back

by bikeshaving·5y ago·view on hn ↗
I’m not sure why this is on the front page. It’s a short blog post about struggles with a TV remote, and then an image of an MSPaint remote which LITERALLY has hieroglyphics on it

I guess I should make a comment about UX design though. In the past year I watched a really informative video where design and usability expert Dan Formosa reviews the usability of various kitchen gadgets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w08XDXjJhsQ). The part of his review process which I found enlightening was that he had this thing called the “Left-hand oil test,” where he lubed up his non-dominant hand and attempted to use the appliance he was reviewing to emulate a person with a disability.

In terms of software and UX, I think the best analogue for this sort of test is to attempt to use your app while you’re stoned out of your mind. If you can’t figure out how to do things in this condition, then your app is likely introducing cognitive overhead which can be reduced.

It really is too bad that too often “design roles” are given to people who fit a certain stereotype or mainly have the ability to make things prettier looking. I firmly believe true UX design requires a holistic approach which at the very least requires you to be able to code demos of the behavior you want from applications.

2 comments
> It’s a short blog post about struggles with a TV remote, and then an image of an MSPaint remote which LITERALLY has hieroglyphics on it

When it comes to "design thinking", that practically amounts to a PhD thesis.

As a rule I try not to be negative, but on occasion I just have to make an exception. "Design thinking" is one of them. One of the stupidest names or concepts ever invented.

Rightly or wrongly, I write off anyone who uses the term unironically as a new-age huckster shilling brainless, overpriced seminars to clueless execs.

Now product design, on the other hand, is a completely separate issue. That's a real field with people who actually do something other than write blog spam and filch money out of companies.

Like a true Scotsman, allow me to just say that the work David Kelley, Tim Brown, and others did to translate the work product of Ray Loewy, Don Norman, Dieter Rams, Walt Disney, Max Faget, Michael Graves, Saul Bass, and so many other design legends into a unified framework for "thinking about design" is and remains groundbreaking.

And it is always amazing the number of people who are beneficiaries of strong design thinking practices in their own lives through the products and services they consume who see no value in applying it to their own products and services.

But, like Agile and DevOps and a thousand other things, the "hucksters" (or, to be most charitable, the surface-level practitioners) outnumber the experts and drown them out in a crowded field.

Seems somewhat odd to acquire 27 points in two hours with only two comments [at time of writing]. Vote farm?