• CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        I’ve made UIs, and at least one I’d say was complex, but it was also really ugly. What am I missing?

        This wasn’t a put-down, BTW. I couldn’t be a graphic designer either.

        • Ethan@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          Making good UX is fucking hard. I say UX because making it good is really about the user’s experience, not graphic design. An ugly front end can be good if it’s intuitive and easy to use. But a visually gorgeous front end will still be garbage if it’s clunky and confusing.

          It’s really something you have to experience to fully understand. Ultimately it comes down to this: front ends have to deal with people, backends only have to deal with computers. So backends can be cleanly organized and well structured. Applying backend design principles to a front end will get you a CRUD interface - something that’s usable but no one really wants to use.

          • hglman@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            You need to be able to do layout design to do good ux. The visual presentation is a critical aspect of usability. Also backend code needs to be consumable future readers (including the author). That’s something that is very often lost and you get terrible unorganized backed code.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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              5 months ago

              This is kind of what I meant. Appearance isn’t just colours and alignment, but also things like flow, organisation and layout. I can make the data theoretically accessible, but with all that stuff I’m completely out of my depth.

              Write-only code can be an issue for either, while on the other hand complexity theory, big data structures and high math make me think backend.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          5 months ago

          The complexity of dealing with different states a UI can be in. The user can navigate the interface of an app in many different ways. The US has to be able to handle all the different combinations of actions the users takes. This means maintaining a consistent state, loading data that’s needed, keeping track of navigation, etc. The logic in an interface of an app like an email client is far more complex than most backend workflows.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            5 months ago

            Yeah, that could be reasonably complex I guess. I’ve never dealt with more than one navigation structure in a UI, like that would have. All the memes are about clients wanting it to look different.