Friday, November 2, 2012

Good Design

Good art is a lot more than a painting. There is the art of life as well. And part of that art is good design. I have always been amazed that.people have settled for the half assed design of Microsoft products. They are slow, cumbersome, and have nothing that resembles an intuitive bent.  I mean you sign off at start? Really? Each new version has a glossy home page but one click in and you're  back to drab and dreary. Half of the screens haven't seen a refresh since Windows 95. And what's that MS DOS line at start up? In 2012?

And then there's those graphics sure to please a five year old but an adult? Windows 8 is sure new and different but a few clicks in? You get my point.

Netflix is another case in point. Talk about a lousy interface. Lets say you start a movie and want to stop and move on. Or even worse WATCH the movie and don't want the 5 minutes of credits at the end. It will sit there forever asking if you want to resume. Is there an option to cancel? Maybe in the code but not on your computer. I've had it and deleted them tonight. My credit card was compromised and they won't get a renewal with the new number. And Hulu. 10 minutes of ads to watch a 20 minute show? At least I can zip past the ads on my recorder. Goodbye Hulu.

And as much as I love Apple they are now the bloat kings of the universe. My computers started up and shut down in under a minute until 10.6. Now, like MS the minutes tick by. Granted they don't have all the updates of Windows 7 ( I timed it one day, took over 30 minutes before I could log on) I can foresee a day in the (near) future when that will happen too.

The processor speeds go up and so does the crap they load. If anything things are slower now than 10 years ago. I mean SLOOOOWER. Do I need all the stuff OS 10.8 does? No. Did I ask for it? No. Are a few geeks driving an OS at the expense of the rest of us? Probably.

Software AND hardware people need to get back to the basics. Do what you do WELL. No bloating, no fancy tricks. Use simple straight forward design young and old can master. IOS was elegant and fun. Now? Not so fun anymore.

Watch your clients. Learn from them. Just because you can do gadgety things, should you? Remember a million blinking VCR's flashing 12:00? To program them was hell. The 12 noon solution? Black electrical tape over the time.

My solution for lousy apps? Deleting and complaining here. Pass the word around. 

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