Ancestors

Written by Scott Jenson on 2024-12-18 at 21:43

One of my earliest UX wins was for Mac System 7. The Finder team wanted to truncate files names with '…' if it wouldn’t fit. I argued that too much critical info would be lost and suggested it be in the middle instead. The Finder team loved it and implemented it later that day. They were so easy to work with.

I'd totally forgotten about it until I overheard someone commenting it was an example of Apple's attention to detail. I'd didn't say anything at the time but yeah, that was me ;-)

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Toot

Written by Scott Jenson on 2024-12-18 at 23:11

What I so enjoyed about the Finder team was that there was no string utility to remove the middle of the string. They had to write it themselves. It was extra work they just took on. I never heard a peep from them about "implementation complexity".

It's experiences like this that have spoiled me. When I hear over (and over) that UX needs to "work within business goals" I think back to this experience where I just had an idea... and they did it.

Why was it so easy then, and so hard now?

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Descendants

Written by Robb B. 🇺🇸 on 2024-12-18 at 23:25

@scottjenson Circa 2007, I felt compelled to create a spreadsheet that showed various methods of truncations against strings like those in our app to convince the team to implement it. That was for myself too to make the choice and dial in some micro logic.

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Written by RonLichty on 2024-12-19 at 01:07

@scottjenson I rebuilt (regrew?) the Finder team after most of the System 7 participants went separate ways - but the same. The Finder team - and perhaps all of Apple - absolutely devoted to delighting users - to ensuring user delight. At the time, I thought we were just a bit ahead of the rest of computerdom. Not so much, 30+ years later.

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Written by bitsavers.org on 2024-12-19 at 03:46

@ronlichty @scottjenson

Apple back then listened to engineers instead of living in fear of Jobs having some shit fit over it.

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Written by the harbinger of eternal sept on 2024-12-19 at 02:31

@scottjenson most hiring is done at a level of abstraction that didn’t used to exist

hiring goes for people that put libraries they know on their resumes and recruiters match on the libraries the business depends on

in the before times, there was just code and you could either code or you couldn’t

now, there’s people that use libraries (product) and people that write libraries (platform)

the people that write libraries still operate like the before times like you describe, but people that need a library can’t deliver a solution if it doesn’t already exist.

the library people are generally quarantined off from ux and the rest of the business as their customers are developers, so while they could do the thing, in practice, they don’t know problems exist until another dev surfaces it, which doesn’t happen

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Written by Nova🐧✨ on 2024-12-19 at 05:42

@scottjenson it's so hard now because the designers who care either can't budge the org to do it or get no funding to make their own :(

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Written by Inaction Figure on 2024-12-19 at 12:09

@scottjenson

Thanks for sharing this look behind the scenes!

I’m a UI dev, and sometimes it seems like Product Owners do everything they can to keep UI from talking directly to UX. Earlier in my career, some of our best work, and most enjoyable work, was when I could just walk into the UX lead’s office and brainstorm.

Now there seems to be less focus on “Let’s build the best experience we can” and it’s more about “Stay in your lane and build with the blocks we give you.”

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Written by Cassandrich on 2024-12-20 at 09:04

@inaction_figure @scottjenson Often that's because management has bad UX as an explicit goal.

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Written by Ray Jepson on 2024-12-22 at 17:32

@scottjenson managers have to justify their existence by questioning every improvement and quantifying them to death.

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