
Creativity is bad for UI design (2018) - laurentdc
https://uxengineer.com/good-ux-boring-ui/
======
mathieuh
[https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-
standard](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard)

GDS has this design standard which all apps looking to be certified (obtain a
foo.gov.uk domain) must follow.

Of course, if whatever you’re working on requires you bend the rules some
times as long as you are able to explain to the auditors how breaking the rule
increases usability they will accroît if.

For example, the most recent GDS app I worked on (DfT roadworks are making an
app that exposes all roadworks in GB so utility companies can collaborate and
avoid digging the same hole days apart.

Our user research suggested that our users would much prefer a map
(JavaScript) to a web form. We have a non-JS version but it I clearly a second
citizen only there to meet the accessibility standard.

I love GDS, never have I used a group of websites where the user research is
done so thoroughly that in many cases a fragmented sentence above the field is
enough to explain what to do. They are pragmatic and quick to reply, only
thing is they can be a bit optimistic (GOV Verify, GOV Pay, still don’t know
what’s going on with their PaaS project) which left us in the lurch a bit on a
previous project.

Ended up having to roll our own 2fa and using some Crapita gateway. There were
so many reconciliations with this awful payment system that it basically
became someone in finance’s full time job.

When Kwik-fit are buying 20,000 test slots per (day? Week? Can’t remember) you
want to be sure you get if right or phones start ringing and front pages of
Daily Mails start printing.

------
taneq
A similar sentiment is expressed by the Principle of Least Surprise:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment)

------
hliyan
I can relate. After many years of obsessing over UI designs and document
formats, I've recently begun to yearn the simplicity of the early web: simple,
default font, black-on-white interfaces with textual hyperlinks. E.g.
[https://www.freesoft.org/CIE/Topics/75.htm](https://www.freesoft.org/CIE/Topics/75.htm),
or perhaps even the minimalist, monospaced formats found in RFC's:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484).

There's a certain relief that comes from being able to focus entirely on
content/task because the interface remains stubbornly minimalist.

------
alextingle
> Google’s user-centered approach is the primary reason why we’ve long
> forgotten about Lycos and the other alternatives.

No. Google's _better search results_ were the primary reason they beat Lycos
et al.

(Something that the Google search people seem to have now forgotten :-/ )

------
freshbagels
"Creativity is bad for UI design"

Way to misdiagnose. It's wholly possible to have a UI that is both creative
and easy to use.

Most of the bad UIs and UXs I've seen have been the result of a lack of
critical thinking and/or user empathy.

~~~
hinkley
Overt cleverness is jarring and irritating. I think that’s the sort of
creativity they’re talking about.

When I was starting as a developer I got a lot of pushback on some of the
creative things I did and ended up redirecting a lot of that energy to
reliability concerns, including human factors issues (human errors cause
bugs). At this point I take - and use - “clever” as an epithet.

------
overshard
Good UX also means having a site that doesn't 500 error when you try to read a
simple static text article.

~~~
cyberferret
A victim of HN's "hug of death" I presume. For the author's next post, perhaps
he can talk about good DevOps or hosting on Amazon S3 or Github pages etc.
instead of a $5/mo VPS that will buckle under any sort of load. :)

EDIT: Seems to be back up again now.

~~~
system2
Free cloudflare dns would solve it with cache.

------
bryanrasmussen
The article shows how UX used to be really bad but was improved upon. The
improvements were creative at the time, so in the case were design introduces
something new that has a better UX than in the past there we can see that
creativity was a requirement.

Aside from that in a boring UI many UX mistakes can arise not from creativity
but from lack of thought, or perhaps not being creative enough to solve a
problem or even see it.

------
gitgud
Creative UI's are way riskier, but the pay-off is a unique experience that the
user will remember...

Without creativity, sites become bland unmemorable clones of each other...

------
dmix
Design has always been a balance of usability and the emotional connection we
create through our products.

I find most designers go through two phases, starting out they are very free
form and fancy-graphics-for-the-sake-of-graphics approach, mostly because they
can, which is where all newbies start. Then they learn about
usability/functional design after reading something like "Design of Everyday
Things" [1] which does a great job of selling why the functional nature of the
product matters first-and-foremost as much or more as the way it looks. This
is the first step in being a good and useful designer.

But people don't realize that same author Don Norman released an equally
important book called "Emotional Design" [2] which digs deeper into why
something like an Apple product is not only easy-to-use but is designed in
such that it melds into our life cleanly, it goes beyond just being a useful
tool to where it becomes part of our identity and we treat it like a piece of
art.

The mature designers learn that good design goes beyond merely simplifying a 5
click process down to 2 (for example), towards crafting something that creates
an emotional connection with the people buying it. For example: sometimes
adding an extra 3rd step which communicates information or eases anxiety in
the user is more important than the lowest amount of clicks/time to action is
completed.

Yet most usability-obsessed designs would dismiss this as unnecessary
distraction when the immediate 'conversion' should be 100% the goal, instead
of realizing the wider emotional experience that exists in these same
processes. It's easy to get someone to click a red button over a black one for
psychological reasons, but it takes good design to have it naturally flow as
part of the goal in the users mind at the time, which helps create a solid
long-term connection with the customer.

The type of relationship where people recommend your product to others, not
just solving their problem quickly and forgetting it.

This is the more abstract and intuitive part of design that reaches beyond
what the more scientific approach to usability and functional design can
achieve by itself. That's were things like aesthetics, colour, copywriting,
and the whole experience buying the product and interacting with the company
comes in. The stuff that seems like excess in a totally functional
perspective. This is what turns a product from merely more useful than the
rest of the market into something that is coveted and sought-out by customers
when they see the brand name or designer behind it. It's the attention to the
details and experience of the humans using your product, not just robots
greased to the credit card page the quickest.

Most software/hardware sucks at even getting the functional parts down, which
is why it gets hyped up and valued so much - which is fine, that's where the
lowest hanging fruit will remain. But that doesn't mean it stops there.

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-
Expand...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-
Expanded/dp/0465050654)

2\. [https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-
Things...](https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-
Things/dp/0465051367/)

~~~
cdrini
Absolutely wonderful description. (This comment was more interesting than the
blog post). I've been trying to figure out how to justify to PMs/etc that we
should spend time to make delightful software, and "emotional design" seems
like just the thing. I really enjoyed The Design of Everyday Things; I'll have
to give Emotional Design a read!

------
hughpeters
I think the author is trying to say is that feature creep and cramped designs
are bad. Definitely! A minimalist design (like google's) is definitely a
creative design. Think of Apple, their most creative and successful designs
were rooted in minimalist ideas.

------
sendwithses
Our first homepage UI for
[https://www.sendwithses.com](https://www.sendwithses.com) consisted of plain
text
([https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctc7phttvaic8z5/Screenshot%202019-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctc7phttvaic8z5/Screenshot%202019-05-06%2011.23.53.png?dl=0)).

We had to change it to the current design since a lot of users were fidgeting
about the lack of 'more' content. We came to the conclusion UIUX is not
something to be fixed but a matter of how comfortable your end users are.

------
anomaloustho
> We find average faces to be the most attractive because they are easier for
> our brains to process.

This point might be shoehorning attractiveness into the usability of
interfaces. I don’t know that “average” facial features are attractive because
they “don’t make us think” in the same vein. Everything I’ve heard points to
average facial features being attractive because they are indicative of
diversified genetics. (which could provide an advantage against birth defects,
vulnerability to viruses, and genetic disease)

------
dehrmann
> We've watched websites become increasingly similar as standard web
> conventions have been formed and adopted. Some of these include...social
> media icons in the footer

I've never used these buttons, but I'm not a normal web user, so I'd love to
know how much use they get. I'd bet less than one in 10,000 pageviews get a
like button click.

~~~
llarsson
They are there for analytics purposes (mostly), as in, if you embed the
Facebook Like button (served with extensive tracking enabled), they know who
has been to your site. And you can then try to target those users with ads.

~~~
dehrmann
But that can be hidden in a tracking pixel.

------
dehrmann
UI is one of those things where it's best if you don't even notice it.

------
insickness
False dichotomy. Minimal is not the opposite of creative. On the contrary,
working within constraints, such as the principle of minimalism, is a hallmark
of creativity.

------
cookie_monsta
An entire blog post to restate the KISS principle? OK...

------
lostgame
Currently experiencing the 'Hug of Death'.

------
giongto35
Good System = Boring Architecture

------
jonny383
Opening the link:

Sorry, that didn’t work. Please try again or come back later. 500 Error.
Internal Server Error.

Ah, the irony of the boring UI article title and the unhelpful error message I
received.

------
thescribbblr
Server error?

~~~
njsubedi
HN's hug of death. Please try this
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190404100502/https://uxenginee...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190404100502/https://uxengineer.com/good-
ux-boring-ui/)

------
platz
The folks who miss the weird and creative days of the web are uncultured in
the ways of UX !

