‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Tells of a Slop UI

386 points · 243 comments · theanonymousone

  1. Art9681 · · focus · HN ↗
    Can we get some examples of what a good UI looks like then? I would like to see a UI design expert take a couple of these slop designs and show what each should look like according to their taste.
    1. minimaxir · · focus · HN ↗
      A half-joke answer is "not like this UI", which is surprisingly easy to prompt if you're already using agents for design.
    2. chasd00 · · focus · HN ↗
      Even better would be some UI expert come up with an application interface for 10 common use cases. Then, give that to a group of designers, say it’s AI generated, and ask them to point out AI tells.
    3. Avicebron · · focus · HN ↗
      this dudes blog: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sha256.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sha256.net&#x2F;
      1. zbentley · · focus · HN ↗
        Really not a fan. Like, fairly significantly bad. Text sizing is poorly chosen, the only affordance for navigation or understanding what content is contained within what sections is at the bottom, sections are concentrated together in an overwhelming way (god help me if I’m a frequent visitor primarily interested in “external writings and presentations”), headings and font sizing is variously too close together and too far apart, code blocks are always in a huge font compared to prose, and code blocks blow out the horizontal scroll, meaning that vertical scrolling on mobile is a massive pain in the ass.

        There are good examples out there for minimal, straightforward blog design. This ain’t it.

        1. Avicebron · · focus · HN ↗
          To be fair, your blog has the opposite issue, with the sidenotes forcing me to zoom in to read the text on mobile.

          I&#x27;ll admit that the blog I linked doesn&#x27;t handle code blocks gracefully specifically on mobile, it&#x27;s fine on the desktop.

          1. zbentley · · focus · HN ↗
            &gt; To be fair, your blog has the opposite issue, with the sidenotes forcing me to zoom in to read the text on mobile.

            Very true, I’ve procrastinated on fixing that for too long.

    4. satvikpendem · · focus · HN ↗
      Read Refactoring UI, originally written by the Tailwind devs. They also used to have a blog with some good articles: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;refactoring-ui&#x2F;7-practical-tips-for-cheating-at-design-40c736799886" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;refactoring-ui&#x2F;7-practical-tips-for-cheat...
    5. dpark · · focus · HN ↗
      I’ve seen several of these “slop design” critiques lately. They don’t seem to be coming from people with strong design skills. (Presumably qualified designers have better things to do than critique AI designs. Also they probably know how to get what they want out of the AI instead of accepting what it creates.)
    6. tamimio · · focus · HN ↗
      An authentic one, a one you create yourself regardless if it’s not perfect.
      1. dpark · · focus · HN ↗
        “Authentic” does not imply good. There were millions of poor interfaces coded up before AI.
        1. tamimio · · focus · HN ↗
          And that’s ok, I am at the point where I would rather to see typos or grammar errors too than a very well written text, as I know a human put the efforts to write it
          1. minimaxir · · focus · HN ↗
            That is not how the real world works outside of anti-AI communities. Typos&#x2F;grammar are seen as unprofessional and are more likely to cause negative sentiment&#x2F;backlash than overused design.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.