37signals is at their worst when they adopt this sanctimonious attitude. Say what you want about their juvenile tone, the criticisms on RTFHIG are mostly valid.<p>What are we going to do next? Pillory literary, film and food critics because their insights are inconvenient to the sensitive feelings of creators in those realms? Come on.<p>Creating things for other people has a long, rich history of criticism. Some valid, some bullshit, but all essential to the advancement of whatever creative field is under scrutiny. The shovelware artists who RTFHIG pick on might find a genuine direction for improving their work. Meanwhile, we're all talking about what genuinely makes a good interface.<p>That these guys are provocative makes their insights more valuable, since they get more attention. If you don't have or can't grow a thick skin, you don't belong in a creative field. It's as simple as that.
I agree that just shitting all over people's work is, well, shitty. But I disagree entirely that the anonymous critic behind Read the Fucking HIG (<a href="http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/</a>) is out of line or that this kind of criticism is lacking in merit.<p>Firstly, it's clearly a bit tongue in cheek: "The evil doctor cackled as the thunder struck his lightning rod, giving life and sentience to his unholy creation, spliced together from iphone, ipad and mac ui." And the vulgarity is right in line with other satirical, single purpose sites like <a href="http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/</a> and others I can't think of right now.<p>Secondly, he's got a "legitimate" complaint. You don't have to agree with his point, but I think a lot of people who are passionate about design (and about design in the context of their Mac) really, really do experience visceral rage at the way Apple flouts the HIG. A site like this is really just capturing that zeitgeist and reflecting how heated people actually feel about the topic.<p>Anyhow, I really am a big proponent for civility in discourse (that's why I'm always reading HN), but everything has its place.
'Read the Fucking HIG' (and 'Perversion Tracker', two years ago - <a href="http://www.perversiontracker.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.perversiontracker.com</a>) is interesting not so much for the content of the criticism, but because it's a reaction to the massive influx of new developers into a development community with its own distinct subculture.<p>Mac developers for the longest time engaged in 'artisanal software production' (for lack of a better term) with high production values - and while a few did well, many of them were just scraping by, doing it largely out of love for the platform. Then iOS came out, everybody learned Objective-C, money began to flow freely, and like homeowners in a town that's suddenly become touristy, they found themselves economically better off but a little ill-at-ease with the new character of their neighborhood.<p>Because of this, I'm more inclined to give this guy a bit of slack. The criticism isn't personal - it's just one person's way of mourning a world that no longer exists.
Although the tone is perhaps a bit mean-spirited (kind of funny), I have to say that I agree with most of the points readthefuckinghig makes.<p>Critique is important, not immature. Despite the fact that the blogger in question comes off as a real asshole, he makes real observations about specific details which wouldn't have been so ugly if the designer had just read the <i></i><i></i> human interface guidelines.<p>If something sucks, I think it's better for someone to say it sucks anonymously than for nobody to say anything - especially if they're citing details that can be fixed!
“Where the heck were you when the page was blank?” - Paul Butterworth<p>Always such a bogus argument. This is what people say when they don't like your opinion but have no argument to counter, so they resort to a rhetorical that implies you have no authority on the issue. But the fact is you do not need to be a creator to criticize a creation legitimately. Sometimes specializing in just observation/criticism and <i>not</i> creation allows you more time to think things over from the standpoint of analysis, whereas creation demands that a large portion of your mental energy goes to the creation process.<p>I can't speak to the blog in question but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea of a blog just for the sake of criticism. How it goes about that criticism and any unnecessary hostility is another issue.
Is it me or is RTFHIG actually generating discussion, adding value and generally making sense? What is it that 37signals are doing in this post again?<p>Oh, I'm sorry, trying to engage in a urinal measurement comparison.<p>There seems to be a thing amongst blogs and indeed writers. They reach a certian level in which they comment on things that affect them, then they comment on things that don't affect them, then they seem to adopt a particular stance that seems controversial to us, but not to them, because thus far we have celebrated them - they have become <i>celebrities</i>. I've seen this with Guber, I've seen this with 37 signals. Perhaps one day this will happen to me (hopefully I'll never become important enough). From that point on the shark is never far away from jumping.<p>I don't think 37 signals jumped the shark here, but I do think they went too far. They're right, there is no place for just shitting all over other people's work. Shame they forgot their perspective on who was doing the shitting.
Criticism is good for a creator. If you can't turn criticism into a force to improve your product, you're doing it wrong. (Granted, baseless criticism doesn't count.)<p>And if they're violating Apple's HIG... Seriously, why? That should be the easiest thing to get right. They've outlined it for you.
I dunno, I worked with one designer who firmly believed that "users like a challenge". He loved little tricks like "hiding" clickable things by making them blend in with decorative elements, he liked unusual fonts, he liked layouts that forced the users to hunt all over the screen for the next thing they wanted.<p>But we weren't making games, we were making corporate Intranets. So my advice is, ignore your designer and try <i>using</i> something he's designed. If it's easy and intuitive, he's a good designer. If it's not, put him on the silly little scooter he'll invariably have and push him gently out of the door... Especially if he tries to tell you "you don't understand <i>design</i>, maaan"!
This has to be an age thing. When I was 10 I shitted (shat?) all over people's work. Now that I'm 25 I have nothing but respect for people who produce.
There are many places, and one is right here:<p><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1351-1-who-the-fuck-designs-this-shit-and-2" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1351-1-who-the-fuck-designs-t...</a>
I see this a number of posts here arguing for/agaist this with an unsaid dichotomy where the choices are<p>1) don't critisize, create instead
2) Criticism is good, even if is kind of mean.<p>But I think this a false dichotomy. Words and tone do matter. If you put the object of your criticism in a defensive position, you are unlikely to effect any change at all. This is not some new insight; it's been well understood at the very least since Dale Carnegie. You might acheive the goal of making yourself feel good, but then that certainly isn't worthy of any external respect.<p>What's the difference between:
1) You app is ugly and it fucking sucks. If you used abc to do xyz, at least I wouldn't be vomitting.<p>and<p>2)Nice effort on your app. You might consider using abc to do xyz. It might improve the aesthetics and usability some.<p>Some might say it says effectively the same thing, but the there is a world of difference in the way the reader reacts to those statements.
1.) The referenced is taking a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to advocating the Apple HIG.<p>2.) I find 37s posting something like this humorous. DHH "shits all over" other people's work all the time.<p>In summary, lighten up.
Eh, it's like Regretsy, the site that makes fun of atrocious items placed for sale on Etsy. Even Regretsy has wound up boosting sales of the mocked items. They've also harnessed their traffic for good with occasional charity appeals, and helped a little boy with cancer raise $100,000 or so to pay for his treatment.
Mac users care very much about design and aesthetics. I would turn this around: These developers are shitting on the platform. And sure, I will just not download that app, but these developers should be ashamed for realeasing something so ugly. Do they have no pride in their work?
I agree, and will also point out that the referenced site (<a href="http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://readthefuckinghig.tumblr.com/</a>) is terrible, IMO. Does the holier-than-thou author not know how to use the fucking shift key?
I think it's the principle of the thing. Criticism works when done right, that is when it's <i>traditional criticism</i> like we all learned in art class. "Your shading is inconsistent here, and the use of lilac is cliche."<p>Contrasting, this blog 37signals is going on about just smacks of the zeitgeist that is modern "criticism":<p>Nowadays, criticism is rarely substantiated. Instead, folk spout out inflammatory nonsense like "it's a flaming load of dog crap" rather than the much more helpful "a combo box was a bad choice here."<p>To the critics: make it <i>constructively</i> funny. If you're just going to badmouth me then put up or shut up you non-contributing zero.
I'm going to have to disagree. Apple make it <i>incredibly</i> easy to make apps which fit with the look, feel and experience of the rest of OS X. The Human Interface Guidelines are clear and specific on how to do most things. Cocoa's APIs and the Interface Builder make it far easier to follow the conventions than to reinvent the wheel. There is absolutely a right way and a wrong way to implement most UI features in Mac software. The criticisms in RTFHIG aren't simply that the apps featured are ugly, but that they do things that Apple explicitly states that you shouldn't do in a Mac app. Doing it the right way requires nothing more than the willingness to read and follow the explicit instructions given in the HIGs. I have absolutely no respect for anyone who has so little respect for software.<p>Writing software is unquestionably difficult, there is a great deal to learn and most developers have a long adolescence before they start writing really good software. It's also true however that the proliferation of bad software has serious negative externalities on the developer community. It feels absolutely terrible to submit a lovingly-crafted piece of software to an app store only to see it swamped by thoughtless, careless crapware. We would be foolish to ignore the importance of signal-to-noise and the ability of noise to render a communications channel useless. For people who make their living through the app store, this is absolutely a matter of survival.
I think what rubs me the wrong way about this site is not the criticism. Criticism is ok. It's lack of proposed solutions.<p>One thing I really enjoy is when designers take a look at some established interface and try and design a better one and put it out there for comments and ideas. <i>That</i> is constructive criticism in my book.<p>example:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachklein/4831151379/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachklein/4831151379/</a>
I don't know if I trust any authority on the Internet when it comes to judging interface design. Even some esteemed bloggers/authors in the web-design field, I've found their personal home pages to be a bit dull. See also: the apparent outcry over the Mac App Store interface. When I finally used the thing myself, I was highly impressed and I suspect the non-geek portion of the population have no problem with it whatsoever.
There are a few things I'd like to throw in here: 1 is that I didn't even know what the fucking HIG was so I had to look it up and, hell, thanks to that website, if I ever choose to put an App on the Apple App store (highly unlikely), I will probably look up the HIG, and read it. Thankyou.<p>Secondly this post by 37 signals is inspired by RTFH but the headline is "There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work" - and that's a true statement.<p>This is something that is particularly rife in amongst programmers: they point at each other and say "what? you don't use X and do X? then you are a shit programmer". Life is about getting things done and getting things done necessitates compromise.<p>You should see how shit the videos I just made for my product are. They're totally shit, but it's the best I could do and I wanted to put something up there. I didn't have the money to pay a professional or the time to learn to do it better - there you go. Whilst I was doing it my own internal monologue kept saying "This looks like the investor pitch video for Prestige Worldwide" (if you don't get that reference, it's from the film "Step Brothers").<p>If someone posted my videos on a website called "makeyourfuckingvideosgood.tumblr.com" I wouldn't necessarily be offended because it would generate traffic to my site and I know my limitations and have no sense of pride in what I've created, but that doesn't make it right for someone to wantonly create zero value assertions about the quality of others' work (let me say, though, that I would say that humour adds value so Maddox's "I am better than your kids" is exempt).<p>Now lastly, I find it somewhat ironic that 37signals have posted all this shitting on the person's work who writes RTFH. Perhaps they could have included some constructive criticism on how to improve their writing, or posted alternative examples of satire they enjoy more.<p>Perhaps the most appropriate response would have been to create readsomefuckingsatire.tumblr.com and put that site on it.<p>As professionals we should all be continually learning and improving, and we should never disparage someone who has not learned or improved as much as us in a given field because, as the OP points out:<p><i>they're making something and that's awesome.</i><p>That's the key point I took out of this post, and it's an attitude I'm going to work harder to cultivate in my own life.
I'm actually surprise by how many people are defending the author of RTFHIG. As a designer I can tell you can most of the users of HN could end up on a site like that with their app (web or native). Those people that he's picking on could be developers who build those app for the love of programming and make some extra cash, and they may genuinely thinking those are good UIs.
A little off topic, but I had no idea there were so many bad apple apps. Some of it looks like the crap that comes on my motherboard driver CD.<p>If anything, this is a sign of the mainstreaming of apple. No longer is it an exclusive refuge of self styled artists... the barbarians are at the gates. This probably wasn't how things were supposed to turn out.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.<p><a href="http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html</a>
I generally only listen to criticism from people that have accomplished something similar to what they are criticising themselves.<p>There are so many negative people out there, and it's a good way to sort the wheat from the chaff. People who have been there themselves tend to only complain if there's a valid reason for doing so.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910
>> Looking at the end product it’s impossible to know the journey that the designer took, to appreciate what went into it. You don’t know about the constraints, the compromises, or external forces that shaped the design before you. Certainly the end user is not going to be privy to those details either, but as a designer critquing the work of another designer you should know there is more to it.<p>I would really like it if designers would be more open with their constraints. If the customers understand the constraints, then we can give better feedback about how to make a better product.
While I agree with the sentiment, I think sites like Read the Fucking HIG serve a good purpose: they keep UI designers from getting lazy. Nobody wants to come up with a design that ends up on a site like that.
It appears that they just took my post from last week and added 500 words: <a href="http://ted-is-a-nerd.tumblr.com/post/2631616173/" rel="nofollow">http://ted-is-a-nerd.tumblr.com/post/2631616173/</a>
As a basketball player, I'd gladly take any (any, really) critique from Kobe. I won't take any (any, really) shit from Joe Blow.
Prove to me you can do better than me. Then, we'll talk.
I just read through 10 or so posts on that blog, and nothing seems terribly out of line... His criticisms were for the most part legitimate. That's just his style, and, while I don't prefer that and think it's quite immature, I've got to say, I did agree with most of the things he pointed out.<p>Amusing how you're calling for respect of other's work when you've shown to not give a shit yourselves and put an end to the work of a competing service that many seemed to enjoy temporarily -- HuddleChat.
I've always found the mac software space to automatically weed out bad UI. The userbase is used to certain behaviours (as generally described in the UI guidelines from apple)- and apps that don't follow that tend to not gain much traction.<p>Sure, the app store will expose a bunch of crappy apps from people who don't read the guide - but the market should weed them out in a hurry - those who develop according to what the market expects will succeed over those who write junk.
Did anyone else notice that the Apple Human Interface Guide is hard to read on a widescreen monitor? I clicked on the link and the text was a good 18" wide. You would think they would know about making a website readable.<p><a href="http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx...</a>
37signals really missed the point.<p>Are they seriously calling them out for not offering more constructive criticism? Um...that's not why that site exists...<p>On a side note, there is nothing stopping 37signals from creating a webspace dedicated to constructively critiquing Mac App design for the benefit of the community in a more thorough and serious manner. But somehow, like the creators of the site, I doubt 37signals is interested in doing so. :|
Criticism isn't often worth anything, just demonstrating a sterile person trying to find other things to do than make. Until we see some world class design from the anon behind FTFHIG, their opinion is worth 0.<p>Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism -<p>'Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well;
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not Critics to their judgment too?'
I think it's an important point that constructive criticism has a positive intent and it's rarely mean-spirited. Might be hard to hear, but the critic isn't just being an asshole.<p>(Did have an art-school teacher who used mean similes to teach, but that was the rare exception. And he had a consistent flair for mean, so it was sort of an odd joy to behold.)
The irony being of course that the critics themselves should start by reading a f<i></i>*ing English grammar book and learn to capitalize the beginning of their sentences.
I rarely enjoy 37 Signals posts, but I heartily agree with Jason Z. (new guy?). There's so much negativism on the net in general; everyone seems threatened by everyone else. And you find it here, too, a place where you'd expect to find nothing but support and encouragement. (To be fair: HN is full of supportive people; there's just more negativity than you'd expect. I'm probably guilty of that, too, although I'm making a concerted effort to do otherwise.)<p>All criticism is not constructive criticism. If someone's trying, they ought to be encouraged to keep trying. That may sound naive and pollyanna, but ask yourself: when was the latest time a hater changed the world for the better?
Of course there is. It's called trolling, and it gets attention. For example, the modern news media is built on trolling, as is most of 37signals's fame.