Most “good UI” isn’t good at all.
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Most “good UI” isn’t good at all. It’s just whatever we’ve been trained to tolerate.
Case in point: for years, anything with too much text was mocked as “bad UX.” Then ChatGPT came along, gave you a blinking cursor and a box—and suddenly walls of text are the peak of interface design. Nothing changed except what people got used to.
Or take macOS. People trip over themselves to praise Apple’s “clean” UI. But what’s actually clean about it? Why does closing every window not quit the app? That’s not intuitive. It’s just something Mac users were conditioned into defending. If Windows did the same thing, there’d be YouTube essays about it.
Same goes for games. The arrow keys used to be the standard for movement. Now, if your game doesn’t use WASD, you’ll get roasted on Steam. Not because WASD is inherently better—it’s just what everyone expects.
The dirty truth is this: UI isn’t about usability. It’s about conformity. Interfaces don’t necessarily become “good” when they solve problems—they become good when people stop complaining. -
Most “good UI” isn’t good at all. It’s just whatever we’ve been trained to tolerate.
Case in point: for years, anything with too much text was mocked as “bad UX.” Then ChatGPT came along, gave you a blinking cursor and a box—and suddenly walls of text are the peak of interface design. Nothing changed except what people got used to.
Or take macOS. People trip over themselves to praise Apple’s “clean” UI. But what’s actually clean about it? Why does closing every window not quit the app? That’s not intuitive. It’s just something Mac users were conditioned into defending. If Windows did the same thing, there’d be YouTube essays about it.
Same goes for games. The arrow keys used to be the standard for movement. Now, if your game doesn’t use WASD, you’ll get roasted on Steam. Not because WASD is inherently better—it’s just what everyone expects.
The dirty truth is this: UI isn’t about usability. It’s about conformity. Interfaces don’t necessarily become “good” when they solve problems—they become good when people stop complaining.@atomicpoet Good UI, for me, is intuitive, you don't have to figure out how to do something because it's obvious. Apple used to be really good at that. Now, not so much.
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@atomicpoet Good UI, for me, is intuitive, you don't have to figure out how to do something because it's obvious. Apple used to be really good at that. Now, not so much.
@CStamp I guess my point is that many things we take as obvious are actually just familiar patterns we’ve learned over time. -
@CStamp I guess my point is that many things we take as obvious are actually just familiar patterns we’ve learned over time.
@atomicpoet Naw...I went from Wordstar, which I learned, to word-processing on a Mac, which was night and day.
I've used software on a PC and Mac, and the PC always had me pulling out my hair because the PC mentality was that one should be a programmer, while Mac invited you to use it. PCs started becoming more Mac-like, but still usually more steps, and Macs started becoming more PC-like as they became more complex and started burying stuff that used to be front and centre.
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@atomicpoet Naw...I went from Wordstar, which I learned, to word-processing on a Mac, which was night and day.
I've used software on a PC and Mac, and the PC always had me pulling out my hair because the PC mentality was that one should be a programmer, while Mac invited you to use it. PCs started becoming more Mac-like, but still usually more steps, and Macs started becoming more PC-like as they became more complex and started burying stuff that used to be front and centre.
@CStamp You seem quite young for WordStar. The last stable release was in 1999.
I’ll say this much. There’s certain things I find easier on a CLI than a GUI. For example, typing the app I want to use rather than opening the app drawer and scrolling to click on the icon. -
@CStamp You seem quite young for WordStar. The last stable release was in 1999.
I’ll say this much. There’s certain things I find easier on a CLI than a GUI. For example, typing the app I want to use rather than opening the app drawer and scrolling to click on the icon.@atomicpoet I do think that different mentalities gravitate to different platforms and different software. There is some software that makes me happy to use vs having to use.
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@atomicpoet I do think that different mentalities gravitate to different platforms and different software. There is some software that makes me happy to use vs having to use.
@CStamp Certainly, and to be fair, Mac now accommodates different mentalities.
For example, to open an app, all I have to do is press the search key on the keyboard, then type an app’s name.
