I remember reading somewhere that most (modal) dialogs are just lazy design. It's easier to have a dialog component and throw whatever notice or controls in there. It's a predictable and flexible canvas.
Your password is incorrect? Error dialog. Easier to design and build that a warning state on the text-boxes and a message close to the login button.
Writing a post? Editor dialog. It's easier to design and build than something that's inline, grows to accommodate what you're writing, and works predictably when you scroll away or click something else.
There's something the user should know? Alert dialog. Much easier than figuring out where in the component hierarchy you should inject a warning, how it should look, what controls you should disable, etc.
I used to have the opinion that modals were bad, but now I think there's a good middle-ground where a lack of modal sometimes generates implicit states with many edge-cases that makes the UX more complex.
Maybe it's lazy but the important question should be: is it good design?
I don't think it is, as it hides some information from the main page. But I think it can be done well and be useful, as said at the end of the article.
And OS modals are crap too. Many many times I have watched someone completely ignore to modal message and get frustrated trying to click on something in the background.
The more important question: do the people paying you care if it’s good design? Because the people who have paid me thus far in my career have not cared.
A lot of people don’t understand design as something that goes beyond the surface layer, though. They see that someone picked a pleasing color palette and layout, but maybe they don’t imagine that a designer would come and tell them to stop using modals.
This is a good point, and often the reality - it’s unfortunate that it is being downvoted. But it’s a defeatist stance. It’s a central part of the designer’s job to contend that human factors are important, and explain what the effects of shortcuts and poor user experience are on the value of the product and the well-being of its users.
If you’re lucky your client hired you because they, too, care and believe design to be important, but that’s far from a given.
Well yeah, but if the person who is in charge of the modal is the implementer, not the designer, then they may not have the expertise to design a good ui.
And many designers are artists ("designers") not ux engineers, so their main goal is to make something that shows their artistic skill - they're going to be trained in design packages, not designing a good ui.
(I mean, when was the last time you saw a clickable button on a modern user interface? nowadays it's just "guess what this shade of grey means")
> if the person who is in charge of the modal is the implementer, not the designer, then they may not have the expertise to design a good ui
Isn’t the obvious fix there to let the designer design and the implementer implement? Obviously if the designer is kept out of the loop completely they may not even be in a position to argue for the importance of good design (or just any design process), but then it shouldn’t be surprising that the outcome is bad design.
Well for many programs there isn't really any separate designer, particularly for line of business apps. That was really where I was coming from - the person who designs the app is simply someone who was trained in coding.
In any case, as I said, you get a problem if the person who designs the app is simply someone who was trained in coding, and you get a problem if they're simply someone who was trained in art.
Have you considered that the problem could be your choice of people who pay you rather than the idea of good design being valuable? Not that it's necessarily an either/or situation here, mind you.
True that may be, if you are not uncovering this during your interview process, do you think it's possible there's room for improvement in how you conduct your end of the due diligence process?
Unfortunately, the CTO that hired me left the company two weeks after I started which caused a significant cultural shift. I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting.
> I did my due diligence, no need for the virtual gaslighting.
> Unfortunately, you never really find out until you work somewhere.
If you invest in a stock that you tried to research and it drops to a value of zero and you say "well you never really know until you try it", am I gaslighting you if I tell you that there's room for improvement in your due diligence process?
A CTO hiring you and then leaving the company 2 weeks after you started is a major red flag. This is not a common occurrence in anything but a dysfunctional org. Now, there is of course only so far you can predict into the future, and surprises do happen. But whose decision was it to accept the offer? And who is ultimately on the hook for it, whether it's in your control or not? To protect yourself, you need to own the responsibility for that decision, even if you have no control over it happening inside the company.
There are companies you can accept offers from where the chances of this happening are one in several thousand, and companies where the chances are closer to one in fifty. To what extent are you confident in your ability to accurately predict and gauge a range and confidence interval about that?
I used to say the same things you did, and I kept getting the same results. Eventually, I just got tired of it and I realized I'd do quite a lot to prevent it from happening in the future -- or at least, if it happened again, I didn't want it to be a surprise. I'm thankful to say that I'm significantly closer to that point now, although it took many years of trial and error. And surely, I have even more room to improve, and I look forward to honing my technique even further as I gain more experience!
If what you're trying isn't working for you, it may be worthwhile to try to reconsider your process and see if you can improve it. If you don't even try to improve it and you're unhappy with your results, why do you think that would ever change?
You are truly insufferable and making incorrect assumptions. This happened once, in my current role.
> This is not a common occurrence in anything but a dysfunctional org.
This happens all the time in orgs all over the planet. Hiring managers and executives get new jobs and things change. Time from offer acceptance to starting work is always nonzero in big companies (measured in weeks to months in most of the fortune 500, I'd bet - my current company is Fortune 10[1], so there's that - cto in this case means of the particular division of this company, not the parent).
Now, please... do us both a favor and stop talking out of your ass.
> I also agree with grumple that you are truly insufferable.
Go for it!
I get paid well to do quality work by employers who appreciate the value of that. Why would I care about whether someone who is content with mediocrity finds that insufferable?
My message goes out to those who want to do quality work, who maybe aren't there quite yet, and are keeping their minds open: don't give up. Every little bit helps. Every career transition you make to a firm that has a little bit of a higher bar than the one before is a difference to be proud of, and one day, you eventually arrive at one that's fairly close to the top. Be patient, keep improving, and don't give up! You can do it!
>I remember reading somewhere that most (modal) dialogs are just lazy design
If they are lazy design does that mean they are quick design, especially if you find a problem that needs solving in the middle of getting ready for the launch of your MVP it might be easier to do a modal.
Of course this would lead to legacy design that needs fixing over time, and legacy code to support the quick and dirty design decisions.
Especially blocking modals (which both stop your code and the user) are a damned easy way to interact with the user in most programming languages. Nothing is easier then to write alert("foo") or if(confirm("are you sure?")) do_sth();
Your password is incorrect? Error dialog. Easier to design and build that a warning state on the text-boxes and a message close to the login button.
Writing a post? Editor dialog. It's easier to design and build than something that's inline, grows to accommodate what you're writing, and works predictably when you scroll away or click something else.
There's something the user should know? Alert dialog. Much easier than figuring out where in the component hierarchy you should inject a warning, how it should look, what controls you should disable, etc.