惯性聚合 高效追踪和阅读你感兴趣的博客、新闻、科技资讯
阅读原文 在惯性聚合中打开

推荐订阅源

罗磊的独立博客
L
LangChain Blog
aimingoo的专栏
aimingoo的专栏
IT之家
IT之家
B
Blog
博客园_首页
博客园 - 司徒正美
有赞技术团队
有赞技术团队
博客园 - 聂微东
I
InfoQ
美团技术团队
GbyAI
GbyAI
阮一峰的网络日志
阮一峰的网络日志
H
Help Net Security
大猫的无限游戏
大猫的无限游戏
MyScale Blog
MyScale Blog
WordPress大学
WordPress大学
The GitHub Blog
The GitHub Blog
A
About on SuperTechFans
人人都是产品经理
人人都是产品经理
Microsoft Azure Blog
Microsoft Azure Blog
Engineering at Meta
Engineering at Meta
钛媒体:引领未来商业与生活新知
钛媒体:引领未来商业与生活新知
The Cloudflare Blog

Unsung

The surprising richness of GarageBand – Unsung “The pipeline of future experts is thinning from both ends.” – Unsung “It took months to find appliances that didn’t need apps to function.” – Unsung Day for night – Unsung “But obviously, that’s just silly stuff.” – Unsung Within or without – Unsung A few interesting modern pixel fonts – Unsung Google Docs shortcut onboarding – Unsung “Why pay for an orchestra when your computer can do it all?” – Unsung Lisa’s copy (and cut, and paste) – Unsung “This is a common tell in web apps, and we did a lot of work to eliminate it.” – Unsung Chrome’s abnormal tab search – Unsung “Some say it sounds like an alto saxophone.” – Unsung Shallow breathing – Unsung “If you just ignore those pesky impossible details, the demo looks deceptively simple.” – Unsung “Accents are an opportunity, not a burden.” – Unsung Less doesn’t need more – Unsung “We accepted this gradual bloat, but that’s not progress.” – Unsung Safari and system design, pt. 1 – Unsung “193 hours of attempts (and practice)” – Unsung Not a radio pharma ad – Unsung “Cryptic mode was born from a hard constraint.” – Unsung Speaking of wiggling the mouse – Unsung “This is where your mouse becomes a cryptographic instrument.” – Unsung Mailbag: Photoshop’s focus post – Unsung Rug pulled – Unsung Save For Web claws – Unsung “Nothing short of a magic trick” – Unsung “They did the bare minimum and moved on.” – Unsung A preview of the future – Unsung
“Easy to use,” the hard parts – Unsung
Marcin Wichary · 2026-05-18 · via Unsung

A reader asked me this, and I thought I will answer here:

One bit of challenge with [where I work] is that my audience isn’t already almost-guaranteed to be into design! They’re hopefully interested in making good software in general, though, and probably curious about the app [I’m building] they could be using. I’m also afraid that developers sometimes confuse “easy to use” with “beginner-only, limiting”, which makes it harder to write about streamlining UIs; there’s only so many times you can invoke “reducing mental load.”

I love this question because it gets to the core of why I started this blog. I’m perennially unhappy with the conflation of “craft” with “delight,” and the subsequent narrowing of “delight” into “cute strings and slow animations.” In the famous words of Steve Jobs, “Design is not how it looks. Design is how it works. What’s tricky is that they’re sometimes related, and even if you learn how to tell the difference, your exec team probably never will.”

I am quoting from memory.

Anyway, I hope spending time on Unsung – please like and subscribe – helps with examples of what to talk about and how to talk about them. But, just to list some alternatives to “reduces mental load” for well-made software that come to my mind:

  • is more efficient
  • gets you home earlier
  • will allow you to spend more time on things you enjoy
  • will allow you to choose which parts of the problem to spend time on
  • reduces tedium
  • understands and practices progressive disclosure
  • understands you
  • speaks your language
  • learns your preferences
  • meets you where you are
  • is made by people like you
  • respects you
  • will make you better at what you do
  • rewards mastery
  • doesn’t dumb things down
  • will teach you concepts helpful in other software
  • never takes control away from you
  • is easy to customize
  • adapts to you
  • doesn’t disobey you
  • will make you look good in front of others
  • respects history and legacy of the space
  • is built well
  • is conceptually/​systemically beautiful
  • is well-considered or thoughtful

There’s more, and I am curious what comes to your mind and how you all connect with developers! But maybe just going through a list like this will provoke some ideas.

(Of course, if you cannot honestly claim some of these about software you’re working on, and you think they’re important – I guess you have some work to do.)