Well yeah, but there are some generic golden rules, if you so want. Things like discoverability, consistency, reactivity and predictability. It’s also not easy to design a single UI for users with vastly different levels of technical skills.
I don’t know what exactly it is, I really can’t put my finger on it, but something always felt a little off in HA’s user interface. Not that it bothers me much, or maybe I just got used to it, but there’s definitely something. But good to know we have a UX guy working on it now !
IF you look at these 4 “generic golden rules” as you call them, i would say , over a longer period of time , it failed for every software , as time change, hardware changes, programming languages changes etc.
UX design isn’t easy. And things like touch completely changed the playing field, especially if you want to combine mobile and desktop UIs in a single system. So yeah things evolve, but probably for the better in the long term.
Same here, but to be honest, most because of the changes in the last versions. As I started witn HA some years ago, everything felt directly intuitive. Of course, there where some functional gaps, but every release brought more features. And with regards to settings, there was a one pager where I was able to go to each setting via one click and where I saw what was in. Currently there is now a nested menu.
And the other changes in the last versions where at least not my taste either. Hiding more and more items, drop down boxes instead of showing it directly, hiding entity id’s, search for entity ids, etc.Most probably because I was used to other menus and places and perhaps because my muscle memory is bigger than others, but most of the listed things has really reduced usability a lot and some of them are not usable anymore, as you e.g. cannot distinguish entities.
And if there is a focus on UX, then I wonder, why there are really big open topics and bugs, where complete functions are not working on some platforms. An no, I’m not able to solve the bugs in my own in PRs. I would really like to see them closed, before there is a focus on new changes.
I am happy that you are dedicated to making the UI /UX better for all. I expect over time we will see vast improvements.
I am on these forums daily as well as discord & reddit and did not see any request for user input. Was this done in the GitHub discussion?
So far, some things for me seem better, but most seem to take longer and more steps. As others have said above it may be due to “muscle memory” and it may get easier over time. Somethings just done make sense and seem broken, (like search). A menu with many single sub items just add more clicks.
I have to admit it took quite a bit of poking around to figure out how to unsubscribe from the beta channel and how to perform a server restart. Most of the other stuff was reasonably easy to find.
Personally, I’d like to see a better development environment with some debugging tools. While I’m thinking of it, am I the only one who’d like to see monospaced fonts in a Card Configuration code editor?
Just today I replied to a post on FB about an infographics about the differences in the menu between 2022.4 and 2022.5.
Here is my comment:
“Working a lot with UX I have to say that this rationalization is almost perfect. It will be hard to digest for those used to the old one, but now the arrangement is sooooo more correct, those who approach only today HA will find everything super tidy. Fantastic!”
Here the data indicates that the people who are happy with the change are twice as many as those who are not happy. This means that change can be made.
In statistics, a neutral comment mostly indicates a “lack of interest in the topic” or a “lack of in-depth analysis”, therefore, if it had been an A / B test, only the vote expressed on the variation should be evaluated.
If you honestly agree with that statement I don’t think I can help you a couple of phrases come to mind…
“We can do better”
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
I like a lot of the UX changes that I’ve seen, but the bad examples in the OP are pretty good ones imo.
(Speaking only on those examples given) justification for a mobile layout I don’t really get honestly - nested menus are not always better than responsive grids.
“Have both” - something I feel like saying a lot on these forums. Keep the “overview” panel and perhaps only have it visible on desktop, as well as the nested menus
The frontend is all component based, it’s not difficult to have multiple views for different devices. The single column views above are clearly targeted at mobile devices…
To be clear - I like a lot of the UX changes that I’ve seen
Fair enough, and I probably am. I’m looking at this from more of a marketing "net promoter " perspective, where neutral is considered bad- ie on a 1-10 scale, you want 7 or better. I have no ui/ux background so there’s clearly a difference how these stats are looked at in that field.
I’m not criticizing the changes, but I’m not really excited about them either so far. However, I’ll look at this from a perspective of we are in the middle of a remodel- you have to knock out some walls, but I’m sure it will look great when it’s done.
Appreciate your work and comments addressing everyone’s concerns.
What are you actually saying here ? … That “they” should not try to make it better(i.e more compliant to common “trends”), if it’s not broke ? , or that “they” should not fix it, even thou they know they can make it better ?
You can have both, Many people make their own System Monitor “Views/Dashboards” , generally adapted to a(their) specific Devices, maybe in Panel-mode, or Grid Design ( or both, Nested etc.)
Right, And i personally is not a a typically “Phone-User” (far from), but surely the “Daily-Use-Part” should be compliant to a Mobil-Device, and for all those that for some reason like to make changes/manage their HA-system/environment from a Mobil-device, the Software have to be compliant to this. And if something is changing rapidly, past years, and coming future, it’s the phone/hand-held devices.
So from a developer/software “vendor” maintenance perspective, it’s absolutely a “no-go” having extensive extra code-base for various devices, and opinions, even thou i.e grid, layout and various forms for responsive design can solve a-lot “issues”
As mentioned, i basically use my phone to make/receive calls, editing / maintaining / build HA-environment, is not something i do from a phone, or touchpad ( but that’s me )
Though i know people with interests, and knowledge/experience make their own “Overviews/Dashboards” for System-Monitoring / Energy-Overview / Common-Maintenance-Tasks etc.
So basically i feel that all commends/opinions( in regards to UI ), should be in this context(and this Forum should not be “cluttered” with to much negative Vibes, It’s not FaceBook … name 1 similar software that is more versatile/adaptable(for end-user that have know-how/experience) than HA
If you want to see issues in the UI, try modifying your people device tracker. It shows the friendly name but you need to enter the device id. Try searching? I have two gps sensors. Searching by gps found neither sensor.
I understand the roll back of the sorting. I don’t understand the friendly name / entity id inconsistency. This is in several places in HA and this needs to get sorted out as it is very difficult as is.
I have to agree with @Darmach about splitting the monitoring information on 3 different places, but there are other changes I really loved, like moving Helpers together with Devices and Entities. In overall, I liked more than disliked.
One thing that should be improved in my humble opinion is the new location for the configuration check. I’m fine about having it on the Developer Tools area, however after each restart it defaults to the first tab (States) which is really slow to load, so I have to wait for that every time. Having YAML tab as default or remembering the last tab even after a Restart would save me lots of time.
, as time change, hardware changes, programming languages changes etc.
a couple of phrases come to mind…