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by dodomodo 75 days ago
What the article misses is that generating a good UI is not easy, a good interface conveys so much more semantic information then just it's underlying API, and it does that without the user needing to concisely interpret the information.

And it's not just semantic information, presenting any kind of information in a way which enable the user to seamlessly interpret and use it is not an easy task.

AI, definitely lowered the bar for making some UI, but it doesn't help with the fundamentals challenges of making a UI, at least not more so then it helps with the fundamental challenges of any other job in our industry.
2 comments
sshine 75 days ago
> generating a good UI is not easy

And so many UIs stink, so auto-generating them might, on average, not be worse.

> a good interface conveys so much more semantic information then just it's underlying API

Yes, a good UI contains institutional memory on rendering that particular information in a bigger context than the pure data. I’m not sure how to convey that best.

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sublinear 75 days ago
In most cases, the deeper into the stack you look the more you'll find out why it sucks. You might be taking for granted how hard it is to implement some features.

Just because you can superficially design a better UI doesn't mean it would work as intended. It's amazing really how much can go on behind the scenes just for a seemingly trivial button that looks like shit.

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brandensilva 75 days ago
I've been thinking about this a lot about what are the benefits of UI, GUI, TUIs in the wake of AI.

I've come to the thought that we built interfaces honed to the way we visualize and work. We simplified many things down to just clicks. A really good UI captures intent and use very well. It doesn't require constant written language input when one mouse click is enough. Also it appeals to the aesthetic experience too in some ways to enhance the brand.

Design might be subjective but that's a good thing to act as a differentiator for companies.

Too many people assume pretty or nice looking is what design is. It's a very empty statement that disguises how important design works to make our lives easy.

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