Winners and Losers In the World of Interfaces: 2013 In Review 116
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by
timothy
from the more-than-just-a-pretty-picture dept.
from the more-than-just-a-pretty-picture dept.
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.'"
losers: everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
As interfaces get more and more simplistic to suit 4 inch screens people jab at with their thumbs, losers are everybody.
There's been a constant dumbing down of computing devices for at least 20 odd years now, until they actually not general purpose computing devices any more, but mere locked down tools to spy on our every move.
Re:Why bother with the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Unity is Metro of the Linux world. It doesn't look like, it just sucks like it.
B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
What 2013 demonstrated us is that UX is not user driven anymore, but marketing driven.
The User Interface is not trimmed anymore to help the user on solving his/her problems or executing his/her jobs.
The User Interface is, now, trimmed to help someone else's job. And this job is to sell something to the user (at best), or simply take something from him/her (at worst).
Re:"UX designers" are why the industry sucks. (Score:0, Insightful)
No. A positive UX is a side effect of a number of factors, good UI design being one of them.
User experience is much broader than "easy to use". A user experience can be frustrating, it can be rewarding, it can be feeling in control, it can be feeling like an expert who knows stuff no one else does, it can be feeling cool, it can be feeling smart.
Everything has a user experience. Car analogies are, for once, quite apt - when blasting along a winding city-street in a high-powered sports car, a racing driver will feel like someone who masters the vehicle, who's in control, who's having fun. A soccer mom will feel terrified and afraid of crashing. Switch the sports car for a small compact - the soccer mom will feel at home but the racing driver will feel frustrated and limited.
Producing a product with a positive user experience means identifying your target users, researching what experience they find positive, then engineering the product to provide that experience. This includes, but is not limited to:
A good UX designer understand this and works to provide it. Sadly, the state of everything user interaction-related has always been piss-poor and the industry is ridden with people who think they do usability, UI design, user testing or UX, when in fact they do nothing of the sort.