An Abysmal State of Modern UI

I just love seeing all those SEO-optimized, GPT-generated articles about “One Hundred More UI/UX Tricks That You Want to Have in Your App to Attract More Users.” Ugh. Utter pain. We’re talking about “air space” and bells and whistles based on AI-optimized data collection instead of actual usability research.

I see creators everywhere talking about the “death of native applications” and other utter nonsense. This is just a trick to get more votes and go with the flow.

Behold Sabre! This software was written in 1964, and it still works. You think you don’t use Sabre? I doubt it. Pretty much all of you have used Sabre, especially when you were at the airport, ordering a ticket. The lady behind the counter smiled at you and typed something on her terminal.

Well, she was looking at Sabre. Here, geek out for a second.

(embedded YouTube video showing a Sabre terminal in action)

That is how we get airline reservations in 2024.

Many unskilled programmers might scream and say something like, “But I can rewrite this in JavaScript in no time.” Please don’t. This thing is something that people have gotten used to. And this thing is useful. It has been a standard for longer than most of you have been alive. It is something that does not change.

And I have no problem with that.

I never swipe any list on my phone anymore. Why? Because I can’t predict what will happen!

Contacts:

• Swipe left: send message
• Swipe right: call

Email:

• Swipe left: archive
• Swipe right: trash

Another email:

• Swipe left and right: both actions display an icon with an arrow whose meaning I don’t know.

Messenger App 1:

• Swipe left: mark as read
• Swipe right: archive

Messenger App 2:

• Swipe left: archive
• Swipe right: does not allow such nonsense.

Messenger App 3:

• Swipe left: pulls up the main app menu
• Swipe right: does not allow such nonsense.

Messenger App 4:

• Swipe left: archives
• Swipe right: pulls up the main app menu

In the name of all the gods of Olympus, how could I possibly get used to a simple gesture? It’s freaking unpredictable. I hesitate to swipe anything on my phone because I have no idea what will happen! There is a chance that I will delete something I need to archive or place a call to a person whose messages I want to delete from my phone.

Like, seriously! Are you calling this “User Experience”? I mean, the experience of a heavy sense of confusion. Sure!

Samsung has this amazing “predictive app list” feature. It shows you an app that you want to open. So I press an app button because I want to open the email app. I see the email app button as the first in that predictive app list. But instead of clicking it, I mistakenly press the close button. Okay, no problem. I’ll just pull up all the apps again and see the email app as the first one on the list, right? RIGHT?

{Anakin and Padme meme to go here, but I can’t figure out where is the “save” feature on this extremely useful app.}

Nope. Your email app is not there. It won’t be! Don’t bother. It just went somewhere else.

And one would expect after years of development those apps to work as they should. HA!

I just read an article right here on Medium about how one should add another 10 new cool-looking UI features into his app. I pulled up comments and tried to type something to respond to this article. Yeah, good luck, buddy!

(screenshot: every time I press a key on the keyboard, the button jumps up and down.)

Like, seriously now! You can’t even keep the primary button of your app on the screen. And you’re going to tell me to make my app even more complex? Ha! Fix a simple thing first!

And we are talking about one simple thing that has existed since Windows 1.0. A button. Something that stays on a screen and allows you to click it.

It’s 2024, and we are talking about an app of a big company. And the simplest thing in this app does not work! So, do you really think you can trust all those SEO-infused articles “101 More Ways of Improving Your App in 2024”?

I can give you an idea for improvement:

Rewrite your web app in pure HTML with CSS. Or even better, no CSS, just standard built-in HTML styles. You will bring some sanity to the world of your users.

You know what’s good about this picture?

(screenshot of the classic Windows Start menu)

It’s been around and hasn’t changed for years. Run was where Run was supposed to be. And we used to click All Programs to get to all the programs.

There isn’t anything bad in not changing things.

You have been told that this is bad. But it’s a lie. By giving someone a stable UI that does not change, you retain users.