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by Someone1234 2307 days ago
Refactoring UI fails to explain WHY or provide evidence (e.g. A/B tests) that show their new designs even work.

Let's take their most recent post for example (Remove Borders): https://twitter.com/steveschoger/status/897849211110273024

The only explanation as to WHY is the before "look[s] really busy." That's quite subjective and unhelpful. There's no testing here, there's no remark on usability/accessibility, no discussion of color-blindness vis-a-vis background color tones, nor real justification for the change anyway.

If you want to create pretty things without worrying about the consequences, they seem like a great resource. But hard to see it as more than a toy resource; professional UI resources do a much better job because they're made for real end users, rather than other developers e.g. UK Digital Project[0], US Digital Project[1].

PS - I'm not saying their designs don't look nice. I'm saying a nice looking UI design isn't a good yardstick for UI. I've created plenty of nice looking UI that users performed worse using.

[0] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

[1] https://designsystem.digital.gov/

2 comments

Users of public facing systems do not have alternatives. It is quite different for privately held SaaSes.
Ugly UI will absolutely reduce the amount of users and even more so potential sales.
Amazon is “ugly” in a lot of ways... but is wildly successful.

Merely claiming something is true doesn’t really mean much.