this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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It's actually simple.
HIG, UX, ergonomics, all that - it doesn't build up. Acceptable complexity of a pretty mechanical normal 80s' UI\UX is the same as of a modern one. Humans don't evolve over decades, they evolve over spans of time which are as good as eternity. They still need the same kind of complexity in tools they use.
A control panel for a loader that a factory worker should be able to use is as complex as a workflow on a computer can be. And that's very explicitly accounting for the fact that loader's or lift's control panel doesn't change every fucking day and the user remembers it, so computer UIs should be simpler than those of lifts and loaders!
You just don't make UI\UX more complex than that. There are things humans can learn to do, and there are things they often can't and they shouldn't.
The issue is that this creates a bottleneck for clueless project managers, UI designers and such. They can't throw together some shit in 30 minutes. They have to choose. They have to test. They don't want that. And no regulation makes them do that, because if a loader has an unclear UI\UX, you might kill someone, while if an email program has that, you'll just get very nervous.
I design control panels. I try to keep the workflow consistent not because I see value in it, but because some asshole decided that they didn't want to pay for retraining. Really I don't care, having to retool slightly every decade or so is pretty reasonable. Especially given that the tech is always changing.
Humans don't. Changing things is fine, making using them more complex for the same result, because another decade has passed, is not.
It has to get more complicated, more edge cases have popped up and the process is more complicated.
Look basic example. I made an uncoiler and needed to add in a reverse override. Why? Because someone one time loaded it in wrong.
By "more complex" I meant making other operations slower (EDIT: and harder to understand) for somebody using it, so - not this example.