[HN Gopher] Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?
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Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?
Author : pimterry
Score : 255 points
Date : 2021-06-26 11:16 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| jsnell wrote:
| Is the distinction between Android and iOS here maybe that iOS
| supports only a limited number of horizontal resolutions? At
| least on my Android phone, the rightmost element ends up at the
| screen edge with no padding, with a similar effect as the cut off
| icon.
|
| (I.e. a design that's appropriate in a tightly controlled
| homogenous environment might not be any good in a mixed one.)
| joshtynjala wrote:
| Ideally, the layout would adjust the spacing between items, so
| that one item is always partially cut off. I don't know whether
| Apple does that or not (or if it's their small number of
| possible iOS device resolutions, like you suggested). However,
| that seems like something that Google should consider as a way
| to improve the Android experience.
| chiph wrote:
| Not just on phones/tablets. If you have an application running in
| dark mode, and your Windows desktop is dark, you can't see the
| edge of the window to resize it. Also - with Windows 10 you don't
| grab the edge of the window, you grab the shadow. Which is not
| visible because shadows on dark desktops have no contrast.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Hip drop shadows and hip dark mode just don't mix. Adding a
| dark mode after the fact is about as fun as writing tests for
| legacy code.
| saurik wrote:
| I would expect windows in dark mode to I guess have a subtle
| lighting behind them (as people sometimes do to objects in
| physical space).
| HKH2 wrote:
| In another well-known OS, the pointer can be somewhere inside
| the corner, and you can press a meta key and click and drag the
| corner without being on it exactly.
|
| I used to miss that functionality quite a bit when using
| Windows, but I think I use window snapping more now.
| dejawu wrote:
| I loved that too! I use AltDrag[0] to get that functionality
| in Windows. It's a bit old and you may have to tweak it a bit
| to make it work with HiDPI, but it's now become a must-
| install when I set up a new machine.
|
| [0] https://stefansundin.github.io/altdrag/
| khendron wrote:
| > Modern design is so beautiful to look at - but an absolute
| nightmare to use. You either need to use trial an error on every
| element, or hope that someone else can tell you what you need to
| do.
|
| This. Aesthetics has overtaken usability. Back when it was _web_
| design, a good interface was defined as one that was easy to use
| first, pretty to look at second. During the rise of mobile
| interfaces, this got flipped. Now pretty to look at ranks
| highest, and easy to use is secondary.
|
| Is this because of real-estate? Mobile screens are smaller, and
| something had to go.
| handrous wrote:
| What's crazy is that at one point the new wave of designers was
| hailed as _digital native_ designers replacing the bad old
| print-trained designers. They 'd save us from treating the
| screen like paper, unlocking the true potential of these
| interfaces.
|
| The worst sins of the print-designer era may have been pretty
| bad, but I'd say the average actually got a lot worse when the
| new crowd took over. First for the Web, then for native when
| Web-trained designers started working there, too.
| teucris wrote:
| The idea of grounding UX in physical analogues, in my view,
| is incredibly important. No matter how much we interact with
| digital screens, we still walk on ground, pick things up with
| our hands, etc. Just because we can do anything in a digital
| experience doesn't mean we should.
|
| Skeuomorphism may have gone too far, but the pendulum seemed
| to swing back too far.
| ectopod wrote:
| App companies are optimising for sales, and pretty sells better
| than usable.
|
| This isn't just true for software. There are lots of things,
| even trivial kitchen items, where you can't appreciate just how
| badly designed they are until you've used them for a bit. It is
| infuriating!
| fassssst wrote:
| They became less necessary over time as people got used to
| computers. Nearly everything on your screen right now is
| touchable or interactive (you can select the text in this
| comment) but trying to show visual accordances for all that would
| make the actual content harder to digest.
| gdubs wrote:
| Mac OS tripped me up with their new-ish "group things by month"
| in the recent folder. I didn't realize those buckets were side
| scrollable. Scrolling is so easy to do that I'm not sure why it's
| even necessary to limit the number of items in view. But I've
| been a computer user for a LONG time and was seriously stumped by
| this behavior because there was zero affordance to indicate there
| were more items. No less horizontally, which is very unexpected
| behavior.
| user3939382 wrote:
| You should try teaching someone without tech literacy when to
| single left click vs double left click vs right click in Office
| for Windows.
| thrower123 wrote:
| These UI standards aren't taught any longer, so unless you grew
| up with the 90s, when at least first-party developers were
| somewhat consistent about following them, you might not even know
| what you're supposed to do.
|
| I came to programming with VB6, and that was an era where even
| the trash "Teach Yourself Programming in 24 Hours" books made a
| big deal about tab order and mnemonics and cues like eclipses on
| buttons that launched new windows.
| mikelward wrote:
| The share sheet on Android is super confusing.
|
| It doesn't help that several apps implement their own, and some
| of them scroll horizontally while others scroll vertically.
|
| Edit: apparently they're forcing apps to use the native share
| sheet in Android 12?
| https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/06/01/android-12-will-spe...
| nonbirithm wrote:
| For reference, this issue was brought up to the chromium
| maintainers but it was closed as wontfix without giving a real
| reason.
|
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=112301...
|
| > We are not going to migrate to the system share sheet any
| time in the near future, so this bug itself is WontFix / WAI.
| We are also not likely to have an option to disable the chrome
| share sheet.
|
| And yes, due to API changes you'll no longer be able to replace
| the system share sheet in Android 12, because it basically
| amounted to a loophole that shouldn't have existed.
|
| https://sharedr.rejh.nl
|
| > We had never actually intended to allow apps to replace the
| share dialog, that Intent is for apps to launch the share
| dialog.
|
| Now I will have no choice but to eat the 2 seconds of loading
| every time I want to share something as it loads a set of
| irrelevant share targets that I will never use anyway.
|
| I really wish that feature was configurable but you can't turn
| it off.
| atatatat wrote:
| Only one problem with the Share dialog:
|
| Doesn't "hint" at horizontal scrollability, just shows four
| apps as if that's all there is.
|
| I've seen this trip up advanced users and parents alike.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I build mobile and web apps--full stack on many platforms and
| I was severely tripped up by that shitty share menu. On your
| first use if you have to think about it the UI sucks. Period.
| Spivak wrote:
| It's because apps want to track where you're sharing links to.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| No, they're preventing 3rd-party apps from _actually replacing_
| the system share pane _for other apps_. An app can still choose
| to implement their own in-app share menu instead of using the
| system one.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm looking for balance, here. Let me provide an example:
|
| I have a "left-swipe-to-delete-from-list." That's the standard
| way that Apple has decreed that items should be deleted. They
| provide no affordance.
|
| You can add an "Edit" button to the navbar, but that means you
| don't have room for other, more important (and frequently-used)
| items. In my case, this is a non-starter. I need the room for
| more important stuff.
|
| So far, I have added the left-swipe, but no affordance. It relies
| on the fact that the platform standard is left-swipe to delete. I
| need to make sure that the screen shows a fairly standard list
| (not getting too fancy), so users that are trained on platform
| standard will know that they can left-swipe.
|
| In some cases, affordances can actually interfere with usability.
|
| I can develop my own affordance, but I am not sure what a
| suitable one would be.
|
| Implied training is also a big part of usability. I think it was
| Tufte that talked about that. He has some really strange UIs that
| don't make sense, until you learn them, and then, you don't ever
| want to go back.
|
| In my experience, train maps in Tokyo are like this. They are a
| fearsome mess, when you first look at them, but, once you
| understand them, they are marvelous.
| edent wrote:
| I get that. But how do you _first_ learn about the standard
| way?
|
| Admittedly, it has been several years since I used an iPhone -
| but I don't remember it ever telling me that slide-to-delete
| was a thing. I literally had to ask on Twitter to find out -
| https://twitter.com/search?q=delete%20podcast%20from%3Aedent...
|
| I agree that there are some things which work best hidden -
| pull to refresh, for example - but it needs to be consistent
| and explained.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Another option is to go to
| Settings->General->Storage->Podcasts and delete from there.
| bitcurious wrote:
| One method I've seen of introducing the behavior is to have
| the list element slightly "bounce" sideways on load, giving a
| peak of the red/green color underneath.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hey, that's a great idea!
|
| It's a bit of a pain to implement, because I'd need to make
| sure that it only did it for displayed rows, and only once,
| but that's pretty cool.
|
| Thanks!
| voakbasda wrote:
| The old Macintosh computers came with a floppy that walked
| the user through using the computer. How to click. How to
| drag. Very basic stuff, but it was all new to the world at
| the time. Now, you are assumed to know all that.
|
| The iPhone/touch paradigm never had such an easy on ramp for
| consumers. Or if it did, they dismantled it before I got on
| that ride.
|
| Personally, I think this reflects pure hubris on the part of
| Apple, and it's one reason that I have not owned a mac for 20
| years.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| True, ui action discoverability is harder these days, but
| somehow I learned to swipe to delete, but I don't know how.
| Maybe I was told, or saw a video? My point is, that the
| interactions are common enough that I think most people
| learn them from other people, whereas in the early days of
| personal computers guides were important because users had
| no previous knowledge, nor anyone else, to turn to.
| machello13 wrote:
| I think Apple's argument for why slide to delete is not
| explained would be that it's a shortcut -- the explicit way
| to delete is to tap "edit" or "select" in a view, which
| exposes an explicit delete button on each row, or the ability
| to select rows and delete multiple. This is all explicit
| through buttons in the UI, and all of Apple's apps tend to
| have this behavior (I can't speak as to whatever UI you were
| trying to use 12 years ago). I would call that the "standard"
| way, whereas slide to delete is the fast way.
| datavirtue wrote:
| If you are having trouble revealing all the functionality then
| your app is already too much for the platform.
|
| Making your users learn a UI is stupid. You aren't building
| Autocad for the phone.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Making your users learn a UI is stupid._
|
| I disagree. It's pretty much how everything (not just
| software) works.
|
| Driving is learning a UI. So is riding a bicycle, or a horse.
| Heck, using a toaster is learning a UI.
|
| Every standard GUI has platform conventions. In fact,
| becoming familiar with these conventions is one of the most
| important tasks that we all do, when starting out.
|
| It's also why so many of us get "fixed" on one or two
| platforms. I generally suggest to folks that are thinking of
| switching platforms, to consider just upgrading their device
| on their current platform, instead.
|
| Many HN readers are probably quite used to bouncing around a
| dozen different UI systems, but that is quite rare. Most
| folks like to find their rut, and then furnish it.
| Causality1 wrote:
| The obsession modern developers and marketers have with trying to
| convince people using a computer they're not using a computer is
| so pointless and perverse I'm tempted to call it a mental
| illness.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| UI affordances have been going away for a long time. FlatUI was
| the first nearly universal obviously-user-hostile movement. It
| happened out of boredom and the slow intrusion of the contempt-
| for-the-audience attitude of art and architecture into web
| design.
|
| Unfortunately, unlike art, we can't ignore architecture or UI
| design.
| makecheck wrote:
| I think the saddest thing about "flat" designs is that
| technology is incredibly capable of delivering so much more.
| Sure, in 1988 we only _had_ a few colors available in hardware
| so maybe a button had no choice but to be one boring solid
| color. In 2021, though?!? Ultra-high resolutions, massive color
| palettes, photo-realism has never been easier to achieve (even
| in 3D!!!), all this computing power, and then these overpaid
| "designers" give us: boring square buttons with one color with
| unreadable contrast. We deserve _so_ much better from modern
| UIs.
|
| UIs should not be so plain and spartan that they are literally
| unusable sometimes. Every Single Button should look like a
| button, with way more detail than UI buttons have ever had
| before (why _not_ have a ridiculous number of colors in
| gradients to make buttons truly beautiful?). When something is
| highlighted, I want it to be _obvious_ and, again, beautiful
| (why not glow with photo-realistic lighting effects, for
| example, since we clearly have the ability and can spare the
| processing power?).
| datavirtue wrote:
| I have been wishing for a return to monochrome (green and
| orange) so that we can from our UIs again. You know it's bad
| when people are fantasizing about mainframe terminals.
| cududa wrote:
| My personal theory is a lot of universities got into "UI
| design" but basically just had print design teachers teaching
| the courses. Plus UI design with depth and complex elements
| requires more talent than flat design. IMO it's a generation of
| lowering the bar so people with less technical ability can
| participate in design
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I don't think flat design is inherently hostile. The same way I
| don't think heavy skeuomorphism is inherently patronising. We
| went from a violent explosion of visuals to ambiguous
| interactive elements. Both shite, both a pain to use, both bad
| design. Both can be avoided within their respective philosophy.
|
| As OP shows, iOS hinting at more content by partially showing
| the next item is a good example. You can very well create depth
| and hierarchy with minimal visual cues.
|
| However, what has increased since flat design became the
| hottest shit ever (2013/2014) are downright malicious
| interaction patterns, no understanding of the platform (e.g
| button vs link), and an ever increasing lust for engagement.
| The design flavour is merely coincidental.
| handrous wrote:
| I think it takes a lot of work to ensure that removing depth
| and shading doesn't remove information, too. I think flat
| design inherently "wants" to be, if not user hostile, at
| least less user-friendly than what preceded it.
|
| It's a win if the depth and shading was just noise, before.
| If it was signal, well, now you've got to find something to
| replace that with, or you're harming UX. And you've got less
| "bandwidth", if you will, to work with.
| layer8 wrote:
| Exactly. Flat design removes signals in order to let the UI
| appear simpler. But the removal of meaningful signals makes
| the UI more more ambiguous and harder to use. Flat design
| is an obfuscation, trying to cover up the actual complexity
| behind a visual semblance of simplicity.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Flat design is the definition of art because it creates
| something without the intention of usability.
| Functionality that is hidden isn't usable by definition.
| It always annoyed me in early Mac UX that there wasn't a
| specific affordance for additional interactive behavior.
|
| Option this, Ctrl that. Yes, they can be discovered
| socially and informationally, but that goes against
| intuitiveness.
| kps wrote:
| The original Mac or Lisa was good in some ways, but it
| also problems with faux minimalism. In particular, Jobs
| insisted on a single-button mouse for 'simplicity', but
| that required inventing the entirely undiscoverable
| double click, which had to be taught, and still causes
| confusion today.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Yes. I agree. Also, the insistence on a "single task at a
| time" notion when real work required context switching.
|
| Simplicity goes too far on the balance of, and in search
| for, advancement of design. Form + Function. Not an
| industrial beige box bucket of parts and not a confusing
| 2001 monolith, but something in the middle.
| teucris wrote:
| But going back to the comment above, I don't think that
| flat design is inherently to blame here. Flat design
| doesn't require the removal of shadows etc. in order to
| favor aesthetics over usability. That removal of signal
| is just bad design. If the designers of flat systems did
| better at replacing the lost affordances and visual cues,
| flat design has the potential to be incredibly powerful
| at making clear, accessible user experiences.
|
| Now that I've said that, I do want to make it clear that
| I haven't seen an excellent exemplar of flat design. I
| remain optimistic though.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just to add, Android's material design is full of shadows
| and 3D encoding, while still being flat. It's not a great
| design by any means, but it's proof that flat design does
| not imply on a 2D UI (despite its name).
|
| The single largest problem is that when we took 3D
| buttons away, we got no icon for the idea that you some
| object is clickable. An icon does not need to be
| skeuomorphic, just unambiguous and easy to recognize,
| besides, it needs to exist to be useful. Flat design uses
| a high-contrast background to encode that, what is
| extremely ambiguous, but there's nothing prohibiting
| people from creating a better icon.
| bluescrn wrote:
| So are those vast swathes of wasted whitespace in modern UI
| design an attempt to turn a UI into a gallery wall on which to
| display those intricately crafted icons?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| And, as with the yale box[1], all icons will eventually
| converge on the same exact design.
|
| Finally, the perfect UI (and modernist building) will have no
| differentiation at all. An exercise in pure, platonic
| intellectual/aesthetic navel gazing.
|
| You are starting to see the post-modernist reaction in some
| places in web design, but, as with architecture, I anticipate
| it will play with forms out of boredom rather than do the
| hard, self-abgenating work of drawing out the good ideas of
| the past and humbly driving them forward.
|
| Perhaps I am too cynical.
|
| [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_
| to_Ou...
| datavirtue wrote:
| It happened out of an explosion of pretentious eccentricity
| flowing out of people who never sat with a user.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Revell (Japanese) model kit instructions: We will show you
| every necessary step clearly and precisely using line drawn
| actions to provide as much accessibility to all people as
| possible. Only for very complicated concerns will we use
| language.
|
| Windows 95 UI: It might be fuggly, but you know where the
| bodies are buried.
|
| IKEA: We will show you how to assemble this sawdust into a
| crappy bookcase that doesn't sit square or level using line
| drawings and language inconsistently.
|
| FlatUI: Physical products should delivered as a white box
| inside another white box without instructions. Tech support is
| an unnecessary expense.
| lozenge wrote:
| This light sometimes blinks green. Sometimes it blinks
| orange. What does it mean? Who knows.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It's either an Ethernet port light or one of those cryptic
| things from AliExpress without a manual.
|
| ----
|
| There was once someone who knew.
|
| It did have a useful purpose at one point for expert users,
| technicians, and engineers.
|
| A large group came along chanting "What does it mean?"
| louder and louder until it was a thunderous war-cry.
|
| The one who knew was trying to shout the answer but he was
| whispering in a tornado.
|
| Then, someone else said loudly: "I don't understand. Let's
| just get rid of it."
|
| Most everyone said: "Yeah! It's useless!"
|
| No one listened and now that that understanding is lost
| like the Antikythera mechanism and Damascus steel to the
| sands of time.
| clearing wrote:
| The author links out to a writeup on Safari 15 which I found
| interesting: https://morrick.me/archives/9368
|
| One of the main bizarre design choices was making the address bar
| shrink as you add more tabs. It made me wonder if these designs
| reflect the diminution of sites visited in a modern internet
| user's session. Seems like we are moving from a mode of research-
| and-explore to residing in one of a few home bases (reddit,
| twitter, etc) and everything else is reached via Google search ->
| first result. Since information delivery is now so heavily
| tailored to a person's filter bubble, there's not as much need to
| stray. I'd love to read more about something like this.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I disagree with that article on the subject of Safari tab
| groups. I had already been grouping tabs by subject using
| separate windows, and now that tab groups let me rotate out
| sets without them all sitting in memory I'm using grouping more
| than ever. It's been very effective at keeping the number of
| tabs in any given group/window low.
|
| I still do old style internet search-and-explore, and that is
| also enhanced because I can tuck away my "everyday" tabs and
| tabs related to other subject and let the topic at hand
| dominate my browser, with as many tabs and windows as needed
| being opened with no worries about having to separate them out
| from the other stuff.
| clearing wrote:
| Oh for sure, and to clarify I'm not against the design
| changes! Tab groups are the logical next step in organizing
| thoughts-as-tabs and Firefox is sorely lacking in this
| capability in 2021.
| Secretmapper wrote:
| Previous HN discussion on the topic:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27559832
|
| That's true regarding 'residing' in home bases. I still
| remember how much personalities each different forums of
| specific interests have, but that's mostly filled by subreddits
| now.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| > But there's evidence that Apple are slowly undoing their great
| usability work in the name of elegance.
|
| Tangent, but am I the only one who is really bothered by the
| update they made to the way you set a clock (eg for an alarm or
| appointment) a few years ago? It's now only digits which I am
| supposed to scroll vertically, which is incredibly tedious;
| before, it was an actual analog clock I could drag around and it
| was awesome.
|
| To this day I still don't understand why they did this, it seemed
| to serve no purpose to get rid of the old UX.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Are you talking about the time input like when you create a new
| alarm? The new one is a text field that you _can_ drag the
| little digit spinners, but primarily you just type in it.
|
| Being able to put times in with a proper numeric keypad is a
| big usability improvement IMO.
| musicale wrote:
| It always amazes me when I see a post on HN or elsewhere with the
| vintage Mac GUI - it was visually very clear and attractive, with
| lots of nice, well-delineated affordances!
|
| 1980s/1990s-style graphical user interfaces were remarkable in
| terms of how much of the available screen real estate, CPU power,
| and memory they were willing to dedicate to the user interface.
| It reduced the visible content and available computing resources,
| but it made the UI very clear.
|
| As much as I like multitouch, it isn't visually discoverable,
| even after you learn the basics of (tap, tap-and-hold, tap-and-
| drag, swipe). It's nice in a way that the whole of your tiny
| phone screen is used for content, but it can be frustrating
| trying to discover the control methods.
| intrasight wrote:
| There's a great deal of fashion over function - especially in
| consumer.
|
| I used to program nuclear power plants, destroyers, air traffic
| control, etc. UI design by engineers not artists.
|
| Here's an interesting question. What will people in 50 years
| think of today's UI fashions?
| bitwize wrote:
| Windows 11's rollout made me want to barf. Lots of marketroidy
| "Simple, clean, beautiful!" and "We put the Start menu at the
| center because we put YOU at the center!" Yeah, those are nice
| inspirational sound bites, now how are you going to make Windows
| less of a pain in the ass to work with, day by day? Windows 9x
| put the Start menu down in the corner to effectively give it
| infinite width and height per Fitts's law. It also gave us
| buttons that look like buttons. The beveled edges did more than
| make things look pretty, they signalled availability for user
| interaction and roughly delineated the boundaries where such
| interaction could take place. It was a massive UX improvement
| over Windows 3.x. Is Windows 11 less fraught with friction than
| Windows 10 in real terms? All the indications say "no, but it is
| prettier!" No affordances, no signals to the user, just plain
| white panels that don't look like anything and now the Start
| button -- _the_ Schelling point for telling Windows what to do --
| is harder to hit with the mouse. Oh, and how do you put to use
| Windows 11 's new tiling and virtual desktop features? Hover over
| maximize! So easy to figure out!
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| People without much life experience, knowledge, mastery,
| humility, or expertise don't understand what things are used for,
| and decide for everyone else to throw them away as "unnecessary."
|
| Put another way, it may well be some sort of Dunning-Kruger
| arrogance that the self-esteem crowd foists on the rest of us
| without our permission.
| gambiting wrote:
| I actually ran into the same problem with YouTube's interface on
| iOS, it made me so angry I actually recorded a video to show
| people how stupid this is:
|
| https://youtu.be/wGKIz0bWVVU
| eitland wrote:
| You ask how you are supposed to find it.
|
| You are not supposed to find it.
|
| Then in next iteration designers can tell management that only
| 0.3% of users use settings and then they can get rid of it all
| together.
|
| Just like Mozilla and the settings to remove the top tab bar
| after you have enabled Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry.
|
| I'm only partially joking here.
| edent wrote:
| Oh that's just infuriating!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Ideally, all doors would look like this
|
| Ideally all doors would swing both ways.
| throwzaway20102 wrote:
| Yes let's just go back to the 90s! Enough of this shit. Get used
| to new technology grandpa.
| jp57 wrote:
| > Apple are slowly undoing their great usability work in the name
| of elegance.
|
| Not slowly, or recently.
|
| The big removal of affordances happened with IOS 7, and Jony
| Ive's "flat" UI aesthetic. Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini,
| former Apple UI researchers and champions of UI affordances,
| wrote an essay[1] complaining about this problem in 2015.
|
| It seems like this era might be slowly _ending_ now that Ive is
| gone.
|
| [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-
| desi...
| johnnysinns wrote:
| And man, didn't the iPhone and iPad completely tank?
|
| ... oh, wait.
| ptx wrote:
| Even less recently than that. As a critique[1] from 1999 of
| QuickTime 4.0 puts it:
|
| _" The new interface represents an almost violent departure
| from the long established standards that have been the hallmark
| of Apple software. Ease of Use has always been paramount to
| Apple, but after exploring the QuickTime 4.0 Player, the
| rationale behind Apple's recent 'Think Different' advertising
| campaign is now clear."_
|
| [1] http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Honestly I don't think minimalism is the issue. And I love
| skeuomorphism, even the overdone Apple version. Minimalism is
| ugly but when done right, it's actually one of the clearest UXs
| possible: only focusing on the content and guides, no weird
| extras, and every design decision is meaningful because you only
| get a few.
|
| Issues with today's UX are: more dark patterns, more people
| making apps easier (= more less experienced developers who don't
| understand UX), companies trying to "stand out" but hurting UX in
| the process (because they still want minimalism, and all of the
| good ways of standing out with minimalism are taken). In the
| author's case Android's share menu just happens to suck - he even
| shows Apple's menu, which is still minimalistic but actually
| clear.
| jwr wrote:
| I think the issue is that modern interfaces are self-centered.
| Or rather, the designers are self-centered: they believe that
| the world revolves around them, and Their Magnificent Design is
| the One Thing that everyone will want to learn, appreciate and
| admire.
|
| In reality, their design is one more thing among the hundreds
| or thousands of things that a user manages, and should mostly
| serve to get other things done.
|
| It's more about hubris than minimalism.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's extremely ungenerous, and no more true about designers
| than coders.
|
| Perhaps some designers start out have this immature attitude,
| but professional designers I've worked with are user-
| centered, not self-centered. That's just a professional
| prerequisite, and what you learn in design school as well.
|
| And in any case, you could just as easily say about
| programmers starting out that they too often believe "Their
| Magnificent Program is the One Thing" and ignore what users
| actually need as well.
|
| In any case, when it _does_ happen (to anyone), it 's not
| hubris, just immaturity. If something seems like the best
| solution to you, it takes experience and perspective to
| realize it's not always the best solution to others. But
| people generally learn that fairly early on.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yeah, the lack seems to be the lack of qualified designers
| in the first place. Or maybe designers who are not givens
| enough time to do the job.
| sweetdreamerit wrote:
| As a UX designer: too few companies understand the importance
| of UX and the difference between UX and UI. It is still too
| difficult to convince the stakeholders of the importance of
| user research, adherence to usability and accessibility
| guidelines, and user testing. Those activities have a cost,
| both in terms of money and time. But they can save a project,
| strongly reducing the risks of failure.
| corysama wrote:
| I remember back around the time of the iPhone 1 seeing a "this is
| the future!" commercial featuring a lady using a tablet. She was
| making lots of vague gestures that didn't correlate to anything
| on the screen and the tablet "just knew" to do lots of diverse
| actions correctly. I thought it was ridiculous.
|
| Well, here we are. What the commercial didn't cover was that you
| had to guess and poke semi-randomly to discover all the magic
| gestures and were never sure if you were missing something
| important because it's right there, but invisible.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Note that the default share UI in Android 11 (or is that
| LineageOS specific?) does indeed show more by swiping up. Firefox
| implements their own sharing UI and does side-swiping as well,
| but at least they went the Apple route of cutting some options
| off.
| ysavir wrote:
| > ...went the Apple route of cutting some options of.
|
| Is this implying there's more to the comment if I side-swipe?
|
| Hrm. I think it's bugged.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Heh, fixed ;)
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| That's true for Google's Android too, not just Lineage.
| geuis wrote:
| I don't understand exactly what the writer is complaining about.
| The thesis of the page is never explicitly stated.
|
| I see a complaint, "Hmmm. It didn't have the share destination
| that I wanted" yet the author never states _what_ option they
| were looking for.
|
| I would agree that, via the screenshot, the default options are
| all over the place and not prioritized well. However, the "Copy
| link" option is clearly visible. Being a website, I'm
| fundamentally unclear about what share option the writer could
| want beyond the ability to copy the url.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| The thesis is that the UI is not intuitive - that's exactly
| what the writer is complaining about.
| edent wrote:
| Author here. In this case, I wanted to share to Twitter. That
| would have resulted in the page title and URL being shared - so
| copy url wasn't a suitable.
|
| But the actual destination is irrelevant. How was I (or any
| user unfamiliar with the interface) supposed to intuit that the
| panel was horizontally scrollable.
| AndresNavarro wrote:
| It doesn't matter what option he was looking for (maybe nearby
| share, messaging, etc as shown in a latter image). The point
| being made is that it wasn't in the first screen and the fact
| that there were more options (and how to reach them) was not
| hinted by the interface in any way. Adding to that the expected
| way of interacting didn't work and only by chance he managed to
| figure it out.
|
| From the article:
|
| > There's no scrollbar, no handle, no "more" icon, nothing.
|
| ...
|
| > I tried swiping it up - that's what I've learned most panels
| do in Android. But it did nothing. So I gave up.
|
| ...
|
| > my thumb slipped transversely (...) The fucking thing was a
| horizontal slider!
| boardwaalk wrote:
| The actual share destination isn't the point, it's how it's not
| obvious how to get to more destinations than are initially
| visible.
| neom wrote:
| Need more people with industrial design backgrounds in UI teams.
| I keep seeing more and more people with only graphic design or
| illustration backgrounds doing these jobs.
| _Microft wrote:
| ,,Doesn't familiarize themselves with the UI, complains about not
| being familiar with it". That's almost meme-ish, to be honest.
|
| What's a discoverable UI? Does it count to have options in a
| context menu? That's very discoverable to someone like me, much
| less for some of my less computer-savvy relatives. A toolbar with
| unlabeled icons is not that different in that regard. I think it
| really boils down to how familiar someone is with the UI already
| and half of the solution is being willing to familiarize
| themselves with it.
| edent wrote:
| I've been using Android since the pre-release versions.
|
| Every Google app has a different share UI. If I hit share in
| YouTube, the panels scrolls vertically. Google Drive's share
| looks different, but also shares vertically.
|
| Google Chrome's share panel looks identical to Drive, but
| behaves completely differently.
|
| So, I'd say that I'm very familiar with Android's UI - but I
| don't think Google is.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| There is no escaping Conway's Law.
|
| A disjointed company produces a disjointed product. Mind you,
| this might be well be a deliberate choice made by people
| cleverer than me.
| readams wrote:
| This is fixed in Android 12
| webwielder2 wrote:
| It's very funny to me that people think "the past" was a UX
| wonderland.
| todfox wrote:
| For more of these daily annoyances: https://grumpy.website
|
| The growing user hostility of UIs makes me want to stop
| developing software and even stop using computers. I started
| using computers because they made more sense to me than a lot of
| things. Now, I'm encountering these little moments of illogic and
| unreason every hour of the day.
|
| It's not just beginners who need little cues. I'm deeply familiar
| with the APIs behind many of these monstrosities and yet I still
| find myself annoyed or momentarily confused by UIs that minimize,
| obscure, and hide in the name of Design.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I tried reading the footer to get the contact information for
| on https://grumpy.website but it keeps doom-scrolling and only
| visible for a fraction of a second. What an irony.
|
| I dream of a day when we go back to pagination. No, not just
| pagination numbers on the bottom of the page to flip through
| pages, but also the URL should reflect that and be able to
| share the 7th page with someone using a link.
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| For some experiences, content needs to be updated in page 1
| (google is a good example). How would you then share page 7?
| that requirement could only be met if content was static (no
| updates) or the ordering of results was old to new. Am I
| missing something?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| That's true. Pagination makes sense when it is static and
| not chronological, thanks for pointing that out. But, the
| problem still exists that I cannot get to the footer where
| there seems to be some contact information of the author
| :-)
| lelanthran wrote:
| There used to be a Hall of Shame for GUIs on the web that I
| used to read around 2002 or thereabouts. Very similar to this,
| only for native programs.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Is it one of these?
|
| https://wiby.me/?q=hall+of+shame
| lelanthran wrote:
| Yup! Wasted an hour there just now :-)
| chiph wrote:
| Thanks for that link. One related to this one just got me on
| DVD Netflix's payment settings site.
|
| https://grumpy.website/post/0VkVVuQ6t
|
| There is no button to remove your card info. It had my old ZIP
| code and updating it wasn't working (it would still fail
| address verification). So to update the value, you are somehow
| expected to know to clear the field and then save, then enter
| the correct value and save a second time.
|
| Except it doesn't work.[0] What _does_ work is entering a
| different credit card, saving it, then reentering your original
| card with the correct ZIP code.[1] So bad design with no
| affordances and a broken help function, lead to a long-time
| customer wanting to unsubscribe out of frustration.
|
| [0] Neither did the chat function to ask for help. I had to
| talk to a support person who told me how this was supposed to
| work. A phone call to support is an expensive cost to a
| business based on volume.
|
| [1] Which made me think they were storing extra info using my
| card number as a key. And that's not great.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I can see how this one might be confusing-
| https://grumpy.website/post/0Vp0pSilq
|
| but the site is misrepresenting the state. That user's state is
| still "muted," the red line indicates that it is a client side
| mute (so the user who checked the mute box can't hear them, but
| everyone else can) while the mute icon without a red line
| indicates that the other user has muted themselves; they're not
| transmitting audio.
|
| There is a third state- Server Mutes turn the entire mute icon
| red and is a "far-end" mute. No one in the voice channel can
| hear that user and the user probably can't unmute themselves.
|
| Looking more at the site I feel like the point it's trying to
| convey would be much stronger if it went for a quality over
| quantity approach and/or proposed solutions to some of these
| problems. A lot of them seem to almost intentionally miss the
| point of the UI.
|
| For example, the airpods post[0] notes, "Want to listen to the
| podcast on your iPhone while playing a game on your iPad? Well
| tough luck using your AirPods for that," which is just
| completely false.
|
| Sticking to posts like this[1][2] would lead to a much higher
| quality website imo.
|
| [0]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VaJdRL-y
|
| [1]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VlYhfUMg
|
| [2]: https://grumpy.website/post/0VfEvLg0j
| andai wrote:
| This is hilarious, but I'm puzzled by his reaction to a
| hamburger menu:
|
| > Oh-oh. Drag-n-drop icon used for a dropdown menu - May 8,
| 2021
|
| https://grumpy.website/post/0V_dyk3EP
| tesseract wrote:
| Horizontal lines (or sometimes an array of dots) are
| sometimes used as a "grip" icon to represent reorderable list
| rows.
| andai wrote:
| I know, I've used them in my own designs. It just sounded
| like he saw a hamburger menu now for the first time 5 weeks
| ago! Or maybe it is some kind of joke?
| craftinator wrote:
| As a designer himself, he probably tries to approach
| design examinations from many different perspectives (we
| do this at work with new designs: if I was an 70 year old
| woman, what would I see here?) to find edge cases where
| the design doesn't work.
| frereubu wrote:
| This is the case for many people. Another explanation is
| that he was being empathetic.
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| Everyone sees the hamburger icon for the first time. It
| certainly isn't obvious what it means. You need to decide
| what is more important, that your site look contemporary
| or that your users can find the
| information/product/service they are looking for.
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hamburger-menus/
| djur wrote:
| Hamburger menu icons usually have a fixed position and
| are part of a header or something of that sort. Floating
| lines like that would always read as "drag grip" to me.
| sroussey wrote:
| We have found that people are afraid to mess things up,
| and don't know what three lines means, so never click
| them. A lot more than you would think.
| prox wrote:
| I post this everytime, but for the love of UX, even if your the
| most hardcore code/terminal junkie... and never see a user near
| your program...read the book called About Face : Essentials of
| Interaction Design!
| rado wrote:
| Recently there are posts from designers about bringing back
| blurred/gradient edges of scrollable content. Hopefully the trend
| gets momentum (pun not intended).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Sorry for this pedantic comment, but he is asking for signifiers
| not affordances. He wants affordances to be more perceptible. See
| Design of Everyday Things.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| If you present me with a completely blue screen, there are no
| affordances.
|
| If you present me with a blue rectangle on a black screen, it's
| still confusing and cognitively-loading what the hell it's for
| or if it does anything. There are no affordances, only
| questions.
|
| If you present me with a blue rectangle with an outset,
| stippled border on a black screen, it's clearly a button.
| Without that border that meshes with familiar previous
| training, there's no way to know it was a button. That's an
| affordance.
|
| If a highlight or animation were added to the blue rectangle
| that already had an affordance, that would be a signifier.
|
| Affordances are major indicators of action potential while
| signifiers are minor, helpful reinforcers of affordances.
|
| The messy, subjective discussion is: what happens when all
| signifiers are thrown away, and then affordances too?
| Baby/bathwater defenestration.
|
| https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-diffe...
| fogetti wrote:
| I upvoted your comment because the blog author even references
| that book, and the book goes into great length to make this
| distinction between the two. So I think it's only fair to point
| it out.
| hashkb wrote:
| And yet, all the upvotes showered on nitpicks again prevent
| HN from using the top comment for substantive discussion on
| the subject of the article.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Is there a more intuitive word for "affordances" or similar? I
| find its definition is always debated or confused in the
| comments so I prefer to avoid it where possible.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Nope, that's the nomenclature and it means something very
| specific in the cases of architecture and UX. Affordances
| "afford" cues to the viewer that something has perceived
| action possibilities. It's the opposite of a hidden
| passageway door or a flat rectangle that doesn't have any
| cues to indicate that it's a button.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
| seanwilson wrote:
| From the link:
|
| > The different interpretations of affordances, although
| closely related, can be a source of confusion in writing
| and conversation if the intended meaning is not made
| explicit and if the word is not used consistently. Even
| authoritative textbooks can be inconsistent in their use of
| the term.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| I don't see any specific evidence given any that good
| textbook is "inconsistent," merely vague accusations cast
| without evidence. A straw man.
|
| Affordances have a specific meaning in design.
| Affordances themselves are subjective because they depend
| on prior user training. Signifiers are nonessential,
| supportive adjuncts to affordances to reduce cognitive
| load (fewer uncertainties and more clarity).
|
| "PUSH" sign on a door that already had a door crash bar
| facing the observer. A crash bar already indicates it is
| both a door and opens outwards. A further signifier for a
| clear wall and door would be a faux door-jam around the
| perimeter of the door so that people can tell where the
| door is more easily. If a door blends-in completely to a
| wall, then any indication of it is an affordance.. it's
| additional, supportive cues that would signifiers.
| Putting bright orange around a "PUSH" sign or some aspect
| of an opaque doorway would likely make it a signifier.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > I don't see any specific evidence given any that good
| textbook is "inconsistent," merely vague accusations cast
| without evidence. A straw man.
|
| Evidence from your link: Human-Computer
| Interaction, Preece et al. (1994, p. 6): The authors
| explicitly define perceived affordances as being a subset
| of all affordances, but another meaning is used later in
| the same paragraph by talking about "good affordance."
| Universal Principles of Design, Lidwell, Holden & Butler
| (2003, p. 20): The authors first explain that round
| wheels are better suited for rolling than square ones and
| therefore better afford (i.e. allow) rolling, but later
| state that a door handle "affords" (i.e. suggests)
| pulling, but not pushing.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| So?
|
| An affordance affords. It's in the word.
|
| > pulling, but not pushing.
|
| Because of prior ubiquitous, universal training.
| Something with a place for fingers to grasp must be for
| pulling because pushing needs no such requirements.
|
| If you want to split concept hairs or justify common-
| sense, you're going to have to delve into linguistics.
|
| Have a happy weekend.
| seanwilson wrote:
| I'm not debating the definition of the word. I'm saying I
| avoid using it where I can because I've personally found
| it hard to get multiple people to agree on the definition
| - you're proving the point by debating against your own
| link.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| I would second that take. "Affordance" is commonly used
| to mean at least two different things _all the time_. I
| think Don Norman himself recommended against using the
| word at some point.
| edent wrote:
| That's a very fair comment. I must go back and read the book
| again some day.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| The difference in terminology depends which edition of the
| book you read. In the second edition he includes a long
| passage explaining that a lot of readers of the first book
| misunderstood the word "affordances" and so he was now
| introducing a new term, "signifier," which means what people
| thought "affordance" meant.
|
| In short, the app already affords you the ability to scroll
| to the right to view more options, but there's no signifier
| telling you this.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The original Mac would pop up a dialog with a threatening icon of
| a bomb with a lit fuse, whenever it crashed!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_(icon)
|
| >The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was
| displayed inside the System Error alert box when the "classic"
| Macintosh operating system (pre-Mac OS X) had a crash which the
| system decided was unrecoverable. It was similar to a dialog box
| in Windows 9x that said "This program has performed an illegal
| operation and will be shut down." Since the classic Mac OS
| offered little memory protection, an application crash would
| often take down the entire system.
|
| Unfortunately, the Mac's bomb dialog could cause naive users to
| jump up out of their seat and run away from the computer in
| terror, because they though it was going to explode!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw&ab_channel=Caitl...
|
| And Window's "This program has performed an illegal operation and
| will be shut down" error message was just as bad: it could cause
| naive users to fear they might get arrested for accidentally
| doing something illegal!
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| Not sure if you're being serious or not, but these stories seem
| awfully apocryphal to me.
|
| I can't imagine anybody - not even a total novice - running
| away from their computer upon seeing a cartoony image of a
| bomb. It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of
| terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a film
| of a train for the first time.
| npinguy wrote:
| > It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of
| terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a
| film of a train for the first time.
|
| The cultural recontextualization of stories like this in my
| lifetime has been one of the most fascinating aspects of our
| modern world for me.
|
| Of course, as I get older, I've seen my own stories and
| stories about events I participated in get told, re-told, and
| twisted and exaggerated without absolutely any malice. We
| also all see how people misrepresent news stories, social
| policies, and scientific studies (with various degrees of
| malice). So I think I know almost exactly how the Film of
| Train anecdote happened.
|
| 1. Theater owner starts showing Train film. Stands outside
| and yells "Come inside and see the wonderous train show. This
| new 'cinema' is so real that audiences have been reportedly
| running for the exits in terror!"
|
| 2. It's an obvious exaggeration and a joke. Passerbys laugh,
| but are intrigued nonetheless.
|
| 3. Someone writes a newspaper story about the cinema and the
| train film. Includes the quote as directly attributed to the
| theater owner. Everyone reading is aware of the context and
| the situation and the implicit tone, and chuckles
| appropriately.
|
| 4. Story gets picked up in another newspaper but without the
| context and removes the quote and instead represents it as a
| factual retelling of what happened.
|
| 5. Years later, someone writing a book uses the newspaper as
| a primary source, and then a cascade of books repeat and
| propagate the "fact".
|
| Perfectly reasonable sequence of events. But here's where
| things get even more interesting to me.
|
| There are *dozens* of similar stories that we've all heard
| and took as gospel growing up that required one person to
| stop, ask "Wait, does this really hold up to scrutiny?" and
| the whole house of cards comes crashing down. I'm talking
| about the "NASA spent $10M to design a space pen, the
| russians used a pencil", "Water flushes in the opposite
| direction in the southern hemisphere", and the like.
|
| But why did it only happen just now? What prevented people
| from being more introspective and curious about these
| subjects 10, 20, 30 years ago? I guess the answer is we
| needed the Internet to hit a certain critical mass for enough
| people with sense to be able to reach the rest of us, but I
| don't know.
| npilk wrote:
| I remember seeing this dialog as a kid (probably ~5 years
| old) and being scared the computer would blow up. Actually,
| for years, I assumed I must have dreamt it.
| pram wrote:
| It seems kinda hyperbolic, but then again the death chime on
| Power Macs scared the hell out of me as a kid.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| Some of those death chimes were pretty ominous! Depending
| on the model, there there a few different dirges, breaking
| glass, car crashes, and others. You knew you were in for a
| bad time.
|
| https://512pixels.net/2021/04/mac-chimes-of-death/
| datavirtue wrote:
| Nope. I too have seen users freak out about illegal
| operations.
| SilasX wrote:
| And cookies:
|
| >>Almost every time, however, something unexpected would
| occur, causing her to panic and call her daughter for help.
|
| >>"It could be almost anything," Widmar said. "She goes
| apeshit whenever a pop-up window comes up. And one time,
| she paged me because she got a message about accepting
| cookies. She was all freaked out because now she thought
| she was being charged for actual cookies."
|
| https://www.theonion.com/getting-mom-onto-internet-a-
| sisyphe...
|
| Yes, a satire article, but representative of how people
| reacted to such cryptic browser messages.
| Izkata wrote:
| I _was_ that user as a kid.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| As a child I remember shielding my face and being scared when
| I tried booting a computer and seeing the Windows 95 boot
| logo (with the red/blue/green/yellow squares) on screen as it
| reminded me of CDs and I heard that lasers were harmful. I
| was probably 4 at the time though.
| jacobkg wrote:
| That reminds me that our Mac (circa 1992) had a menu option to
| "Erase Hard Disk". My Dad would routinely remind us to never
| click this option and (unfortunately?) we never tried it.
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