> The simple fact that these skinny scroll bars exist are evidence that designers do not sit with non technical users to conduct usability testing.
This kind of hits one of the superficial symptoms of the problem, but I think it’s a much more fundamental problem than this.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the type of programmer who’s incredibly productive and cranks out features like nobody’s business, but has little knowledge of, and even less respect for, computer science fundamentals. Short term these are great for getting an MVP out the door, but they become a liability when you need to scale. When stakeholders see their short-term productivity and miss the long term implications of their work, you breed a very particular technical culture.
The UX design world has the exact same problem. Designers who come from a pure graphics design background and no experience with, or respect for, decades of HCI research. They produce beautiful, slick designs that dazzle their stakeholders, while not accounting for the actual interactive component of their work.
Or, in short — the same attitude that leads to developers saying “premature optimisation is the root of all evil” in response to any performance concerns is what causes designers to produce this sort of work.
This kind of hits one of the superficial symptoms of the problem, but I think it’s a much more fundamental problem than this.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the type of programmer who’s incredibly productive and cranks out features like nobody’s business, but has little knowledge of, and even less respect for, computer science fundamentals. Short term these are great for getting an MVP out the door, but they become a liability when you need to scale. When stakeholders see their short-term productivity and miss the long term implications of their work, you breed a very particular technical culture.
The UX design world has the exact same problem. Designers who come from a pure graphics design background and no experience with, or respect for, decades of HCI research. They produce beautiful, slick designs that dazzle their stakeholders, while not accounting for the actual interactive component of their work.
Or, in short — the same attitude that leads to developers saying “premature optimisation is the root of all evil” in response to any performance concerns is what causes designers to produce this sort of work.