> they have a whole design guidebook why wouldn’t they follow it??
So the same question applies: yes they have a whole design guidebook but why ? Does the users care ? My opinion would be that most don’t and that those who care are horrified by all those apps with all their own guidelines.
Computers used to be (and I’ll be giving credits to old windows for that) « once you learned the system/ergonomics you only have to adapt to each program’s feature set » and is now « relearn everything on my app and btw it’s not compatible with other apps except our partners ».
I mean as an example, we pretty much had a working standard in how to discover features of a program (the menu bar) and how to give back data to the user (saving and opening files). Just knowing those patterns made you apt to discover most of programs features.
I’m not saying it was perfect or intuitive, but it was not hard and OSes could have improved that.
But we collectively ditched that for, it seems, easier deployment on the web (which is not something Logitech is concerned by, btw) and since there is no UI framework, why not hire UI designers to write UI guidelines ? It’ll make marketing guys happy anyway.
I’m sorry I recognize that I’m a little salty on this topic but I do feel like the industry stole something important to the users, or at least if I’m honest, to me, which is the basic knowledge of how to use a computer.
Oh I want to be clear that I’m not defending the use of the design guide in this context - I think style guides are fine for certain things, but not necessarily desktop apps like these. I get that it’s Electron, and so in theory the same components could be shared to their web experience and to other installers etc but I don’t know if they do that.
I was one of those people who thought XP/ME went too far (im a System 7 Stan tbh, but 98 was solid enough). And then when Office got the ribbon I was so unhappy lol. I don’t like a lot of how MS has embraced trendy UI, outside of windows phone which I actually really liked (and that made sense, it was a system that didn’t have much to go on, and they weren’t living up to any expectations outside of “be different than Apple and be better than Google”. I will def be salty here because MS had a great opportunity with windows phone and just blundered it. For every solid idea they have, it feels like they fumble 10000 other actually decent products).
I personally really appreciate that Apple has largely not changed the fundamentals of their OS in regards to the dock and menu bar - sure the dock is “new” as of OSX but that’s going on what, 20 years old now? At least? And the menu bar has been with us since always. Using native MS apps in 11 and not having a visible File menu drives me bonkers.
> I’m sorry I recognize that I’m a little salty on this topic but I do feel like the industry stole something important to the users, or at least if I’m honest, to me, which is the basic knowledge of how to use a computer.
I feel this. For the company I work for, we have an A11y group that is comprised of representatives from different departments (across engineering, product, marketing, and design) that meets regularly. Our component designs focus on accessibility, discoverability, and usability. If we are going to say “well we want a blue button with a drop shadow” instead of whatever the browser and OS do, fine, I’m going to make sure it’s still USABLE and accessible dammit. /rant
So the same question applies: yes they have a whole design guidebook but why ? Does the users care ? My opinion would be that most don’t and that those who care are horrified by all those apps with all their own guidelines.
Computers used to be (and I’ll be giving credits to old windows for that) « once you learned the system/ergonomics you only have to adapt to each program’s feature set » and is now « relearn everything on my app and btw it’s not compatible with other apps except our partners ».
I mean as an example, we pretty much had a working standard in how to discover features of a program (the menu bar) and how to give back data to the user (saving and opening files). Just knowing those patterns made you apt to discover most of programs features.
I’m not saying it was perfect or intuitive, but it was not hard and OSes could have improved that.
But we collectively ditched that for, it seems, easier deployment on the web (which is not something Logitech is concerned by, btw) and since there is no UI framework, why not hire UI designers to write UI guidelines ? It’ll make marketing guys happy anyway.
I’m sorry I recognize that I’m a little salty on this topic but I do feel like the industry stole something important to the users, or at least if I’m honest, to me, which is the basic knowledge of how to use a computer.