Leo

Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed that 90% of my design feedback comes down to these three things: <ol> <li>Ditch those words!</li> <li>Ditch those words!</li> <li>Ditch those words!</li> </ol> It’s the fastest way to make a design more easily understood because almost every interface tries to explain too much at the wrong time and is far too yappy. Modern interface design is made up of sentences and sentences of needless information, over-explaining every detail and presenting too many ideas and concepts at the wrong time. It’s strange because as an annoying book person I believe in words! I want more and more words. I want fancy words and long-winded words and difficult words. I demand complexity! I want to think and ponder and struggle with a sentence that is trying to drag me along with it on a rip-roaring ride that I can barely comprehend. This, to me, is the textbook definition of fun. But here’s what modern UI design looks like: There’s always a confusing title; it doesn’t quickly tell me what to do or what it wants me to understand; beneath that there’s a subtitle, explaining the title again; beneath that there’s several sentences that restates the title and subtitle but simply jumbles all the words around to make it justify its existence; then the button—there is always a button—and it asks me to “Confirm” or “Apply” but as to what I’m confirming or applying I have absolutely no idea unless I go back to the text and fight my way through it all again. Folks will spend so much time adding fancy illustrations and making sure the icons aren’t blurry but when it comes to words and actions in interfaces they seem to gloss right over them. We have learned to scan UIs like robots because the folks who designed them don’t care for the words as much as they cared for the fonts or the colors. But words in an interface have a different job than they do in a book and behave in a different way. Every word in a UI needs to act like a hammer, with each successive word the interface should become clearer, more easily understood. If you put a word like <code>Explore</code> in an interface it might make sense but now add another navigation item like <code>Discover</code> beneath it and now both words make no sense. The UI has collapsed into meaninglessness and folks are forced to click and think and furrow their brows to understand the difference between the two. This is because words in interfaces have relationships: they all work together to build comprehension. If one button or title or navigation item is confusing then it makes everything else more confusing, too. The cynic in me worries that the folks who made this interface don’t want me to read the popup or modal or alert or web page or list of settings or whatever and they really just want me to click a button. The words are designed to be longwinded and confusing. They just want the click. The more hopeful designer in me worries that these folks just didn’t spend the time necessary to understand what they want from me. Either way, it sucks. So this is feedback I give to myself as I’m working on an interface today: Remove that subtitle! Make that title as brief as possible! Kill that second sentence! Make it impossible for users not to read this! Disambiguate! Separate these concepts! Hide the fluff! Say one thing! Ditch those words!