Web UI
I'm sorry that I haven't put more of my thoughts down regarding these topics, and my lack of visual aids, but let me at least chime in.
There's a slew of UI/UX changes being made by big sites like Google and Twitter that have people talking. Well, at least has UI engineers tweeting.
Here's some of the recent ones:
1. The Google+ and Gmail logo aren't links to their homepage. Now they scroll you to the top of the page. I have to elaborate on this one. For a while I had the Google logo as a navigation menu, but now they've switched me back to the black top bar. Strange.
2. Google Chrome removed the "+" from within the new tab button.
3. Gmail redesigned the inbox and added a lot of white space. Others have noted they also changed their conversation UI.
4. Twitter recently removed the permalink behavior of timestamps in favor of a "Details" link.
I could dive right into each of these changes and give you my point of view on them, but let me start by stepping back to reflect on the nature of these changes.
Firstly, when deciding to make changes to a web product, consider both new and existing users. I feel that a lot of arguments forget about one or the other. For example, removing the "+" from the new tab button in Chrome can be seen as a simplification which doesn't negatively effect existing users, but does potentially increase the learning curve for brand new users. This is also an interesting usability pattern: "It might not be intuitive at first, but once you figure it out, you've got it".
On the other side, Twitter has removed a pattern from the days of blogging where the timestamp is commonly used as an anchor to the permalink for that story. Essentially you have a list of articles and want an easy way to find the detail page of any article. While using the timestamp as that anchor has been the norm, Twitter must have found that new users weren't finding that link. Hence, they've added explicit "details" links to do the job.
Getting to my point, I've always felt that there is still a lot of art mixed into the science of interfaces and usability. Surely these sites have plenty of traffic to draw statistical analysis, but the real question remains intent. Who is going to be affected by the change and for what gain and loss? Unfortunately there isn't always a one to one correlation between your desired influence and the result. I think we tend to fail at understanding chain reactions and the hidden complexity of seemingly simple interactions. In other words, I think we can make numbers tell the story that we want to hear.
With all that said, I'm mostly pro change as an opportunity for growth. The web is the most beautiful medium and should be constantly improved. What concerns me most is the intent of changes and the audience they consider. It's fun to think about and always a loft goal to keep interfaces intuitive, yet simple and minimal. The area that really intersets me is the learning curve of using new or changing applications.
There's a slew of UI/UX changes being made by big sites like Google and Twitter that have people talking. Well, at least has UI engineers tweeting.
Here's some of the recent ones:
1. The Google+ and Gmail logo aren't links to their homepage. Now they scroll you to the top of the page. I have to elaborate on this one. For a while I had the Google logo as a navigation menu, but now they've switched me back to the black top bar. Strange.
2. Google Chrome removed the "+" from within the new tab button.
3. Gmail redesigned the inbox and added a lot of white space. Others have noted they also changed their conversation UI.
4. Twitter recently removed the permalink behavior of timestamps in favor of a "Details" link.
I could dive right into each of these changes and give you my point of view on them, but let me start by stepping back to reflect on the nature of these changes.
Firstly, when deciding to make changes to a web product, consider both new and existing users. I feel that a lot of arguments forget about one or the other. For example, removing the "+" from the new tab button in Chrome can be seen as a simplification which doesn't negatively effect existing users, but does potentially increase the learning curve for brand new users. This is also an interesting usability pattern: "It might not be intuitive at first, but once you figure it out, you've got it".
On the other side, Twitter has removed a pattern from the days of blogging where the timestamp is commonly used as an anchor to the permalink for that story. Essentially you have a list of articles and want an easy way to find the detail page of any article. While using the timestamp as that anchor has been the norm, Twitter must have found that new users weren't finding that link. Hence, they've added explicit "details" links to do the job.
Getting to my point, I've always felt that there is still a lot of art mixed into the science of interfaces and usability. Surely these sites have plenty of traffic to draw statistical analysis, but the real question remains intent. Who is going to be affected by the change and for what gain and loss? Unfortunately there isn't always a one to one correlation between your desired influence and the result. I think we tend to fail at understanding chain reactions and the hidden complexity of seemingly simple interactions. In other words, I think we can make numbers tell the story that we want to hear.
With all that said, I'm mostly pro change as an opportunity for growth. The web is the most beautiful medium and should be constantly improved. What concerns me most is the intent of changes and the audience they consider. It's fun to think about and always a loft goal to keep interfaces intuitive, yet simple and minimal. The area that really intersets me is the learning curve of using new or changing applications.