Scrollbars. Ever heard of them? They’re pretty cool. Click and drag on a scrollbar and you can move content around in a scrollable content pane. I love that shit. Every day I am scrolling on my computer, all day long. But the scrollbars are getting smaller and this is increasingly becoming a problem. I would show you screenshots but they’re so small that even screenshotting them is hard to do. And people keep making them even smaller, hiding them away, its like they don’t want you to scroll! “Ah”, they say, “that’s what the scroll wheel is for”. My friend, not everyone can use a scroll wheel or a swipe up touch screen. And me, a happy scroll-wheeler, even I would like to quickly jump around some time.
UX design got better and better for many years…but it has definitely been regressing over the past few years, IMO. It’s weaponized minimalism at this point. Because it “looks cool, bro”.
It’s a variant of enshittification.
The overuse of the word enshittification drives me crazy.
Enshittification of “enshittification”
/s
Enshittiception
Ekshuliiii… it should be Enshittificursion or Reshittification. Inception means something else.
I’ll show myself out.
Yeah, it has a very specific meaning, and people are now using it to mean “things becoming shitty”. Just because “shit” is the base word doesn’t mean that’s what the whole word means.
Enshittification doesn’t mean “thing gets shittier”? Who knew?!
No, it doesn’t.
From Wikipedia:
From the guy who coined the term itself:
That’s just listing the whys and hows of "things get shittier ".
Being a pedant is never a good look. You’re missing the larger point. The same corporate impulse that drives platform decay ripples out to things like UX design. And that impulse is: the customer doesn’t matter anymore, we already got your money, only what we want matters.
Being intentionally ignorant is never a good look.
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Maybe listen to that feeling.
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Ooh, we have an internet tough guy over here.
Thank you. I think it was overused even the moment it was used for its intended purpose. It feels really im14andthisisedgy to me.
I’m actually really glad we’re hearing it.
It’s a sign that people are finally starting to have higher standards.
I think those with low standards would get upset. Nobody likes to admit they’re being taken advantage of.
And I think this is a dumb take, considering who coined the word and why. It’s a variation of “I hate anything trendy or popular”.
Underuse IMO. We’ve grown complacent in so many regards.
Are they wrong for using a word correctly? Or are you wrong for being a bitch about it? Hmmm.
It’s Lemmy’s “play stupid games…” variant
Yup, and when I used it, I knew someone would bitch about that. It’s funny how people get hung up on their pet peeve more than they do the more serious underlying issues we’re talking about here. It’s the same phenomenon politicians and wealthy elites use to keep us fighting each other over trivial culture war bullshit instead of pulling together to improve our material interests.
What do you mean ‘overuse’?
It’s just now entering our vernacular.
Buy!!!?
[YES SPEND ALL MY MONEY]
[no]
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LOL, harsh facts right here.
applying any design language feels wrong. it’s pure manipulation – i remember being forced onto the official twitter app and couldn’t believe there wasn’t a scroll bar. i felt lost; the timeline felt infinite, swallowing
I would are that the design industry has gotten better about understanding a user’s core motivations, and how design can solve business problems, but it’s gotten worse at classic interaction design / HCI.
The UX industry is FULL of bootcamp people or former graphic designers who never really studied or were passionate about interaction models.
As with engineering, the demand for UX designers is so high that a lot of mediocre talent can easily get a gig.
Those scenarios you paint definitely exist.
In my decades of work experience, I’ve also seen it play out a few ways. Sometimes the shop creating the software is too cheap to hire a real UX designer, and they make some poor coder do their best with it (and the coder will usually admit they are not good at it and is frustrated with being coerced into it). Sometimes they hire a good UX person, but that person is constantly overridden / micromanaged by some “marketing genius” MBA type with horrible ideas of user behaviors they want to “push” and other behaviors they want to “disincentivize” in the UX.
On a few (rare) projects, I’ve seen it done correctly where the UX designer is considered a vital part of the team and their input is valued and they do a good job and focus on what users actually want and need.
Some businesses still understand that if your customers are happy, everything else tends to go better for your businesses. But in this era of relentless enshittification, more and more businesses are looking at their customers at naughty children and/or suckers to be exploited. I keep hoping for a massive backlash against this trend. But it feels like it has to get even worse before it will get any better. They have conditioned younger customers to just expect shit products, shit service, and shit subscriptions for everything. UX design has gotten caught up in this sea change, unfortunately.