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0 pointszigzag3121y ago0 comments

> Custom styling should be considered a hostile pattern in most cases

Why? Almost every website has custom styling and yet it doesn't seem to inhibit users from using them.

Good UI/UX patterns seems to be universal. As consistency is part of good UI/UX there are things that should be consistent with the underlying platform. But consistency with the platform is not equally important for all things. For some things, like window management, it's much more crucial, that it is for other things, like roundness of buttons.

> except in highly specialized software with workflows dependent on prior user experience, such as DAWs

It's not just about prior user experience. If a custom control enhances UX for a specialized task, it has a good reason to break some of the consistency. All specialized software (DAWs, graphics applications, IDEs etc.) have such features. Limiting themselves to just native components would lead to a suboptimal user experience.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

bux931y ago· 2 in thread

How would you know inconsistency among websites isn't inhibiting users from using them? There's not a Web A and Web B to do A/B testing on.

Roundness of buttons? Buttons shouldn't be round in the first place. Back in the day, they were these rectangular things with a shadow and a highlight. You could instantly things you can and cannot click on. Now, it's anyone's guess. Do people click on the wrong stuff? Do people fail to discover functionality because it's hidden in plain sight? Of course they do!

Is there a place for custom components, yes, but not to the extent that every website out there is styling their buttons, and that even Windows itself is hiding scroll bars.

kalleboo1y ago

> Buttons shouldn't be round in the first place. Back in the day, they were these rectangular things with a shadow and a highlight

I dunno, looks round enough to me https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/vi/4/4e/Windows1.0.pn...

zigzag312OP1y ago

There's a lot of A/B testing going on on the web.

> Buttons shouldn't be round in the first place.

Is there any data available to back this up?

Modern UIs are not perfect by any means, but from what I remember, those old UIs were not great either... even worse in terms of UX on average.

While consistency is important, placing it above all else, leads to suboptimal UX and bland UIs. How many times did you hear people raving about how great is the UI of an app build with a generic form builder?

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