What is "ugly" software?

Posted by Luhmann
Jul 12, 2018 at 08:58 AM

User interface (UX) is not separate from functionality. If a software has an amazing feature but it is hard to use, difficult to find, or implemented poorly due to bad design, then it doesn’t really matter if it has that feature or not. This has been the guiding principle of Apple’s corporate philosophy since the beginning, and it was only very late that other companies, such as Microsoft and Google began to understand that design was not separate from functionality. Now all three have good design, even if their design philosophies are still different. (Jobs, for instance, was slow to move away from skeuomorphism.)

The difference between Workflowy-like outliners and OO for me is that they get out of your way, so you don’t have to think very much about the UX when you work. I would not say that OO is ugly, but it is poorly designed in a way that makes it difficult for me to do the work I want to do. But I use 2Do over Things even though it isn’t as elegant a UX, precisely because it has some features that are absolutely critical to how I work. The same with BBEdit which I keep around to do RegEx text manipulation even though I prefer using Bear or Ulysses for my note taking. (I still haven’t figured out any use for Agenda…)