User interfaces are in decline

When we first got personal computers, we didn't care too much about what it was like to use them. To tell the truth, we were too shocked that we even had something like this. To enter a DOS command, you had to learn some secret language. It never occurred to us that using a computer would be difficult or inconvenient. But gradually computers became more advanced, and when the first Macintosh appeared with its powerful graphical user interface, we began to realize that the process of interacting with a computer also matters to us.

Programmers now had to think not only about how the program would handle a task, but also how the user would handle the program to complete the task. It became clear that a good user experience could increase sales. If an app is easy and intuitive to use, users will get more done with it and be happier.


The first step was standardization. One of the things that the Macintosh, and later Windows, did was introduce a number of interactions with programs that we now accept as the norm. The File menu, with options like New, Open, Save, and Close, has become ubiquitous. “Ok” and “Cancel” buttons have appeared on dialog boxes. All of these teams did exactly what you would expect them to do.

These ideas reached their maximum development in Alan Cooper’s seminal book “Interface. Fundamentals of Interaction Design, which codified and clarified many design patterns that users had come to take for granted, and paved the way for new ideas to improve interactions between people and computers.

Alas, these days, everything that surrounds us on the Internet shows that these very practical and useful considerations are gradually being lost.

The “Ok” button is dying

One of the fundamental principles widely used in the design of graphical user interfaces was to be very clear about what action would be performed when a mouse was clicked. If, say, the user is presented with a dialog box with a number of options from which to choose, there should always be an “Ok” button that will save the changes made, and a “Cancel” button that will reject them.

The “Ok” and “Cancel” buttons played an important role. The user could go, for example, to “Settings”, change some parameters there, and then click on “Ok” and be sure that the changes took effect. But it often happened that a person changed something, and then thought: “Although no, I want everything to be as before.” Then he pressed the “Cancel” button, and everything returned to the starting point. No tragedy.

Unfortunately, this simple and clear diagram was somehow lost when moving to the Internet.

On the Internet you can often see pages with settings without “Ok” and “Cancel” buttons. Instead of buttons, you need to click on the cross in the upper right corner – then the dialog box will close and all changes made will be saved.

But what if you made changes and then decided you weren't happy with them? How then can you reset everything and ignore these changes? No way. The responsibility is now on you, poor fellow – you yourself will have to remember what exactly you changed and bring everything back to its previous form. And sometimes it’s difficult to remember.

It’s even worse when, to close the dialog box altogether, you need to click on an area of ​​the screen outside of it, and then sit and think: “So my changes were saved or not?” The “Ok” and “Cancel” buttons need to be returned.

Requires dexterity with mouse control

Another change that gets on your nerves is that those who use a mouse are now required to have surgical precision in their movements (not to mention those who use a touchpad). At some point, performing normal actions became possible only with improved fine motor skills.

One of the great features that graphical user interfaces give us is resizing windows as well as moving them around the screen. With the advent of very large monitors, this has become doubly useful. However, operating system vendors (I'm looking at you, Windows) have started making things difficult to stretch and move.

In new versions of Windows, I spend a surprising amount of time trying to grab the desired area in the corner or edge of the application window with the mouse and resize it. If I need to drag a window, it is often difficult to find a suitable place at the top that can be grabbed for dragging. Previously, application windows had eye-catching titles that were easy to see and click.

Look at the tabs in your browser. If you, like most people, have a whole bunch of them open, then where do you put the cursor to move the window to a more convenient location?
Previously, such affordances (a term coined by Don Norman in his wonderful book The Design of Common Things) could be quickly found and easily used. The window boundaries were wider, and it was easier to grab onto them; the same can be said about the title. But, as I understand it, for the sake of aesthetics, the borders have become thinner to the limit, and now it’s not so easy to reach them with the mouse.

What kind of application is this?

Go ahead. It happens that I am not at all sure which application is in front of me. In the old days, apps made themselves known clearly by having their name in the title. Not so now.

For example, what application is this?

Well, yes, it’s clear that it’s a browser. But which one exactly – Google Chrome? Firefox? Who would have known. In fact, it's Microsoft Edge. But how am I supposed to guess this by looking at the application? As far as I can see, this information is simply not there. You need to go somewhere else to figure out what is in front of you. Grrrr.

I’ll save my tirade about Microsoft Edge as a persistent and completely inescapable irritant until another time.

Everything turned gray

Color is a powerful indicator. We know that if there is something red in front of us, we need to be on guard, and if it is green, we can relax and enjoy life. Color has also been very useful in user interfaces. In the golden age of GUIs, it was common to make a button colored to show that it was active and clickable, while leaving inactive buttons gray. Likewise, active tabs used to be marked with bright colors, while inactive tabs used to be marked with dull, gray colors.

For example, which of these tabs is active?

At some point, designers seem to have decided that gray and black were neat, stylish colors, and stopped using bright shades to mark boundaries and describe states. I've even seen interfaces where the selected element was marked in dark gray, and the unselected element in light gray. Look, gray is not about activity or focus at all. Blue – yes. Green – yes. Gray is a lack of focus.
It seems to me that what happened is that the designers came to the fair conclusion that gray is indeed preferable to black, and then got too carried away by this thought and began to paint everything gray. But gray is not preferable to all other colors.

The main thing is effectiveness

What saddens me is that for application and operating system developers, it seems that glamor has become more important than usefulness and ease of use. Working with programs should be easy. People should be able to do what they need to do without having to put in extra effort or wonder, “What just happened?” It's good to have an application that simply does its job without forcing me to rack my brains or read manuals. Form is important, but sacrificing functionality at the altar of form is a failure. Well, yes, I agree, small pearls. But this epidemic of bad usability decisions is very annoying and disappointing. It used to be better.