Isn't this sort of a Fizz Buzz for a UX/UI design professional? I don't mean to demean anyone, but I see this sort of a thing literally everywhere. Hiding important and absolutely crucial information (that can make or break your product) in the name of minimalism. Coming out of a company that has one of the highest hiring bars for software engineering, and yet, their products have such an awful UX/UI. This isn't an exception, it is a pattern.
I worked as a freelance graphic artist/web designer once and while I wasn't bad at the job, I really hated one aspect of it:
Everybody and their kid thought they knew better than I did. When I said: "Yeah but this should really be visible, because accessibility", they would say: " But it looks better if..."
People in high paid position certainly want "has taste" and "knows what looks good" to be part of their self image. Many fails in design and architecture happen for that reason alone.
I then ended up programming and working in film sound, because very few people in both fields tell you what to do when they have no idea what's going on.
Ah ha, someone with the same experience as me. My degree is in Graphic Design, but I immediately ditched the idea of using it after university and took up programming instead because everyone has a fucking opinion when it comes to design.
Imagine a pointy-haired boss, or some rando in Marketing doing your code review (shudders) "That value is a trademarked name of our product - I mean variable - please capitalize it and add a (TM)" I'm glad I don't get noob oversight the way designers do.
I actually studied film and through my music experience I was always "the sound guy" programming was actually more like a hobby until it turned out I am actually not bad at it.
I did a fair amount of indie films and know sound guys, so the part I am confused about is: what are you programming in film sound? is it per-film, or like software for film sound in general?
Ironically forgetting that visual minimalism produced by hiding things isn’t really minimalism.
It would be like me throwing all my things in the garage and advertising my house as Spartan. No, it’s not, it’s a mess. The mess is just hidden until I need to do something.
"Hiding important and absolutely crucial information"
If we want to give awards for this my vote would go to Apple. I find their products to be horrific when it comes to completely undiscoverable features. iOS is bad on its own but the Apple TV is a total train wreck. I couldn't get rid of that thing with its awful interface and remote fast enough.
Exactly. Everybody does this. In anything using video, UI elements apparently need to be hidden as much as possible. In virtual meetings, Youtube, and it's often an option in games.
And sometimes it's great, because you get to focus on the content, and sometimes it's not, because you lose control. It's something that should be optional or configurable. It's great to have shortcuts for the most common commands (like space for pause in youtube), and I guess it would make a lot of sense if video conferencing tools also had such a shortcut for mute/unmute.
But again, give people more control over their UI. There are too many applications that mess this up one way or another.
But this has been a solved problem for ages.... just move your mouse a tiny bit, and all the controls are exposed, with large, visible buttons, help text, etc, click whatever you need to, and the controls slowly dissapear, revealing the video.
Having to find the exact spot to hover your mouse is a bad UX
Which also happens to be the shortcut for bookmarking webpages in most browsers... and Meet doesn't let you rebind this to something sane like spacebar.
This is true. I find Android UI so offensive that if I did not have iOS as an alternate I probably would carry a dumb phone and live like a monk. I can’t stand the miles of white space and brightly coloured tiny UI controls.
Evokes such a visceral reaction in me that even I am startled at times haha
As a developer I'm a huge fan of Google Cloud. But I'd actually think really hard about chosing them if I started by own business, as the customer service is both expensive and woeful.
