{ "version": "https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1.1", "title": "User interface", "_rss_description": "Ilya Birman’s blog on design, cities, music, and life", "_rss_language": "en", "_itunes_email": "ilyabirman@ilyabirman.net", "_itunes_categories_xml": "<\/itunes:category>\r\n<\/itunes:category>\r\n\r\n", "_itunes_image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic-square@2x.jpg?1573933764", "_itunes_explicit": "no", "home_page_url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/tags\/ui\/", "feed_url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/tags\/ui\/json\/", "icon": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1573933764", "authors": [ { "name": "Ilya Birman", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/", "avatar": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1573933764" } ], "items": [ { "id": "386", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/design-vs-evolution\/", "title": "Design is dead, it’s all evolution now", "content_html": "

There’s no design in digital products anymore. It’s been replaced by evolution.<\/p>\n

When I was reading Richard Dawkins about evolution, one example stuck with me: the giraffe’s laryngeal nerve. It connects the larynx to the brain, but in a giraffe it runs all the way down the long neck, loops around the aorta, and then comes back up. Logically, it should run straight from the head to the larynx. But the giraffe evolved from a short-necked ancestor that already had this loop around the aorta. As the neck grew, the nerve simply stretched.<\/p>\n

Here’s another example: Instagram. It used to be a timeline of photos from the creators you liked. Then direct messaging was added, and the feed got scrambled with ads and videos. Then the developers copied Stories from Snapchat. They didn’t really fit the feed, so they were stuck on top as little circles that live separately from the feed and use different gestures. Then, in various places, they shoved in live streams (not the same as videos), something called IGTV (also different), and Reels lifted from TikTok (different again). Reels got their own tab with its own set of gestures.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"\n
Design and evolution<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There was a time when products were designed with intent. Sections were organized into a hierarchy, features were given logical places. You could feel a system behind the product: what parts it consists of, how screens are organized, what kinds of data it has. Users didn’t analyze it consciously, but it helped them navigate and gave them a sense of control.<\/p>\n

That’s not how it works now. Instead, teams make hundreds of random changes, keep the winners, roll back the losers. In the end, nobody sees any logic in the product. Users post the same photos in Stories “just in case” (because nobody finds them in the feed anymore, and users know that). Reels, in turn, somehow leak into the main feed (because lots of people never visit the Reels tab, and the developers know that).<\/p>\n

Just as a giraffe is a messy tangle of nerves, guts, and bones, Instagram is a mess of features with no logic, order, or plan. In neither case do you feel the hand of a Creator who carefully thought through how everything should be structured.<\/p>\n

This shift from design to evolution is happening in most digital products around us. Sometimes it’s framed as the change in the designer’s role: we’re told that a modern designer should test hypotheses and analyze metrics. But that work can’t be part of design; it’s literally the antonym of design. Nobody designs anything; instead, people take random steps and keep the ones that happen to work.<\/p>\n

You can call this evolution operator a “designer” if you want — words can change their meanings. But you don’t actually need a human at all to generate variants and see which ones survive: nature was doing it for billions of years before humans existed. Some people find the insides of a human more beautiful than the insides of a MacBook. That’s a matter of taste. The fact remains: to create human insides, a human wasn’t needed.<\/p>\n", "summary": "There’s no design in digital products anymore. It’s been replaced by evolution", "date_published": "2026-02-09T16:52:44+03:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-09T16:52:33+03:00", "tags": [ "design", "interface" ], "image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/design-vs-evolution.jpg", "_date_published_rfc2822": "Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:52:44 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "386", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [ "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/design-vs-evolution.jpg" ] } }, { "id": "383", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/apple-future-hope\/", "title": "Hoping for a brighter future at Apple", "content_html": "

The internet is celebrating the news that Alan Dye, Apple’s head of design, is leaving.<\/p>\n

Alan has been the face of Apple’s interface decline in recent years. There was a time when the core principles of good interface design were easiest to explain using Apple as the example. Now Apple mostly serves to show how not<\/i> to do it. Dye ended up with enormous power despite minimal competence: he simply doesn’t understand what makes an interface good; he lacks the education and isn’t even aware of it. Looks and surface-level effects completely defeated depth and thoughtfulness, and things still work only thanks to the extraordinary foundation laid long ago. Dye neither understood nor respected that foundation.<\/p>\n

Steve Lemay is taking over. I hadn’t heard the name before, but he has been an interface designer at Apple since 1999, so there’s no doubt he actually understands what the job of an interface designer is. And judging by the reaction, the designers inside Apple can’t believe their luck and seem genuinely hopeful. Maybe he’s someone for whom “design is how it works” isn’t just nice-sounding words. And only a couple of weeks ago there was another rumor that this year Apple will focus on polishing and refinement rather than new features.<\/p>\n

I very much hope Apple is headed for a revival. Maybe window sizes will once again be chosen so that elements actually fit instead of triggering a three-pixel scroll bar. Maybe we’ll get back the wonderful world where elements and their labels aren’t pushed as far apart as possible. Maybe animations will once again work to explain spatial relationships or bringing joy, instead of being accidental artifacts of implementation.<\/p>\n

One more thing I hope for: Apple once led the world in making drag-and-drop a truly comfortable gesture. On Windows, it was basically unusable — if you dragged a file, nothing else worked until you finished. On the Mac, while “holding” a file with the mouse, you could scroll windows with the wheel to drop the file where you needed, and you could even hit space bar to activate an element under the cursor while the mouse button was already pressed. Today these things work only sometimes, in the places where Apple hasn’t yet broken them. Maybe Apple will suddenly remember the implications of Fitts’s law, and we’ll once again be able to drag files to the very edge of the screen to drop them into the Dock, instead of having to aim at the icon.<\/p>\n

When Steve Jobs introduced Quick Look about twenty years ago, he explained that PDF parsing was built deep into the system, so even complex PDFs opened instantly, like ordinary image files. Today on the Mac, not only PDFs — even a regular JPEG takes noticeable time to appear. Just open a folder full of JPEGs and press the down arrow key to move through them. On the old Mac, the JPEGs would flicker past your eyes as they changed. Today, the Mac waits until you release the key, and only then lazily draws the JPEG you stopped on.<\/p>\n

You simply have to not know how good things can be — how good they were<\/i> — to believe that today’s Mac is good. The only reason to tolerate this misery is that everything else is even worse. If only that stopped being the only reason. Please.<\/p>\n", "summary": "The internet is celebrating the news that Alan Dye, Apple’s head of design, is leaving", "date_published": "2025-12-06T11:20:47+03:00", "date_modified": "2025-12-06T11:20:34+03:00", "tags": [ "Apple", "design", "interface", "Mac" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Sat, 06 Dec 2025 11:20:47 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "383", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "381", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/type-to-search-finder-mixed\/", "title": "When you type to search in Finder, files and folders are mixed together", "content_html": "

In Norton Commander, as well as in Windows Explorer it’s always been the norm that folders go first, then files. On Mac, it used to be different: files and folders were always mixed together based on the selected sort order.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, Apple finally gave in and added a proper sorting option to Finder: folders now appear first, files below.<\/p>\n

In Norton Commander, as well as in Windows Explorer, and even in Finder, you’ve always been able to select a file in a list just by typing its name. I’m always surprised when people scroll through giant file lists looking with their eyes, instead of just typing a couple of letters.<\/p>\n

So imagine you open a folder in Finder, and in it you have:
\nimages\/<\/tt>
\nindex.php<\/tt><\/p>\n

You press the “i” key. Obviously, the highlight should jump to the images\/<\/tt> folder. But in reality, it jumps to index.php<\/tt>. Because even though Finder visually sorts folders to the top, deep down it still believes that index.php<\/tt> comes before images<\/tt>.<\/p>\n

Vibe coding had not been invented then, but the implementation quality of Apple software was already at that same level.<\/p>\n", "summary": "In Norton Commander, as well as in Windows Explorer it’s always been the norm that folders go first, then files", "date_published": "2025-08-06T17:44:33+03:00", "date_modified": "2025-08-06T17:44:24+03:00", "tags": [ "Apple", "bugs", "interface", "Mac" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Wed, 06 Aug 2025 17:44:33 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "381", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "380", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/mobile-desktop-recognizability\/", "title": "Recognizability between mobile and desktop", "content_html": "

How much can a design change when adapting it for mobile?<\/p>\n

I go by this rule: the mobile and desktop versions should be mutually recognizable. If I’ve used a website on my computer and then open it on my phone, everything should be where I expect it to be — and vice versa.<\/p>\n

If, say, there’s a row of six images on desktop and on mobile it becomes two rows of three — that’s fine. But if the images are replaced by a “View Photos” button that opens a popup — that’s not fine anymore. If there’s a large block of text on desktop and on mobile part of it becomes hidden with “Show more” — that’s fine. But if the text is edited down just for mobile — that’s not fine anymore.<\/p>\n

I disagree with the idea of separating scenarios where people say things like: “On mobile, users are usually in a hurry, for them section X is more important than section Y, so let’s move it up”. That breaks the mutual recognizability.<\/p>\n

You can put the mobile and desktop designs side by side and ask yourself: do they feel like two views of the same thing, just rearranged for screen size? Will someone who knows one version find their way around the other? If not — I’d ask for a redesign.<\/p>\n", "summary": "How much can a design change when adapting it for mobile?", "date_published": "2025-08-03T22:58:13+03:00", "date_modified": "2025-08-03T22:58:11+03:00", "tags": [ "interface", "web" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Sun, 03 Aug 2025 22:58:13 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "380", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "379", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/superpedestrian\/", "title": "Superpedestrian fleet management interface", "content_html": "

Check out the Superpedestrian fleet management interface:<\/p>\n

\n\n\"\"\n<\/a><\/div>\n

I like designing interfaces of this kind where you need to figure out an obscure process.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Check out the Superpedestrian fleet management interface", "date_published": "2025-07-18T18:39:08+03:00", "date_modified": "2025-07-18T18:30:49+03:00", "tags": [ "interface", "projects", "release" ], "image": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/superpedestrian-cover.jpg", "_date_published_rfc2822": "Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:39:08 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "379", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": [], "og_images": [ "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/pictures\/superpedestrian-cover.jpg" ] } }, { "id": "377", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/automatic-email-sorting\/", "title": "The problem with automatic email sorting", "content_html": "

New email apps keep coming out, trying to organize your inbox. Folders in email were invented nearly fifty years ago, and since then we’ve had filters, rules, and now AI — all aiming to automate sorting.<\/p>\n

Some apps don’t even call them “folders” anymore, but “categories” or something else that only adds to the confusion. Every new app tries to outsmart the others at sorting: “inbox”, “important”, “newsletters”, “social”, “purchases”.<\/p>\n

Even Apple Mail recently jumped in with its own version: “primary”, “promotions”, and so on. Surely, I have no idea how it decides where things go. To avoid missing an email, I have to check all the categories, so the workload goes up, not down. “Didn’t get our message? Check your spam, secondary, non-urgent, and low-priority folders!” I turned that off immediately, of course.<\/p>\n

For some reason, email designers don’t get that folders only work when you create them yourself and sort things manually. If the system exists in your head and you stick to it, you can trust it. But someone else’s system makes you second-guess everything.<\/p>\n

Instead of sorting emails into folders, computers should be mining the actual information from them.<\/p>\n

Yes, finding booking references and boarding pass QR codes in your inbox is a pain. But even finding them inside an email you’ve already opened is a pain! I don’t want just a folder with those emails — ideally, I’d see the info without even opening a message. If I do need more context, let there be a shortcut to the original message. And I don’t care what folder it’s in.<\/p>\n

If an email invites me to a conference and asks me to respond by the 25th, I want that deadline clearly flagged next to the message. And show me, in my inbox, the three emails I should respond to today — based on what they say. Leave folders for people who actually like manual sorting.<\/p>\n", "summary": "New email apps keep coming out, trying to organize your inbox. Folders in email were invented nearly fifty years ago, and since then we’ve had filters", "date_published": "2025-05-23T18:14:18+03:00", "date_modified": "2025-05-23T18:14:14+03:00", "tags": [ "AI", "email", "interface" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Fri, 23 May 2025 18:14:18 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "377", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "369", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/reversibility\/", "title": "Reversibility of an interface element", "content_html": "

Reversibility is a property of an interface input control, where the user can return the control to its initial state at any time. Or, more generally, where the user can freely switch between all available states. Irreversibility, consequently, is when the element has states to which it cannot be returned after some actions. Well-designed controls are reversible.<\/p>\n

An example of an irreversible control is a group of radio buttons of which none are initially selected. Once one option is selected, there is no way to return the group to the initial blank state. This creates discomfort and frustration. In a proper radio group exactly one element is always selected, including in the initial state, so the group is reversible.<\/p>\n

But what if picking an option is required to proceed to the next step? There is no point in unselecting all options! Why would the user want that? Well, the reversibility requirement stands even if the initial state is not “valid”. This has to do only with the mechanics of the interface control, not with its role in the interface external to it. It affects the sense of control. Consider this: a text input field does not resist having all characters erased from it, even if it is required. Any other element, if it has a blank state at all, should let you return to it. In the case of a radio group, remove the blank state altogether by providing a default option.<\/p>\n

Here’s another example of irreversibility. Suppose you have a required text field, initially blank. The user clicks the field, then clicks another element, leaving the field blank (or fills it in, but then erases everything). The system now draws a red border around the field, hinting that the field cannot be left blank. Now it is impossible to return the field to its initial “clean” blank state. A solution would be to fade out the red border so that the field returns to the initial state after a second.<\/p>\n", "summary": "Reversibility is a property of an interface input control, where the user can return the control to its initial state at any time", "date_published": "2024-01-10T15:59:01+03:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-10T15:57:09+03:00", "tags": [ "interface" ], "_date_published_rfc2822": "Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:59:01 +0300", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "369", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": true, "links_required": [], "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "365", "url": "https:\/\/ilyabirman.net\/meanwhile\/all\/duolingo-no-more\/", "title": "How I stopped using Duolingo", "content_html": "

Duolingo used to be a great app. I opened in to practice almost every day. But then they changed the design:<\/p>\n

\n