Trying to improve the wrong dimension of #UX will only lead to waste. Learn the difference:
Wonky products are confusing; their mental model doesn't match the user's. Janky products are conceptually fine, but buggy or inconsistent.
Jank manifests only at the hi-fi stage of development, and can be solved by UI redesign or backend optimization. However, wonk must be caught at the conceptual stage with lo-fi tools. You will NOT be able to fix it on the #UI layer.
Been appealing to other designers to adopt HDI principles
(Human Data Interaction) https://hdi-network.org/intro_to_hdi/
3 core principles of legible, agency and negotiability.
Also as a quantified self person, I'm more frustrated by the lack of "self" in the products, services and infrastructure.
How can it be self if there is always a 3rd party's influence?
Keep up the great podcast
When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was friends and family sheepishly asking me for tech support help, and me slowly, patiently explaining to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.
But that's not true anymore.
User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.
My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.
In my experience, the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) have deteriorated in the last few years. Not only in terms of consistency but also in the way the components are presented. The HIG used to be very visual and descriptive. This is no longer the case.
App design is still a core competence for all UX and UI designers. So I created an overview of the most common iOS components for my students. Might also be interesting for this community!