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Showing posts from February, 2017

Modernizing UI trend, Swapping Functionality for Aesthetics

Recently I've seen some trends where developers are trying improving the overall look of an application at some costs to functionality of the user experience. Our lectures example of the windows 10 visual update made me realize some of the subtle trends that are catching on with UI developers. The buttons for controlling the windows are integrated into the window. The whiteness of the buttons are hard to distinguish from the picture in the actual window. This loses some functionality for more aesthetic appeal. League of legends has gotten a similar treatment where the UI has gained some more aesthetic appeal but lost out on some functional benefits. Here is am example of the new client on the store Here is an example of the old client also on the store screen The buttons for the new client have some problems. They actually aren't buttons, you actually have to click on the text to change screens. The clickable boundaries are not as concrete as the old c

Nuisances of the New and Nuance of the Old.

     I've been using piazza for two and a half years now, while it is a great tool for learning there has been one feature which they have that drives me insane every new semester.      I have no idea what the website designer was thinking when they made it so that whenever you add a new class they automatically subscribe you to a reading "smart digest." This means that per a class every 4 hours if there was a post then it will email you an update. Although this might be a great feature for some people who are super extremely keen for their classes, to the majority of people it's a huge hassle.      This is a great example of a developer trying to force a feature onto its users without careful consideration. When I was first using piazza, after about a weeks my email was filled will a bunch of junk notifications from piazza that I did not care about. It about two weeks before someone cared enough to make a post about how to change the emai