
Why are web apps so badly designed from a user-friendliness perspective? - hamiltonians
an example is plotly...impossible to make it work<p>Do developers actually have beta testers who aren&#x27;t also developers, such as random people, or do they just assume that their users will somehow figure it out . it&#x27;s like the people who design this stuff don&#x27;t actually test it on random people. having your fellow developers do your beta testing is not a good beta
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LarryMade2
Complex web interfaces aren't easy, you gotta do a lot of magic to make a
browser be like a desktop app. I think most struggle in getting their concept
to work in the first place, and when they get to ease of use it's a lot more
work they may not want to invest time in.

Given web limitations you cant just do the same UI as a desktop you have to be
mindful of web browser input idiosyncrasies, screen size limitations, etc.

I've written intranet database stuff, which can be a bit a tad rough and user
intensive - but when you are doing more public facing things you have to
concentrate on simplification, sanity checks, added security and cross-
platform issues. That stuff doesn't always come easy.

Until you get a handle on how you are going to pull-off doing X on the web you
can't think too much on how to make it work easier. I think you would see
better UX when you have seasoned web developers doing the apps, as they
understand the environment and can now also concentrate on UX.

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eyelidlessness
Might as well follow up with "why are desktop apps so badly designed...?" Web
technologies are certainly their own specialization, but UI/UX is bad for a
most user-facing software, regardless of the technology used to present it.

Web technologies don't make UI/UX harder (in a lot of ways, they make it
easier!). There's just a lot of them, and they've become dominant for the vast
majority of things the vast majority of users experience.

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flukus
Because we design around database tables and not workflows.

Quite often our underlying architecture simple mirrors the database structure
with pattern like the Repository pattern and Active Record. Then it flows to
the user. Instead of the user creating x as part of their workflow, they have
to first create x on the "add x" page then go back to what they were doing.

Of course this only applies to some software, you couldn't make a word
processor that encapsulate the user workflow, but for many apps, especially
LOB apps, you can.

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Jtsummers
Not a web app, but another interface: Hulu on Roku. When watching a movie you
get an overlay suggesting "Watch this next" that cannot be removed by hitting
the back arrow or any other means, doing so leaves the movie. This means you
can't watch any scenes in the credits without having 1/4 of the screen
obscured.

Why did this survive into production? It's clearly user hostile, especially
with the way a lot of movies (comedies and action movies in particular)
include extra snippets. It survived because it drove people to click on the
next movie. Which is what Hulu wants, they _want_ people to keep watching (it
bolsters their viewership numbers which is what lets them charge $$ for
advertisers).

A lot of web UIs have the same issue. The things they measure are clicks and
page views. They don't care how good/bad the page is if it gets them views and
clicks that they can sell. It's like anything else where what's measurable
becomes the goal itself, even when creates a system that's hostile/counter to
the original intent.

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ceyhunkazel
I am not an UX expert, but idea of beta testers who aren't also developers is
a solid idea. Even big companies fail on this. Recently I have written about
it

[https://hackernoon.com/users-are-not-programmers-amazon-
expe...](https://hackernoon.com/users-are-not-programmers-amazon-expects-pipe-
character-for-user-input-d56c6d178515#.akg8hsnea)

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dorfuss
I think that things are easy and intuitive for the designers, not so much for
the user that tries the app for the first time. Devs don't see the problem.
Moreover serious qualitative research is expensive and difficult to do.
Finally it is hard to actually apply changes proposed after doing the UX
research because it may require a lot of coding which costs both lots of time
and money.

In short: the business wants to deliver fast and the users will use it anyway.

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anon98736817
maybe its cause they get shitty useless feedback like the above "impossible to
make it work" is not constructive. It's an utter waste of time. To read and to
write. Man up and put some fact in your bitching.

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fratlas
HCI is more of art than science. That's why UX/UI engineers have their own
title, not just "web developer".

