Szymon Kaliski

Optimising for Fewer Interactions

• when building UIs and data visualisations each interaction moves the responsibility away from the designer, and towards the viewer
• in an ideal world, no interaction should be necessary to understand the information - the viewer should see, and then understand
  • on the other hand, interactions can be interesting when playing with Simulations, trying to understand the parameter spaces, and get a feel for how things work

Interacting with an interface always involves some work on the part of the user. The goal of designers (or at least one of the more important ones) is to minimize that work, while at the same time enabling users to achieve their goals. If designers and developers don't pay careful attention to the human actions required to operate their technology, the result can be a taxing experience for the users.

— About Face

• and not as strongly related, but still relevant:

  (...) Everything added dilutes everything else.

  — https://x.com/mschoening/status/1794224774845284735 ↗

  • everything that's added to the UI has impact on everything else, and the more there is of it (the UI), the more cognitive work the user has to do