user’s experience and should not event touch the usability part of that same experience.
But how far can you go with simplifying your design? When should you stop, take a step back and see what have you created? Yes, I’m talking about the flat design trend. I have nothing against minimalist aesthetics… I love white space, simple colors without textures. But where is the letter U in flat? Nowhere… This is an example where aesthetics takes over usability, where the so called “simplicity” confuses the user.
Does a person that is not so aware of this trend will know that text surrounded by a 1px line rounded bordered box is actually a button? Does text that has no underline (not even on hovering it) is actually a link?
NO.
Why shouldn't we reuse shapes? Why can’t we rename things?
One of the designers from the documentary pointed out that the not so long ago, photo cameras took their shape because of the SLR film, and the new DSLR cameras didn't brought any change in the already common design. I tend to disagree with him… that we have to change things that are already comfortable, for the sake of design...
Sometimes people feel the need to ‘improve’ something that is perfect. Say hello to the new trend of making drop-downs look like tool-tips. You click a drop-down, you expect to see the drop-menu connected to it’s context. But no, someone had to improve it adding that gap and that ugly arrow. Congrats to him.
Going back to basics, instead of following trends is not necessary a bad thing.
Another example present in the documentary is rather debatable. There were a few “robots” that had some weird shapes, mostly camouflaged as pieces of furniture. Why would we call them “robots”? Why buttons are called “buttons”? I really like the way Microsoft tried to reinvent the way we precept buttons. They transformed buttons that have icons inside them into something they call tiles. It does screams: “Hey, click me!”. Don’t really understand why the Metro trend is confused as “flat”. Metro’s design works, people understand it, the aesthetics over usability I've talked before does not apply.
Haven’t seen myself as a “share a thought” sort of a guy, but I’ve gave it a shoot thanks to @medium’s awesome service.
