I want more than that. I want some sort of visual guidance for what's possible to do and how to do it. A blank canvas means that I have to focus more on "how do I do this?" than actually doing it.
Yeah, discoverability is getting worse. It would be slightly more okay if there were one canonical menu system for an app that you could summon immediately and unambiguously. But every app is a mess of inconsistent layout and hidden gestures.
> But every app is a mess of inconsistent layout and hidden gestures.
This is what happens when we decide that the web is the end all be all of application delivery platforms, even for desktop (Electron).
Call me old man yelling at clouds, but when native apps would use the operating system's components and APIs, they looked just like every other app or utility in the OS, behaved the same way, shared the same shortcuts, etc. You could just learn how to use the OS and that intuitively expanded into any native app written for that OS.
We decided to throw all of that out the window for custom branded "experiences" and lowest common denominator cross platform UIs.
Now things appear simple on the surface, but are much more difficult to use because instead of just learning your OS's conventions, you have to learn each individual application and its quirks.
Letting marketing people dictate app design was one of the biggest mistakes this industry has made.
Things are slightly better on macOS because it still has that mandatory main menu in every app. Which app developers can still ignore, but then it looks like a sore to the user, so they're incentivized to fill it out.
Unfortunately even there I increasingly see apps with features that aren't exposed through that menu at all.
I want more than that. I want some sort of visual guidance for what's possible to do and how to do it. A blank canvas means that I have to focus more on "how do I do this?" than actually doing it.