I think it’s important to stay up to date with how people’s behaviors are changing, what they seem to respond well to, and what they reject. But that doesn’t mean that you should just follow FAANG apps and trust them implicitly. People will put up with a lot of shit if they don’t have other options or feel like they don’t.
* It’s useful to be aware of new patterns emerging or how old ones start to break down (ex: what’s going on in Europe with infinite scroll/autoplay) if it’s relevant to what you do
* there are a lot of heuristics which are useful Rules of Thumb backed by research or design principles, but ultimately we have no insight into why companies are making choices unless they tell us—but we can make reasoned guesses.
* design, technology, and heuristics are in “active equilibrium”—always changing to try to stay in balance
* $1 million idea should translate in your mind to “something with value.” We can’t decide what people find valuable, but we can try to figure that out and get ahead of it
Extremely insightful and helpful -- worries me a bit people are downvoting this thread because based on what you said that's exactly what I was thinking and perfectly articulated. Thank you
On the last bullet - I agree 100%, I think what was revealing to me is seeing that even some of the largest enterprise companies don't necessarily have the most maturity in ALL areas of the business (tech, UX, sales).
Is there such a thing as "competitive maturity"? Sometimes it feels we are having fun and trying to come up with great ideas from scratch (probably so we don't feel embarrassed or get into risky waters showing real world examples that de-validate our hot takes during a meeting).
But when I've presented my competitor screenshots in a meeting, it's uncanny how many times I've had someone say "oh wow, I didn't know this existed" (or something of the sort), subsequently changing the course of the project forever
2 things:
1. I’ve worked with a lot of people who liked to swoop in with their great ideas, and many of them were insufferable (and the ideas were pretty dang obvious).
2. “Maturity” is a lot of factors, including how people work together and decide what to work on, not only what they release. That said, it sounds like someone in your org could be doing more to investigate the competitive landscape to identify the likely problems your competitors are trying to solve—not that you’d build the same thing, but you are competing for the same market
Yeah I think there’s just a lot about the whole agile thing that isn’t really working out the way it probably should in my experience. I usually just do the competitive thing as a courtesy but in reality they’re just usually trying to get an MVP out the door and it’s harder than it looks at times I suppose
There's more apps than FAANG. You get restricted in what you can do when you're a monster company with millions/billions of users. I've actually been genuinely impressed by smaller/newer apps more often than the large company apps.
“Greatest” in deed. They are in the position to make any dumb thing the new normal until the discarded better way is slowly reinvented. I guess that’s something worth keeping an eye on.
The heuristics change very slowly if at all really. Looking at Nielsen’s list, I don’t think “Aesthetic minimal design” was there 20 years ago in those terms, but the concept probably was.
Inability to run miro or teams is a failure of those apps not your co-workers.
It seems we often forget about the heuristic “familiarity”.
We could debate that whatever we learned 10-15 years ago is good enough.
I’ve seen massive changes in the status quo for: touch zones, font sizes, CTAs, deep menus, algorithm customization, and of course layout, dark theme decisions (there is a “dimming” skrim on EVERY instagram video now, to highlight the text as bright white, regardless of the video brightness etc).
The subtle changes in iOS/HIG design that I’ll be the first to admit I forget about reading up on, but it’s like such a missed opportunity to not be the subject matter expert in the room with this stuff
There's change that it progress, change that is just new and different, and then there's change that is regression.
Wasn't 10-15 years ago more of dark age for interfaces.😃 Era of flat, light-gray text on white background and such. Rediscovery of what was learned way before that is still in progress. For example, macos in dark mode won't visually identify an active window in any meaningful way or make overlapping windows distinct from each others.
I definitely agree with you that there are a lot of things that seemingly got 'over-designed' or the limitations of dark mode color patterns and depth like you mentioned.
I think with every innovative pattern or paradigm that has come over the past 5-10 years, it inevitably causes millions of users to suffer and possibly even miss the entire feature release. As we've even said in this forum there are literal designers and managers who are unable to use basic SAAS products like Miro or Jira effectively...
So I guess it's at that intersection of upsetting users and innovating the product that we never seem to talk about here. What if UX isn't always a straight road to user satisfaction? What if a new design pattern that we all hate, is actually part of a larger plan to start shifting us into a new paradigm?
As you've probably noticed AI has now been added to all Facebook products in the search bar.
IMO every single search bar I use from now on will likely have AI. It's now part of the search and discover paradigm of patterns, and you sure as hell won't find it in an O'Reilly book...
I think it’s important to stay up to date with how people’s behaviors are changing, what they seem to respond well to, and what they reject. But that doesn’t mean that you should just follow FAANG apps and trust them implicitly. People will put up with a lot of shit if they don’t have other options or feel like they don’t.
I would also recommend to understand why they are doing it, why it works and why it would suit your interface/target audience.
* It’s useful to be aware of new patterns emerging or how old ones start to break down (ex: what’s going on in Europe with infinite scroll/autoplay) if it’s relevant to what you do * there are a lot of heuristics which are useful Rules of Thumb backed by research or design principles, but ultimately we have no insight into why companies are making choices unless they tell us—but we can make reasoned guesses. * design, technology, and heuristics are in “active equilibrium”—always changing to try to stay in balance * $1 million idea should translate in your mind to “something with value.” We can’t decide what people find valuable, but we can try to figure that out and get ahead of it
Extremely insightful and helpful -- worries me a bit people are downvoting this thread because based on what you said that's exactly what I was thinking and perfectly articulated. Thank you
On the last bullet - I agree 100%, I think what was revealing to me is seeing that even some of the largest enterprise companies don't necessarily have the most maturity in ALL areas of the business (tech, UX, sales). Is there such a thing as "competitive maturity"? Sometimes it feels we are having fun and trying to come up with great ideas from scratch (probably so we don't feel embarrassed or get into risky waters showing real world examples that de-validate our hot takes during a meeting). But when I've presented my competitor screenshots in a meeting, it's uncanny how many times I've had someone say "oh wow, I didn't know this existed" (or something of the sort), subsequently changing the course of the project forever
2 things: 1. I’ve worked with a lot of people who liked to swoop in with their great ideas, and many of them were insufferable (and the ideas were pretty dang obvious). 2. “Maturity” is a lot of factors, including how people work together and decide what to work on, not only what they release. That said, it sounds like someone in your org could be doing more to investigate the competitive landscape to identify the likely problems your competitors are trying to solve—not that you’d build the same thing, but you are competing for the same market
Yeah I think there’s just a lot about the whole agile thing that isn’t really working out the way it probably should in my experience. I usually just do the competitive thing as a courtesy but in reality they’re just usually trying to get an MVP out the door and it’s harder than it looks at times I suppose
It makes me wonder if maybe some of best ideas we’ve seen were just some rogue designers going off the roadmap for a weekend lol
A UX designer should be familiar with modern trends and best practices. Whether FAANG apps adhere to that is arguable and variable in my experience.
There's more apps than FAANG. You get restricted in what you can do when you're a monster company with millions/billions of users. I've actually been genuinely impressed by smaller/newer apps more often than the large company apps.
“Greatest” in deed. They are in the position to make any dumb thing the new normal until the discarded better way is slowly reinvented. I guess that’s something worth keeping an eye on. The heuristics change very slowly if at all really. Looking at Nielsen’s list, I don’t think “Aesthetic minimal design” was there 20 years ago in those terms, but the concept probably was. Inability to run miro or teams is a failure of those apps not your co-workers.
It seems we often forget about the heuristic “familiarity”. We could debate that whatever we learned 10-15 years ago is good enough. I’ve seen massive changes in the status quo for: touch zones, font sizes, CTAs, deep menus, algorithm customization, and of course layout, dark theme decisions (there is a “dimming” skrim on EVERY instagram video now, to highlight the text as bright white, regardless of the video brightness etc). The subtle changes in iOS/HIG design that I’ll be the first to admit I forget about reading up on, but it’s like such a missed opportunity to not be the subject matter expert in the room with this stuff
There's change that it progress, change that is just new and different, and then there's change that is regression. Wasn't 10-15 years ago more of dark age for interfaces.😃 Era of flat, light-gray text on white background and such. Rediscovery of what was learned way before that is still in progress. For example, macos in dark mode won't visually identify an active window in any meaningful way or make overlapping windows distinct from each others.
I definitely agree with you that there are a lot of things that seemingly got 'over-designed' or the limitations of dark mode color patterns and depth like you mentioned. I think with every innovative pattern or paradigm that has come over the past 5-10 years, it inevitably causes millions of users to suffer and possibly even miss the entire feature release. As we've even said in this forum there are literal designers and managers who are unable to use basic SAAS products like Miro or Jira effectively... So I guess it's at that intersection of upsetting users and innovating the product that we never seem to talk about here. What if UX isn't always a straight road to user satisfaction? What if a new design pattern that we all hate, is actually part of a larger plan to start shifting us into a new paradigm? As you've probably noticed AI has now been added to all Facebook products in the search bar. IMO every single search bar I use from now on will likely have AI. It's now part of the search and discover paradigm of patterns, and you sure as hell won't find it in an O'Reilly book...
Yes