Productivity software, computer maintenance tools, creative software suites, integrated development environments, habit trackers, language learning apps, video games, video streaming libraries, pretty much anything that involves a screen feels bad. It's so odd that every bit of software's UI/UX feels both overly designed/bloated but also simultaneously barren and empty. Software design seems increasingly unable to fulfill its basic functionality. So many of the bits of software that we interact with feel identical but also somehow feel distinctly bad.
I can't articulate how capitalism is to blame but if any of you could help I would appreciate it.
You’d think that there would be some sort of universal visual/technical language we can all agree upon but it seems that there is no real driving aesthetic philosophy for systems we use every day. Aside from getting users to interact with a payment system/outlet all of the software we use has dreadful UI/UX.
Paying for something is very easy. Simple and intuitive (most of the time), it’s usually one to four clicks/taps but actually using a thing is seemingly more difficult. Using a common feature of a product can be somewhere between two to nine clicks/taps. I don’t think everything should be command-line interfaces (CLI) of course, but I will say that CLI at least usually allow users to get what they want.
I know it’s usually answered with “because money”, but how and why are UI/UX so universally bad for pretty much every bit of software we all use? It feels kind like how every car (fuck cars) had the same weird amorphous shape that is both considered “normal” must also universally unappealing.
What happened?
I was showing my 14y/o BIL how to make a basic web server with python. He's been taking a python class in school and it was basically useless.
The kid has a gaming computer with a multi-monitor setup and when I was walking him through setting up WSL and vs code, he barely knew how to navigate his machine. Start menu? Huh? basic google searching? nuh uh, "drag that window onto your other display so we can reference it as we go "whoaa".
I'm happy to help but I can't imagine being given a nice computer at that age and not figuring out how to make it my own.
We must bring back awful PC ports that require you to implement ridiculous hacks whose only instructions are in README text files to get the gamers computer literate.
The only reason I have a degree in computer shit is because I needed to host a pirate minecraft server from the command line. My entire career in tech after that can be drawn as a straight line. I repurposed a computer from like 2003 to be an always-on debian based MC server that had well over a year of continuous uptime before being shut down.
Before MC it was pirating GTA: SA and Halo.