[WrtCdEvrydy]

Build the UI for the target user.

Minimalistic UIs are great if you're trying to make it simpler for outsiders.

If you have people who understand how to use the software, you can actually cram the UI full of everything you need in a single place.

[jklinger410]

Look, this sounds like you are talking about brutalist design for corporate software, and I can dig that.

What I can not dig is how old software prints things to screen. Touch a new dimension, let's recompile the data and re-load the list/entire screen right now! We've never done analytics our study our user base, so the most popular functions are buried 10 levels deep in a menu that re-loads every time you lose your scroll spot! ETC.

If you have spent time in corporate software developed in the WIN 95 days (cough oracle CRM cough) you won't see intentionally brutalist design. You will often see Magyver level hacks stacked through the roof, and software that loads so slowly you can re-load Gmail 3 times before it finishes.

[ams6110]

First generations of browser-based UI did refresh/reload the page a lot. But there was nothing else they could do, really. AJAX wasn't a thing, DOM manipulation wasn't possible.

Older UIs written in Visual Basic, Delphi, Powerbuilder, or even for text-mode interfaces did not do this, because the frameworks supported refreshing only the changed data.

Look at how emacs or vi works over a 1200 baud dial-up connection. Surprise, it does, because it only redraws the parts of the screen that are changed. These problems were solved in the 1970s and 1980s.

The web broswer has been for most of its existence a really bad way to deliver user interfaces. The zero-deploy nature of it was very powerful though, so people suffered through it. Only in the last few years have browser-based interfaces approached the abilities of native clients.

[maxxxxx]

“you can re-load Gmail 3 times before it finishes.”

After the latest changea to Gmail I have high hopes that it soon will catch up in terms of slowness :)

[maxxxxx]

Most UIs these days seem written for beginners. Easy to get in but they become tedious for experienced people.

[sli]

Oof. Currently developing software for doctors to use and this feels all too real. The concessions we have to make to cater to their relative inability to adapt would make me hate using this UI every day, but it's what they want.

It's not like I don't get it. I do. Just not 100% of the time.

[basch]

eg Facebook or Amazon or Outlook or Photoshop. The antithesis of minimalism, features and buttons everywhere.