
Eye Candy vs. Bare-Bones in UI Design - nreece
http://uxmag.com/design/eye-candy-vs-bare-bones-in-ui-design
======
pedalpete
This article makes some good points about the balance of design & graphics,
but with the first image being of the windows 'ribbon' interface, I wish the
author would have used that as an example, and am curious if the author would
use that as an example of bad design. Personally, i still can't adjust to the
ribbon, too much going on, and lacks direction.

At the same time it is great to hear Donald Norman perspective 'prettier
things are actually easier to use, or are at least are perceived to be.' This
is my opinion of Mac's (which I am typing this on now). Pretty, but I think
most people confuse that with easier to use.

~~~
iamcalledrob
I would argue that the Mac is easier to use not because it is pretty, but
because it feels considered from the ground up to be a pleasure to use, rather
than an afterthought.

Things people mistake for "pretty", such as the genie minimising effect are
actually cues that show clearly what your action has done.

Similarly, having a single menu bar at the top of the screen gives the menu
items infinite height, so they're much easier to target than the menus on
Windows (this is especially important on laptops with trackpads).

..of course, some of it is just pretty. damn pretty.

~~~
Qz
At the same time, the single top menu makes it harder to access menu items of
two programs simultaneously. If you have two different programs side by side,
in windows you can just click the menus on either one, but in mac you have to
click the window you want to use, then move up to the top to click the menu,
then back and so on.

I'm a bit biased, I have double display set up so I constantly switch between
4-5 windows at a time. If I had to click on the top menu all the time as on a
mac I would go a little more insane.

Personally I think both the mac and windows setups are junk, which is why I'm
making my own desktop shell.

~~~
brehaut
Purely anecdotally, i have found that applications that are native to the mac
are not as reliant on the menu bar for the most of their tasks than their
windows counterparts. As a result i don't find having to switch applications
to access a menu particularly onerous.

~~~
Qz
I think menu bars in general are a relic and should be done away with
entirely. I can't count how many applications have the obligatory
File/Edit/Tools/Help menus when the application has absolutely no need for
them. Some of the newer microsoft apps have been moving away from them, which
is a good sign, but they're obviously not the king of innovation.

I have an idea for how to shake things up, which is what I'm working on.

------
kentosi
One opinion I do want to throw out there is with the screenshot the author has
of the mac Coda application. What strikes me as completely out of place
interms of visual asthetics is the mac vertical scroll bar.

While the rest of the screenshot looks pretty consistent interms of colour
(low-contract, grey(ish) shades, modest use of gradients), there's this
bright, shiny, blue, bubble-shaped scroll bar wedged inside a heavily-
gradiented scrollbar background.

Whenever I see UI articles pointing to mac appeal, this is the first thing
that strikes me as out of place. And I hope I'm not the only who thinks so.

~~~
Groxx
You're most definitely not. Look to iTunes to see what Apple is experimenting
with in terms of UI, it's typically a release or two ahead. Some things are
retained, some things are lost, of course.

I think the shiny-blue scroll bars are doomed fairly soon, and looking at
iTunes suggests they are indeed. The scroll bars there are a much less
obtrusive non-glossy, paler base with a blue-grey tone, all _heavily_ anti-
aliased. They're also narrower, which I hope is kept. I rarely use the scroll
bar, and most Mac users I know don't either; the two-finger scroll is more
than accurate enough, and any specific point is still accessible by clicking
on a specific location. Having a large one is unnecessary space waste, and
draws your eye away from the content of the application.

------
brehaut
One factor of pretty that wasn't discussed is that a pretty (rather than just
bling-fueled) interface is often one that has a lot of attention to detail
paid to it, thus it is an indicator that other aspects may have received
equivalent care.

~~~
lsc
Really? I mean, I had one (potential) customer who checked out a rather nice
(tier 3) data center and said he didn't like it because the paint on the doors
was scratched up. "if they ignore that detail, what other details are they
skimping on?" The guy ended up over at one of the cut-rate (tier 1)
datacenters that skimped on cooling and power but paid extra attention to
things like paint and free drinks.

Now, I'm in no position to judge UIs, but I am in a position to judge
datacenters, and picking the datacenter with the nicest paint is about as
retarded as picking the programmer in the nicest suit. I suspect (though, of
course, don't know) that a similar principle applies to UI design and eye
candy.

~~~
brehaut
Firstly, I agree that its certainly not a definite signifier of quality, but
it is an indication that care has been paid.

Secondly, the floor on the data center to me sounds like its closer to the box
the software came in than to the interface itself. From a users perspective
the interface _is_ the software whereas the box (and the painted floor) are
merely a nicity that you only see once. I can't stretch the analogue any
further though because I don't know data centers.

~~~
lsc
I'm just railing against this idea that unrelated details are an indicator
that care has been paid to important things. Now, not everything is like the
programmer in a suit; I know so little about UI that it's possible that things
I see as unrelated details are not, in fact, unrelated.

~~~
brehaut
The connection between pretty and good posited either in the linked article or
one of its links (perhaps [http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/27/realizations-
of-rounde...](http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/27/realizations-of-rounded-
rectangles.html) ?) is that the cognitive workload required to process visual
cues is (inversely) related to the qualities that are often perceived as
'attractive', e.g. round rectangles, non-garish color schemes, sensible type
choices etc.

~~~
lsc
heh. well, my idea of 'pretty' is probably so far off from yours that I
wouldn't know. I'm halfway colorblind, so all your well-tuned colorschemes are
for naught. A friend made me a (presumably really nice) multicolored pastel
logo for prgmr.com. I thought looked like a yellow circle. Apparently, it had
four different colors.

But yeah; I mean, I've seen a lot of really bad websites that have obviously
had a lot of effort put into making them pretty. Remember the 'click here to
enter' intro screens? or flash-based websites? One certainly can be pretty
without being usable.

~~~
Qz
I'm curious... do you have a hard time distinguishing the color
magenta/fuchsia from other colors? Or does it stand out pretty well?

~~~
lsc
I had to look up what that meant; but yeah, uh, I can see purple, but I can
have a hard time distinguishing between different purples. In general, the
pastel colors look, well, pretty similar.

------
richcollins
Eye candy is mostly about conspicuous consumption. It makes it look like you
have resources to spare so you must be doing something right.

