Winners and Losers In the World of Interfaces: 2013 In Review 116
An anonymous reader writes "A review of the top UX successes and failures of 2013 covers hot topics ranging from Snapchat to the Nest thermostat to David Pogue's departure from the New York Times. The author begins: 'In terms of UX milestones and missteps, 2013 failed to produce industry-altering innovations like 2007 with the introduction of the first iPhone or 2012 with the demise of Blackberry. Yet on another level, UX design in 2013 gave us a glimpse at the rapidly broadening definition of UX design as a structural concept and its role in the future of new media device design, content creation and even the status of product reviews created by leading tech journalists. In a critical way, I personally find this more interesting than blockbuster introductions that alter the technology landscape.'"
Re:Why bother with the article (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft was also a loser with Windows 8.
This article made me want to kill myself (Score:2, Informative)
Reading this article I was left with the impression that it was written by a trendy "UX designer". My suspicion was confirmed when I scrolled to the bottom and found it was written by Charles L Mauro, president of MauroNewMedia; a company specialising in user interface design and UX optimization.
User interface designers are usually the last people you want to get to design a user interface. They're the sort of people who produce crap like Metro, Unity, GNOME 3, the Gmail interface, the ribbon and can cancerous interface that's slowly killing Firefox with each new version. They focus in interfaces that are "innovative", "fun" or "magical", and don't seem to care about speed, productivity, usability, consistency or conciseness.
Surely there's an island we can ship all these UX designers to? They can sit around all day enjoying their latte and generally being trendy, and in the mean time we might start getting some software that's actually usable.