HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Sorry, I'm still not clear what exactly you want from me. A paper explaining why clutter is universally bad? Seriously?

You try so hard to come across as if you had a remote clue about the UX field, yet you want to debate one of the most basic premises?

May I suggest to review the standard works (you have them on your shelf, I know you do);

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-%20Usability/dp/032...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/156205810X/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385267746/

Somehow you must have forgotten, well, everything, since you last read them.

That's okay, happens to the best of us. However, you might come across a little less unarmed if you could at least memorize the title of Krug's book.

Thanks for playing anyways.

⬐ Pewpewarrows

And again, you're completely missing the point. One user's UI clutter is another user's essential UI component. Doing actual UX studies on your interface is essential (which I assume Disqus has done thoroughly).

Your original comments claimed that a mythical "the user" doesn't care about the Reactions, Community, or star buttons, citing "common sense." That's not a UX study. That's you trying to spin your personal opinion as fact. Which is cute, but is not useful criticism in the slightest.

⬐ moe

which I assume Disqus has done thoroughly

And your assumption is based on what?

Just by looking at the result it's obvious they haven't.

That's not a UX study

Exactly. It's the common sense that you would possess if you had been involved with any similar project of significant size. And I'll proceed to criticize obvious violations of well established common sense without performing studies on other peoples sites, thank you very much.

"the user" doesn't care about the Reactions, Community, or star buttons

Yes, it's still common sense. And quoting what I said does still not make a counter-argument. If the user cares about "Reactions" then where did all those useful pingback-listings go that used to trail every blog post? If he cares about detached community-silos then why can't even Apple make one work? And when was the last time you've seen a useful star-rating on a comment-thread outside an established forum?

That's you trying to spin your personal opinion as fact.

My spin must be pretty good then since you still haven't even tried to dispute any of my claims or references. Oh wait, actually you have once. Turned out not so well...

This is a beautiful and interesting concept, but isn't this really just a dressed up command line interface? This is a feature I would absolutely love to have, but I don't see it replacing the menu in the form demoed for the simple reason that this violates one of the core principles of user-centered design: visibility. If the user has no visual indication of what is possible within the system, how can we expect them to learn the interface?

One super simple example of this: http://cl.ly/082D441E2D0L1l3d3g2Y

Most readers of Hacker News are probably aware of the calculator feature in the Spotlight in Mac OSX, but if I had a dollar for every time I've blown someone's mind by showing it to them, I'd be counting money right now rather than writing this comment. The bottom line is, visibility is an extremely important design principle, because it informs the user what they can do within a system, so hiding possibilities is probably not a good idea.

For detailed reading on the principle of visibility, check out Donald Norman's Phenomenal The Design of Everyday Things, which I firmly believe should be required reading for anyone thinking about building anything: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385267746/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... [yes, it is an affiliate link]

I thought the name looked familiar. I downloaded a copy of "The Design of Everyday Things" not too long ago. Guess I'll have to crack it open?

For those that are also interested: http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

⬐ andos

And there's also Emotional Design: http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-Things/...

Read this book: "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. It talks about good and bad design in everyday objects through lots of enlightening and amusing stories and examples (doors that look like you should push them but you actually have to pull, mixing boards with dozens of identical knobs, aircraft software that hides important state information, etc). It provides some interesting insights from cognitive science and psychology too. It definitely made me a lot more conscious of how I went about making things that people would use and how those things could effectively communicate through their design what should be done with them. This also had an impact into how I went about communicating in general.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

⬐ pkamb

Without a doubt. The big takeaway from the book is that when you encounter something that's hard to use, it's not your fault for not knowing how to use it. It's the thing's fault for being badly designed. Read this book.

These are exactly the two books I was going to recommend. Don't Make Me Think is like the K&R of web UX books, and Designing the Obvious is like a nice web 2.0 companion for it.

Also, I'd throw in The Design of Everyday Things -- see http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d.... It was written long before anyone ever thought of web usability; instead, it focuses on the usability of things you interact with daily in real life. Let's just say that you'll never look at teapots or door handles the same way again...

You should read Norman's "The Design of Everday Things." I bet you'd really enjoy the bit where he discusses hotel doors.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

It's a really great book, and something I would consider a must-read for serious UI designers/developers. While the book was written in the 80s, and talks about things like ring slide projectors, VisiCalc, the original Macs, the ideas about what constitutes good and bad design are salient to this day.

⬐ mrduncan

Based on the title of the post, I'm sure that's where part of the inspiration for this post came from. That said, great book which I completely recommend.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csik...

The Design of Everyday Things http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...