≥If you have two buttons, there is a third ‘object’ created, the decision a user must make on which button to tap. This cognitive load is invisible and rarely discussed but it can be a real source of confusion.
I was just making this argument on a kde mailing list about the kburgermenu. It hides the main menu, that I've been using for 30 years, behind a burger. It adds a surprising amount of cognitive load, and you don't need to be a UX professional to feel it. To their credit, the digikam team have so far resisted hiding the menu by default, but the first day you accidentally press ctrl±m will be a bad one, when you notice that menu missing.
And it is becoming fashionable now to drop the main menu altogether. Why, to save 10 pixels? Darktable and rawtherapee both have a lot of awesome features, but no menu bar. So they each have there own ideas on how best to reimagine the UI, and then you have to search the internet to learn how to do the equivalent of File ≥ Save As.
It's cool to be sleek, stylish and unique. But not in dangerous machine interfaces. FFS. I even heard that Musk got rid of the yellow/black striped safety tape from his factories, because they didn't fit his aesthetic aspirations. And I honestly don't know if that is a myth or not. Given this latest evidence, it is believable.
What is interesting is the fact that so much research, and expensive lessons in engineering and design are now ignored so easily. I wonder if it stems from a deeper societal phenomenon of denigrating the past? The younger generations, caricatured in the media as angry Greta Thumbergs, seem to have declared their undying enmity towards an generation they blame for their apocalyptic fate. So they also reject, instinctively, symbols of those people, the visible signs of the past, and the lessons handed down.
This may be a meandering rant, but I do feel that there is a real problem in UX and UI that is hurting us all. And fixing that requires some questioning of the root causes. Why did we collectively forget good UI paradigms and accessibility best practices?
And it is becoming fashionable now to drop the main menu altogether. Why, to save 10 pixels? Darktable and rawtherapee both have a lot of awesome features, but no menu bar. So they each have there own ideas on how best to reimagine the UI, and then you have to search the internet to learn how to do the equivalent of File ≥ Save As.
It's cool to be sleek, stylish and unique. But not in dangerous machine interfaces. FFS. I even heard that Musk got rid of the yellow/black striped safety tape from his factories, because they didn't fit his aesthetic aspirations. And I honestly don't know if that is a myth or not. Given this latest evidence, it is believable.
What is interesting is the fact that so much research, and expensive lessons in engineering and design are now ignored so easily. I wonder if it stems from a deeper societal phenomenon of denigrating the past? The younger generations, caricatured in the media as angry Greta Thumbergs, seem to have declared their undying enmity towards an generation they blame for their apocalyptic fate. So they also reject, instinctively, symbols of those people, the visible signs of the past, and the lessons handed down.
This may be a meandering rant, but I do feel that there is a real problem in UX and UI that is hurting us all. And fixing that requires some questioning of the root causes. Why did we collectively forget good UI paradigms and accessibility best practices?