Too narrow, hidden, minimal feedback…

  • Boozilla
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    1429 months ago

    UX design got better and better for many years…but it has definitely been regressing over the past few years, IMO. It’s weaponized minimalism at this point. Because it “looks cool, bro”.

    It’s a variant of enshittification.

      • P03 Locke
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        329 months ago

        Yeah, it has a very specific meaning, and people are now using it to mean “things becoming shitty”. Just because “shit” is the base word doesn’t mean that’s what the whole word means.

          • P03 Locke
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            9 months ago

            No, it doesn’t.

            From Wikipedia:

            Enshittification, also known as platform decay,[1] is a way to describe the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets.

            From the guy who coined the term itself:

            Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification.

            • Boozilla
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              -49 months ago

              Being a pedant is never a good look. You’re missing the larger point. The same corporate impulse that drives platform decay ripples out to things like UX design. And that impulse is: the customer doesn’t matter anymore, we already got your money, only what we want matters.

          • @mindbleach
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            39 months ago

            “Conservatives want to conserve stuff!” levels of logic.

            Words mean more than what they sound like. If you don’t know this, you cannot speak English.

      • @[email protected]
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        69 months ago

        Thank you. I think it was overused even the moment it was used for its intended purpose. It feels really im14andthisisedgy to me.

        • @[email protected]
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          9 months ago

          I’m actually really glad we’re hearing it.

          It’s a sign that people are finally starting to have higher standards.

          I think those with low standards would get upset. Nobody likes to admit they’re being taken advantage of.

        • Boozilla
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          -29 months ago

          And I think this is a dumb take, considering who coined the word and why. It’s a variation of “I hate anything trendy or popular”.

      • pizzaboi
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        69 months ago

        Underuse IMO. We’ve grown complacent in so many regards.

      • No_
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        39 months ago

        Are they wrong for using a word correctly? Or are you wrong for being a bitch about it? Hmmm.

      • Boozilla
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        -19 months ago

        Yup, and when I used it, I knew someone would bitch about that. It’s funny how people get hung up on their pet peeve more than they do the more serious underlying issues we’re talking about here. It’s the same phenomenon politicians and wealthy elites use to keep us fighting each other over trivial culture war bullshit instead of pulling together to improve our material interests.

    • @[email protected]
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      219 months ago

      applying any design language feels wrong. it’s pure manipulation – i remember being forced onto the official twitter app and couldn’t believe there wasn’t a scroll bar. i felt lost; the timeline felt infinite, swallowing

      • I_Miss_Daniel
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        299 months ago

        They want you doom scrolling.

        It’s one reason I like kbin. I’ll read to page 5 and that’s my limit for a session. Endless scrolling is annoying.

        • snooggums
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          99 months ago

          On kbin you have the choice to set it to doom scroll if you want.

          Choice is the important thing with something like doom scrolling.

          • I_Miss_Daniel
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            59 months ago

            Yes.

            I also like upvote and downvote separated. Some apps don’t have that option.

    • Ghostalmedia
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      59 months ago

      I would are that the design industry has gotten better about understanding a user’s core motivations, and how design can solve business problems, but it’s gotten worse at classic interaction design / HCI.

      The UX industry is FULL of bootcamp people or former graphic designers who never really studied or were passionate about interaction models.

      As with engineering, the demand for UX designers is so high that a lot of mediocre talent can easily get a gig.

      • Boozilla
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        59 months ago

        Those scenarios you paint definitely exist.

        In my decades of work experience, I’ve also seen it play out a few ways. Sometimes the shop creating the software is too cheap to hire a real UX designer, and they make some poor coder do their best with it (and the coder will usually admit they are not good at it and is frustrated with being coerced into it). Sometimes they hire a good UX person, but that person is constantly overridden / micromanaged by some “marketing genius” MBA type with horrible ideas of user behaviors they want to “push” and other behaviors they want to “disincentivize” in the UX.

        On a few (rare) projects, I’ve seen it done correctly where the UX designer is considered a vital part of the team and their input is valued and they do a good job and focus on what users actually want and need.

        Some businesses still understand that if your customers are happy, everything else tends to go better for your businesses. But in this era of relentless enshittification, more and more businesses are looking at their customers at naughty children and/or suckers to be exploited. I keep hoping for a massive backlash against this trend. But it feels like it has to get even worse before it will get any better. They have conditioned younger customers to just expect shit products, shit service, and shit subscriptions for everything. UX design has gotten caught up in this sea change, unfortunately.