[HN Gopher] The words you choose within an app are an essential ...
___________________________________________________________________
The words you choose within an app are an essential part of its
user experience
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 396 points
Date : 2023-03-06 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Here's a favorite UX error message of mine from chase.com
|
| >"Your session is about to end. You've been inactive for a while.
| For your security, we'll automatically sign you out in
| approximately 1 minute. You may choose "Stay signed in" to
| continue or sign out if you're done."
|
| No stress put on the user with a timer (e.g. "You will be logged
| out in 3...2...1"). Instead, they simply state the facts in a
| calm way. "For your security" tells me why they're logging me
| out. Perfect voice for a bank. I want that level of simplicity in
| all my financial apps.
| hackernewds wrote:
| YMMY it seems overly wordy for me, and makes the bank seem
| amateurish and that they don't respect their users' time. Which
| would dissuade me from a banking app
| hackernewds wrote:
| From the article
|
| > Be clear. Choose words that are easily understood and
| convey the right thing. Check each word to be sure it needs
| to be there.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| I could see that POV. If it helps, they use effective visual
| formatting. The first sentence is an enlarged heading, and
| the rest of the text is smaller underneath.
| lozenge wrote:
| A banking app needs to be universal because of how essential
| it is to participate in society.
| twodave wrote:
| [ title: You have been inactive for a while ]
|
| [ dialog: To help keep your account secure, you will be signed
| out in approximately 1 minute. ]
|
| [ button: Keep me signed in] [ button: Sign out ]
|
| [ maybe a link: Why am I seeing this? ]
| masswerk wrote:
| Isn't this considered terrible UX nowadays? Shouldn't a button
| "Maybe stay signed in later" be the only option to continue the
| countdown? ;-)
| Y_Y wrote:
| "For your security" is a cliche, I don't feel like it explains
| anything.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Using that snippet as an example, I wonder if I'm in the
| minority in that I would rather have more generic and
| impersonal explanations whenever possible, avoiding _you_ *s
| and _we_ *s. I find it somewhat grating to have what I know
| are software environments taking automated decisions and
| describing abstract concepts trying to pretend this is a
| personal relationship or interaction. This is not a terrible
| annoyance for me, just a very minor pet peeve, but I would
| much prefer the app/website to say for instance:
|
| > _This session is about to end due to inactivity. For
| security reasons it will be automatically signed out in
| approximately 1 minute. You may choose "Stay signed in" to
| continue or sign out if you're done._
|
| Note that I don't mind the _you_ in the last sentence, as it
| is truly referring to the personal _me_.
| Y_Y wrote:
| How about when some annoying dialog box gives you the
| options: Yes No, thank you
|
| I don't want to thank my phone for offering to set a
| battery saver. It's not a person and I didn't want it to
| offer.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Yes, that also annoys me! Especially when it's not even
| my phone but for example a third party service that is
| asking me to do something in their interest and not mine.
| Every time I click on one of those _" No, thank you"_
| buttons I mumble to myself a correction of _" No, fuck
| you"_.
| kdkwsndne wrote:
| Whilst I agree with you on the communication from you to
| your phone.
|
| However the phone is never speaking to you. It's the
| designer(s).
|
| I'm not sure why the illusion of the technology speaking
| to us is so important. I guess because humans
| anthropomorphise everything.
|
| Slightly ironic that this makes us loose sight of the
| fact that we are actually communicating with humans.
|
| In this whole conversation it seems this point is lost.
| chronogram wrote:
| I think it was originally used because A/B testing said
| there's a 1% increased "Yes" conversion rate when having
| to thank the company while declining, and then everyone
| started to copy Bigtech as always.
| mercer wrote:
| I suppose there are more people bothered by having to
| click a rude 'no', maybe?
|
| EDIT: also, being bothered by it is maybe more the case
| for people who understand computers (at least somewhat).
| baal80spam wrote:
| I cringe every time Windows says "they" are doing
| something.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I found that disconcerting, my computer is singular, so
| who is helping it?
| Y_Y wrote:
| We have everything under control, you do not need to
| know.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| We have everything under control, you do not need to
| know. Are you happy with the experience we are providing
| you? - Yes - Yes, thank you
| fwlr wrote:
| The HIG can upgrade that message slightly:
|
| title: Your session is about to end.
|
| text below: You've been inactive for a while. For your
| security, we'll automatically sign you out in approximately 1
| minute.
|
| action button: Stay signed in
|
| action button: Sign out
|
| Maybe the text could be reworded a bit. "Automatically" is
| redundant, everyone knows websites are automatic. "About" can
| do the work of "approximately". I like how friendly they are
| when telling you the time limit but it may not be necessary to
| give a time at all. So you end up with: "For your security, we
| sign out sessions that have been inactive for a while."
| zachrip wrote:
| Does everyone actually know what a "session" is? That word
| must be so confusing to some people.
| fwlr wrote:
| Yeah, it probably is confusing to some. You might be able
| to skip the title entirely.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I'm not sure. Everyone learns it quite quickly after they
| are logged-out, but I don't think people know beforehand.
|
| It's certainly not an issue for returning users. But I
| don't know how to improve it for first time visitors either
| ("logout" has the same problem).
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Isn't it used the same way in English? When you go to a
| therapist, you have a therapy session. When some musicians
| get together, they may have a jam session.
|
| The technical meaning is very similar to the non-technical
| one.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I agree it's similar, though there's one difference: on
| many websites a session can have an arbitrary duration.
| If you log in to Google or Amazon once you can stay
| logged in on that device for months.
| wging wrote:
| It seems inferrable, at least in broad strokes, from the
| other, non-technical meanings of the word. See for example
| "the court is now in session" or "I had a physical therapy
| session this morning".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I would personally go with a much shorter "Are you still there?
| If you're not, we'll log you out to protect your account." The
| buttons speak for themselves and the more words you add to a
| message, the less of it people will read.
|
| Hell, if one button says "stay signed in" and the other says
| "log out", I don't even know if I'd go with a message that
| long. Just "are you still there" may be enough, with a redirect
| to the "why did I get logged out" page if you let the timer
| lapse.
|
| On the other hand, I want error messages to be as descriptive
| as possible, with a short summary for normal users perhaps.
| Operational messages may be short and sweet, but if I need to
| solve a problem, I've had it with the "oopsie whoopsie we made
| a mistakey wakey" messages apps produce these days.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Disagree, your suggestion sounds anything but calm. It's like
| the computer is angry at me and it's fed up of my inactivity.
| ysleepy wrote:
| I don't like being asked something if the question/answer
| does clearly communicate what the consequences are.
|
| Either the broad question is patronizing, suggesting the
| program makes decisions over my head without even informing
| me what about, or it is superfluous since the
| explanation+action is all I want or need.
|
| I really do not enjoy programs behaving like they have
| intelligence by being vague or leading, but really never are,
| since their logic only covers the common case.
| mvellandi wrote:
| I've always thought of users as guests, and your website/app acts
| as the concierge for various services. They speak clearly,
| consistently, are helpful, and act according to the situation at
| hand.
| mmacvicarprett wrote:
| Apple makes great hardware, good OSs, horrible apps, indecent
| websites. Also, they use a very preechy way of advising, which
| for me means they think they are right, instead of looking at the
| market to tell us what works or not.
| visarga wrote:
| More generally, the UI is just as important as the algorithm
| behind it. We see social networks doing all sorts of UI
| shenanigans to trick users into doing their bidding. It's not
| enough to allow customisation of our algorithmic feeds, we need
| to have a level of control over the UI as well.
| barrysteve wrote:
| If we're fully committing to the new and improved culture, then
| logically we need to ditch the word "write".
|
| The root word of write, is a proto-indo-european word that means
| 'to cut, mark'. Writing grew out of making permanent cuts on
| stone and permanent marks on paper. The culture of the writing
| era exemplified cut earthwork and decorative marks.
|
| We don't do that verb anymore, we type. We push buttons and
| symbolize words in binary streams. Our culture celebrates games,
| software and movies that are pushed out into the world and
| symbolize something.
|
| We can't keep overloading the meaning of the word 'write' and
| expect people to understand what's going on.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Bizarre take. Should people also not use the word write when
| referring to using a pen and paper? That's also not cutting or
| marking.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It exactly is marking paper.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Wait until you find out how academics use the verb "to read".
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Instead of "It looks like you have fell, call 911?", go "Oh no!
| You fell! Omg! Call an Ambulance, but not for me?"
| alkonaut wrote:
| So you spend a lot of time and effort choosing terminology and
| phrasing these messages, then you need to translate it to N
| languages, and you are mostly out of luck. I tried to translate
| back one (of several thousand) of carefully phrased messages from
| a third party translation into English, and it was nowhere close.
| Was this a problem with google translate? Is it some limitation
| in the language? Who knows.
|
| In the end I realized that the product has a consistent and well
| thought out language only for the languages the development team
| speaks, and that will never be very many. I guess the takeaways
| is this: If you can, an application in the language it was
| _developed in_ , even if there is a translation to a language you
| master better. Because after a certain limit the importance is
| how well the developers master the language, not you.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Google translate is garbage level quality and can not be relied
| upon for any task. You should use DeepL for translation and you
| will be fine. Contract professionals to double check.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Google translate was only used by me to try to check what the
| professional translators had done, and see whether the
| phrasing is what I expect.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Google Translate is unreliable for that use. You'll need
| another professional translator to check that with
| certainty. DeepL is much better than Google translate, and
| also free.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I know. So it's just a creeping suspicion. But the "need
| a different translator" still doesn't help. Because of
| the same reason the first one didn't help. Unless the
| person knows the semantics of the program, and not just
| the domain and the languages involved, we can't be sure
| they are making the right translation. It doesn't matter
| how many translators you throw at it (or how many tools).
| The closest thing would be to simply sit down with
| translators+developers and go through it. But that's also
| prohibitively expensive for specialist software (I.e.
| software where the number of languages times the number
| of translated texts is easily 100x the total number of
| users).
| trinix912 wrote:
| Hold up, are you really relying on Google Translate for that?
|
| Hiring an actual translation team solves this problem.
| alkonaut wrote:
| No, I am not google translating. I was just doing that as a
| "reverse test" to see what the translators had actually
| written. We are using translators who are proficient in the
| domain and speak 2 languages at least (English plus the
| target language). But they are still "external" to the team.
| They have _some_ domain knowledge, but they don 't have the
| true conceptual knowledge about what things are called in the
| program. Translators inside the development team (for the
| couple of languages covered by the developers) don't make the
| mistake of picking an incorrect synonym. The external
| translators might, despite good domain knowledge. The problem
| with it is: We don't notice. Because we don't speak the
| language!
|
| E.g. if you make an architectural program, you might call
| things "floor", "level", or "storey". In an editor you might
| have "object", "entity" and so on) and all of these might
| exist and mean different things in the program. Language wise
| they may well be synonymous, but in the "domain language" of
| the program they might be very different.
| numpad0 wrote:
| As a frustrated non-English user of recent widespread
| degradation in software translations, I can verify that
| you're completely correct in your observations. Recent
| advents of "I give you lists of short gibberish to make
| guesses on but I don't listen for excuses because they're
| short" platforms like Crowdin are starting to put toils on
| i18n users, just as you have been finding out from the
| other side.
|
| Basically it has to be bunch of screenshots or has to be
| tweet-long sentences, and it always had been, until someone
| ignorant in power started forcing that naivety.
| golergka wrote:
| Have anyone tried ChatGPT for this? It must be pretty good at
| following these guidelines.
| iddan wrote:
| I use GitHub CoPilot for this all the time!
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I'm skeptical UI matters and I sometimes think if you get
| traction with extremely poor UI (as is often the case) it implies
| you're solving something people need and people are willing to
| circumvent your bad design yet still find value you're probably
| onto a winner.
|
| Sure, be kind to your users once you have some traction but I
| think nice UX or even words isn't hugely important.
| iddan wrote:
| Shameless plug: if you want to empower your team to iterate your
| UX text in web apps (React, Angular, Vue, etc) FlyCode lets non-
| technical teammates make changes to UX texts and send a PR to
| GitHub with the text changes: https://www.flycode.com/developers
| yieldcrv wrote:
| A job for ChatGPT
|
| Fire the copy team, and if you never had one now you dont need
| this skillset either
|
| Enjoy coding in the building blocks together and compiling, peace
| lapama wrote:
| And sane with the words you write while using it.
| mlajtos wrote:
| I would like to take a moment to appreciate also the localization
| of the words. I deal with technical English my whole life, so I
| have no problem understanding computer terminology, but using Mac
| UI in my native language is quite beautiful experience. (Compared
| to Windows, Android or Linux.) I can't really wait when Siri will
| speak every language. (ChatGPT is pretty great at this, so my
| hope is that Apple will take notice.)
| timthorn wrote:
| There's a need for localisation of tone, too. Even if the
| language is common, culture is not.
| gitgud wrote:
| A tiny UX tidbit I like, is the "close dialog" buttons in some
| products, consider the following 2 buttons: [
| Dismiss ]
|
| "Dismiss" is self-deprecating and is an implicit admission that
| the warning is annoying, which makes the user less engaged.
| [ Got it ]
|
| "Got it" or similar phrasing subconsciously encourages the user
| that they understand the message and can continue. Even if they
| don't care about the message at all, at least the message doesn't
| consider itself "Dismissable" and unimportant... it's a subtle UX
| change, but makes dialogs are bit more tolerable...
| ninkendo wrote:
| "Got it" buttons fill me with rage in a way I can't really
| articulate well. It's probably due to the mental association at
| this point, but they always come up in ridiculous first-run
| tutorials that block me from using their product until I read
| and acknowledge some inane UI feature like "you can drag your
| finger to swipe!" or something equally obvious.
|
| A "got it!" button (especially with the stupid fucking
| exclamation point) makes the software feel like the overly
| enthusiastic waiter from the restaurant in Office Space who is
| just nauseatingly upbeat. Fuck off and get me my coffee.
|
| I'd love an OS-wide extension that would take replace the text
| on every "Got It!" button with "Fuck Off". I know it would
| accomplish nothing but it would make me feel so much better
| using my phone.
|
| > which makes the user less engaged
|
| I don't want to be "engaged" using your software. I want to
| accomplish my task and move on with my life. Why must every
| single aspect of software try to be my buddy nowadays? Why do I
| need to be "engaged" with it?
| MereInterest wrote:
| The UX that I like best is the one that provides the opt-out
| at the point where it would be an annoyance. Whenever there's
| a pop-up, I want an option to say "Don't show me notices of
| this kind again.". This requires a measure of humility on the
| part of developers, to acknowledge that learning about the
| feature they just added may not be the top priority of all
| users at all times, and an alternative way to learn about the
| UI.
|
| Start-up tips that have options of "Close this tip", "Never
| show tips again", and "Next tip" are the best example,
| because they account both for users who want to learn more
| about the program and users who already know how to use the
| program.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _I don't want to be "engaged" using your software. I want
| to accomplish my task and move on with my life. Why must
| every single aspect of software try to be my buddy nowadays?
| Why do I need to be "engaged" with it?_
|
| Engaging software is successful software. Engagement is also
| just a metric of 'user attention' I guess, which is a bit
| insidious...
| ape4 wrote:
| You're in the middle of something and the app (or OS) says:
| here is some info about a huge new change, Got it?!
| numpad0 wrote:
| > subconsciously encourages the user that they understand the
| message
|
| One of the problems with these friendlier messaging is, they
| are friendlier because they are more often only relevant to
| en_US(2023) linguistic, visual and societal context, and they
| are often in fact out of context by the time they are dissected
| into language resources, passed to (human or machine)
| translators, and executed on user terminals.
|
| [Dismiss] is blunt, cold, harsh, "disrespectful", unnegotiable,
| but it _virtually has no invalid translation candidates_. [Got
| it], [Go ahead], [Fine], those can be anything.
| catmanjan wrote:
| I find the familiarity that modern software assumes unnerving.
| Everything has a time and place, I wouldn't want a Got It
| button while filling out an official form.
| exodust wrote:
| I'd ignore advice from Apple or Big Tech about how to use words.
| They are not language experts. They are not content experts.
|
| They are infected with the same over-sensitive "inclusivity"
| reaction that has spread far and wide like a virus. Apple has
| adopted the widely criticised Stanford harmful words list.
|
| At bottom of this article are link to another page which has the
| following advice:
|
| "Avoid 'Peanut gallery' and 'grandfathered'". Because they arose
| from oppressive contexts.
|
| People are not "grandfathers" at their core. Nobody becomes a
| grandfather because they had an accident and woke up with the
| unwanted new identity. Grandfathers won't protest in the street
| about the term used in tech circles. Grandfather is a name
| describing their relative position in a family tree.
|
| "master", "slave", "sanity check", "kill"... Apple says no to all
| the usual copy and paste words from the list. The viral nature of
| these lists spreading around is of concern.
|
| "Fall through the cracks", "on the same page", and "backseat
| driver"... Apple says no.
|
| - support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/applestyleguide/toc
| rchaud wrote:
| Who would have thought that Apple, a niche brand known to so
| few, would feel the need to use inclusive language? Mac? More
| like PC gone mad! /s
| exodust wrote:
| Without your '/s' I'd be lost in the rough seas of your
| intended meaning.
|
| Feeling the need to copy a list of words is not the same as
| feeling the need to be inclusive.
|
| Besides, using those words and phrases isn't offensive to
| anyone other than a small minority of... "language activists"
| for want of a better description. The same people modifying
| books down to story elements like what jobs the characters
| have.
|
| "Check the history of words" is not a UX concern, and
| shouldn't be in style guides alongside "avoid 'click here'".
| Lio wrote:
| > _Interjections like "oops!" or "uh-oh" are typically
| unnecessary and can sound insincere._
|
| This is a good observation.
|
| I'd also avoid stuff like _" Maybe Later"_ buttons, instead of
| allowing the user to just say _" No"_.
|
| I believe the idea is to gently inform the user that they can
| perform the action later but it comes across as a passive
| aggressive way of removing control.
|
| i.e. the user wants to say no, full stop, but the app/website is
| telling them that they'll just nag them again until they accept
| regardless.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| So very true. Atlassian were the worst at this; their laggy
| software would error out, filling you with rage, and you'd be
| faced with a dialog titled something utterly insincere like
| "Whoops!".
| layer8 wrote:
| "Maybe later" or "Not now" can be useful to indicate that this
| isn't a permanent decision. The situation where it's bad is
| when it's the only option next to an "Always allow" option (or
| similar), which is just a dark pattern to prevent the user from
| permanently disabling something.
|
| When there is a choice between applying a decision once vs.
| permanently, then that should rather be made using a separate
| "remember my decision" checkbox or a "No, and don't ask me
| again" option (or similar).
| rchaud wrote:
| > "Maybe later" or "Not now" can be useful to indicate that
| this isn't a permanent decision.
|
| Useful for who? When was the last time you hit "Maybe Later"
| and meant it? To a consumer, that message just means "this
| annoying popup will be back later".
| renewiltord wrote:
| On system upgrade dialogs. I want to stay up to date and I
| won't remember to do it but usually I don't want to do it
| right now.
|
| In fact, I use this style of "snooze" quite often as a
| user.
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _separate "remember my decision" checkbox_
|
| I have a beef with these and not really any place to
| complain, so here it is: I hate apps that provide this
| functionality but have no way for you to reach into the app
| and undo it. Sometimes I _want_ to be reminded of something
| and I accidentally check this thing (or click "No, and stop
| reminding me") and either the app doesn't provide a way for
| you to undo the permanence of your choice or it's hidden
| somewhere that I have no possible way to find.
| layer8 wrote:
| There should definitely a way to undo it. Traditionally
| there is at least a "reset all my decisions" button in the
| settings.
| Karunamon wrote:
| My favorite example of this: by default, the Windows remote
| desktop client will present an "are you sure" dialog when
| closing a connection... If just once you check the "don't
| remind me" box, there is literally no way of undoing that
| preference except for _manual registry hacking_. If only
| Microsoft were so respectful of their users preferences in
| all other cases!
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1617750/how-to-restore-
| remot...
| ok123456 wrote:
| In my head I just replace "Maybe later" with "Maybe never".
| prox wrote:
| The user must be and feel in control at all times. Taking away
| agency in most cases is unwarranted. Exceptions may be with
| children or special needs groups.
| tesin wrote:
| While I agree with this as a general rule, it ignores an
| entire class of problem. I work in a data preservation space
| - if we let people delete things every time they wanted to,
| it'd be a disaster. Instead we 'tombstone' it (hide from
| everyone but admin), then let someone with some space from
| the process confirm it actually should be deleted. We've
| averted dozens of disasters this way.
|
| I'd argue the user must feel in control, as you say, but not
| necessarily _be_ in control.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't know--this kind of deception is how the industry
| attracts more regulation. Delete needs to go back to
| meaning delete, and the user should be in actual control.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No. I frequently undelete or unsend. Others do too.
| Removing the Windows Recycle Bin or its equivalent would
| not make my life better by "giving me agency".
| JohnFen wrote:
| One of the first things I do in any OS is disable the
| recycle bin or equivalent functionality. To each his own!
| temporallobe wrote:
| Same here. We implemented a "soft delete" in a system I
| worked on recently, as actually deleting something could
| have legal implications. We just have a table column where
| we mark it as deleted and then exclude those from any
| retrieval queries. If we ever need to undelete, someone can
| manually update the database.
| prox wrote:
| Well, it ties in with another rule I have, don't allow for
| stupidity. If a user can do some stupid things, it's not
| designed well. (Say your deletion problem)
|
| But yes, as long as these decisions are made consciously by
| a team, it's get the attention it deserves.
| Toreno96 wrote:
| > > Interjections like "oops!" or "uh-oh" are typically
| unnecessary and can sound insincere. > > This is a good
| observation.
|
| I agree. That reminds me: > Imagine a doctor performing a
| procedure and then suddenly saying "Oops! Something went
| wrong..." That is the last thing anyone wants to hear when the
| stakes are high, whether it's surgery or someone's source of
| income. That is not the time to be cutesy or fluffy. >
| --https://wix-ux.com/when-life-gives-you-lemons-write-
| better-e...
| causi wrote:
| Not sure this point applies to software, but I find a doctor
| saying oops to be very comforting. If I know when he screws
| up I don't have to be suspicious of him the rest of the time.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| True story from my rotation on General Surgery during my
| third year of medical school (UCLA; 1973):
|
| I'm in the O.R. doing what 3rd year med students do, namely
| holding a retractor to help keep the operative site open
| and perfectly exposed.
|
| The attending, a very senior surgeon, vice-chair of the
| department, tells the senior resident, "When you
| accidentally nick a big blood vessel, instead of saying
| 'Oops," say "There!'"
| aaronharnly wrote:
| My father is a retired surgeon, and has told me he was
| trained the same way -- to say "there" rather than
| "oops". The rest of the OR staff know what you mean, and
| it doesn't spook a patient or other people who might
| overhear.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I hate the "Maybe Later"/"Not Now" buttons. I take them as a
| signal that the software/website/whatever that does that is
| scammy and to be avoided.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I actually like "maybe later". As soon as it's provided with
| "no" together (which IME usually is the case), I have no issue
| with it.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Indeed. But often I do see just the two options "Yes" /
| "Maybe later" and this is infuriating.
| Lio wrote:
| That's it in one. The cutesy "be kind" language does not
| hide the reality of the "heads I win, tails you loose"
| choice from the user.
| the_af wrote:
| I've no problem with "yes / maybe later". To me, "maybe
| later" implies "no" is also a possibility. I don't read
| passive/aggressiveness into it, and I don't need a separate
| "no" option which would add nothing.
|
| Why do I like seeing the "maybe later" option? Because the
| app's devs are telling me "this is possible to configure
| later; we thought about this flow, and you won't be locked
| out of this option if you skip it now".
|
| If they don't show this wording, maybe they thought about it,
| maybe not. Maybe I'll be forced to reinstall the app from
| scratch. Who knows!
| pivic wrote:
| This is one example; there are other examples of frameworks and
| term lists: https://pivic.blog/blog/technical-writing/#technical-
| style-g...
| wkjagt wrote:
| Something I've always found interesting is wording in 1st person
| vs 2nd person. For example a link to "your orders" vs "my
| orders". They're both legit, but feel totally different. And I
| guess there's a third, neutral option: just "orders". The article
| mentions this very briefly, but this difference has a pretty
| profound effect on how the relation between the site and myself
| feels, that it doesn't go into. I wonder how deliberate this
| decision (1st or 2nd person) is on most sites.
| jononomo wrote:
| It seems to me that most apps choose the "my orders" approach,
| but I prefer to use an app that uses the "your orders"
| approach. It feels more professional to me and less like I'm
| being conned into something.
| throwaway09432 wrote:
| Honestly, all I care about is speed. Couple of word swaps here
| and there using a thesaurus, who gives a shit.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > It's always best to help people avoid errors. When an error
| message is necessary, it should appear as close to the problem as
| possible, avoid blame, and be clear about what someone can do to
| fix it.
|
| Try designing with the idea in mind that the user will never see
| an error. First, instead of coming at it from the point of view
| "the user made an error", start from "the program was not useable
| enough". Much like a door with handle that cannot be pulled, but
| must be pushed, a program with a UI that appears to allow an
| action but really doesn't, the issue is not the person's fault.
| Respond to failures to complete the action the user attempted
| with alternates. Imagine how frustrating it would be if you went
| to buy coffee and the person working there simply said, "no,
| you've made an error" when you tried to order something they're
| out of. You'd right avoid doing business there ever again.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Write clear error messages
|
| Totally. So often, the message that comes out on a "this should
| never happen" branch of the code is a random invention of a
| junior coder, and never reviewed by anyone.
|
| > be clear about what someone can do to fix it.
|
| "Sorry, an error has occurred."
|
| _i.e. All hope abandon, ye who enter here._
| pavlov wrote:
| Many of Apple's own apps are egregiously bad at reporting
| errors -- as in, they don't report them at all.
|
| When Airdrop doesn't work, it just gets stuck. No timeout, no
| nothing. I guess that's very clean from a UX writing
| perspective because you don't even need an error message. But
| it's extremely frustrating to the user.
|
| The iOS Family features suffer a similar lack of feedback. I
| toggle an app limit for my child and sometimes it just secretly
| doesn't register on the server. I navigate back and forth to
| see the UI action hasn't taken effect.
|
| (Often I wonder if anybody at Apple actually has kids because
| Family works incredibly poorly. 30-second delays are common.
| Notifications don't come through. User flows go through
| confusing incorrect states. Etc. Feels like it's maintained on
| leftover MobileMe infra by junior developers who have no idea
| why anyone would even use this product.)
| ragazzina wrote:
| >When Airdrop doesn't work, it just gets stuck. No timeout,
| no nothing.
|
| Even when Airdrop works, it doesn't work. One "feature" of
| Airdrop is that if you try to airdrop something from your
| iPhone to your iPad, for example, but you had already
| airdropped it earlier, it won't give you ANY indication. It
| will make a nice ping sound, and just do nothing. This is so
| infuriating.
| groestl wrote:
| I bet Apple Subscriptions is a popular product and makes them
| tons of money. Yet their admin UX is just as poor, I got
| instantly tiggered by your description.
| thiht wrote:
| Apple Music too is awful with error messages. There's one
| time I wanted to add a song to my library, I clicked the
| button and nothing happened. Which is the exact behaviour you
| get when it succeeds. Except it didn't work and my song
| wasn't added to my library. I tried a few more times and it
| just didn't work for this particular song. Thinking I maybe
| "lost" dozens of songs because they weren't added to my
| library is one of the reasons I went back to Spotify
| aprilnya wrote:
| > Which is the exact behaviour you get when it succeeds.
|
| If it successfully adds to library, it doesn't just do
| nothing, it gives you a "Added to Library" thing
| tshaddox wrote:
| AirDrop is a particularly egregious outlier. It's clear that
| something has gone very, very wrong with that feature. Not
| only with how unreliable it is, which is already bad enough,
| but with how clearly broken that basic state machine driving
| the UI is. Once it has gotten into a bad state, from my
| experience there's no way to get it to succeed without
| restarting one or both iPhones.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple's policy has been to show error messages when the user
| can do something with the information. And in most cases
| trying again is the only thing they can do so it tends to be
| minimal.
|
| Also I suspect many of those issues you're seeing involve
| asynchronous behaviour which is a hard UX challenge to solve.
| You could send a push notification that an update has failed
| on the server but often the user has moved onto something
| else.
| pavlov wrote:
| Even returning the most bog-standard message like "Try
| again (Error #12345)" would be immensely more helpful than
| having the UI simply do nothing, unclear on whether it's
| still working or not.
|
| Sure, async UI is hard, but the world's richest corporation
| with a reputation for UX excellence could afford to try at
| least.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This. You have nailed it.
|
| And why does Support and Marketing push back on that
| idea? Because they don't like when a customer reaches
| Support and says "I got error #12345! What should I do?"
| They'd much rather the customer just shut up and go away
|
| however, the programmer who put 12345 in the code would
| dearly love to know that it was hit.
| perlgeek wrote:
| When you have an error message you don't understand, at
| least you can google for it. If something simply doesn't
| work, there could be many possible underlying causes, and
| finding a list of possible errors and going through all of
| them is much more frustrating.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| An infinite loading animation and similar things are very
| ambiguous. Is my wifi connection bad right now? Is the OS
| acting up because I haven't rebooted the device in two
| months? Is a server down/unreachable? This wide range of
| possibilities is very frustrating because it often means
| you have a long, unsuccessful troubleshooting session
| ahead.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Preach. In the same vein, I hate when I get a random error code
| (e.g. "error 189") in an error message on the UI as a user.
|
| Am I supposed to remember that as a user? Will support know
| what the error code means?
|
| Genuinely curious why some generic error messages (e.g.
| "Something happened") include these error codes.
| MereInterest wrote:
| At least if there's an error code, I can search for that
| specific error code and see if anybody else has run into it.
| Seeing "Error 3bad617a" means that somebody else may have
| copy-pasted that same error message, and it might show up in
| search for "$PROGRAM_NAME 3bad617a". This is best if every
| location that can give an error has a unique code, but can be
| useful even if it is just parroting some low-level code.
|
| In other cases, an error code may be a standard value, and
| indicate that something is wrong with the inputs I provided
| as a user. If I see "Error saving file: 13", I may guess that
| the "13" was returned by some system call and is the error
| code EACCES or "Permission denied". I could test this by
| saving the file in another directory. The specific error code
| is useful for knowing what to do next, as error code 28 would
| be ENOSPC or "No space left on device", and I'd instead check
| if I ran out of disk space. (It would have been better if the
| error number had been passed through strerror() before
| display, but having the numeric code is still better than
| nothing.)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For messages you don't expect mere mortals to solve, error
| codes may be useful as a filter. Some Windows Update errors
| can't be fixed without a reboot (or a debugger and the
| Windows source code) so 0xdead1337 is a fine code. You can
| Google it if you want to try anyway.
|
| Sometimes, errors happen because a whole chain of behaviour
| failed. The program is in a bad, irrecoverable state or
| contains a bug. The user can't fix it and the programmer that
| made the method may not even know the state can be impossible
| (i.e. code has been refactored).
|
| Sometimes, error codes are more about helping the developers
| pinpoint a bug than they're about helping the user.
|
| That said, things like "database corrupt" or "no connection
| to API server" should just be displayed rather than muffled
| away.
|
| In my opinion, these impossible error codes should be
| accompanied with a support phone number or email address.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Error codes are far better than lack of error codes. I was
| once involved in a large project to add unique, Googleable
| codes to all errors that could happen with $POPULAR_API, and
| support tickets dropped considerably after they were added.
| wruza wrote:
| Numeric error codes are useful for troubleshooting, e.g. you
| can google "<program> error <code>", or its developer can
| find where or around what exactly it's localized.
|
| The "something happened" part usually comes from a generic
| error handler that reports surprising errors. E.g. your
| current graphics card driver messes with directx internals in
| a way that the game couldn't foresee this sort of exception
| in that code path. So here you go, "unknown error
| 0x8000abcd". Google it -> update your driver.
| secretsatan wrote:
| Sometimes they're unavoidable, when you simply have no idea,
| or can't think of all the things that could go wrong, it's
| better to give an error code than a generic, something went
| wrong, message.
|
| I've had worse though, when a UX design specified a specific
| error message and a developer blindly followed it and simply
| remapped errors to the given message, ignoring what the
| actual error was, misleading the users and the developers.
| I've told UX to never include error messages again..
| fwlr wrote:
| Including arbitrary error codes in error messages is a good
| idea because it creates virtual gathering points for users
| searching for answers.
|
| From a comment I've made about errors in the past:
|
| "You should probably include the error code in the message
| (ERR0231), because that helps make the error message unique
| to this specific error situation and thus makes it functional
| as a "gathering point". If you Google the error message and
| find others talking about the same error you experienced,
| that's useful; if you Google the error message and find
| others talking about different errors on the same site, that
| is useless at best and could be harmful. (Concrete example: a
| multiplayer gaming platform reports a checksum of game files
| to a remote server to ensure all players are using the same
| version of the game. Scenario 1: The files are corrupt, the
| checksum is wrong, the error message is "Unable to validate
| game files", the fix is to reinstall the game. Scenario 2:
| The user's internet connection is temporarily degraded, the
| game is unable to get a response from the remote server, the
| error message is "Unable to validate game files", the fix is
| to wait until connection improves. The unfortunate user from
| Scenario 2 is going to google their error message and get
| told to try the fix from Scenario 1. Now they're re-
| downloading the game on their spotty connection.)"
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Because there's a programmer who knows what 189 means, and
| the fact that it happened out in the wild means he can
| potentially fix the problem.
|
| No, Support won't know, but they can pass the information on.
| dewey wrote:
| > branch of the code is a random invention of a junior coder
|
| No need to blame interns or junior coders, this is done by big
| corporations after going through reviews and design iterations
| too.
| sjaak wrote:
| It can also be fun :)
|
| Guru Meditation!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation
| gampleman wrote:
| Error messages are one of the items on my mental code review
| checklist that gets very often excersized, since going from
| terrible to OK is usually pretty easy, but it's often a very
| different mindset from the actual programming task that
| introduced that error pathway.
|
| So usually it's up to the reviewer to notice and guide the
| author to that improvement.
| msy wrote:
| And yet so often UX Writing is distained as an unecessary job
| that can be handled by designers or PMs instead of recognising
| the verbs and nouns of your product are its fundamental
| architecture to users. And that's before you get to voice & tone.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Why the supposition that PMs and designers cannot learn this
| within < a week? Driven by personal qualm or bias perhaps
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| UX is an art and you can't learn art in a week.
| diarrhea wrote:
| For the same reason a writer is not and cannot be expected to
| become a designer within just one week. In the case of shoddy
| visuals, it's just much more obvious to even laymen if
| something's off.
| politelemon wrote:
| Hmm, I think this just might be a situation of our own
| making. When we assign a title to a person, we draw
| imaginariy mental lines and we hold an implicit bias that
| says only they are capable of doing that thing, rather than,
| it's their primary goal to be doing that thing. Similarly,
| others outside that title will hold a prejudice thinking,
| what is the big deal with what they are doing, what's taking
| so long, couldn't someone else do it?
|
| The question can easily be shifted to ask, why only devs
| doing development, couldn't PMs and designers do it too?
| Well, yes they can. At least parts of it. HTML, CSS,
| definitely, maybe some basic JS too. Could devs do PM work, I
| think so, at least little bits!
| brigandish wrote:
| We all look forward to your first novel with bated breath.
| When will it be published, next month?
| politelemon wrote:
| This is unnecessarily condescending and doesn't actually
| answer the question.
| brigandish wrote:
| It was supposed to be condescending, and not
| unnecessarily so as, quite frankly, anyone who thinks
| they can learn to write _professionally_ in under a week
| _and then_ question someone else 's mental disposition
| regarding this _deserves_ to be ridiculed for their
| teenage pretensions. Hopefully it 'll jolt them into a
| smidgen of humility or consideration, or just make them
| go to Reddit or somewhere their low insight, low quality
| pap will be more welcome. Their username certainly checks
| out.
|
| What next? Questions like "Why can't everyone in the
| world just love each other?" sandwiched between chats
| about some talentless rapper I've never heard of and his
| _beef_ with some reality TV "star" I wish I'd never
| heard of? Can't wait for that version of HN to appear.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Please leave such condescension and other toxic
| commenting behaviors on reddit where they belong.
| airtonix wrote:
| [dead]
| Savageman wrote:
| And then you have to translate it, which also is essential to UX.
| Reminds of of this 10 years-old article which is still relevant
| today: https://alistapart.com/article/translation-is-ux/
| zwilliamson wrote:
| maybe they should try to improve user experience with their own
| applications before telling others what to do?
|
| Finder on MacOS: probably should be renamed to Hider. Just a
| horrible file explorer interface. I couldn't imagine something
| worst. I ended up training my family on how to use the Terminal
| and mdfind command instead.
|
| Apple Photos and the shared album interface is such a pain to
| work with as a user. I hope it's not just me!
|
| I could go on but I'll stop here.
| macspoofing wrote:
| It's a nice set of guidelines but does Apple have credibility in
| this area? Specifically, does Apple actually follow what they
| preach (looking at you _' Write clear error messages'_)?
|
| Or more generally, are Apple's apps as good or better than what
| is out in the industry?
| none_to_remain wrote:
| Looks like a guide to bland consistent mediocrity
| urbandw311er wrote:
| This thread is a great example of how subjective matters of
| design are.. ..and what a nightmare any sort of "design by
| committee" can become.
| fwlr wrote:
| Apple's Human Interface Guidelines are a wonderful set of
| documents. Apple doesn't always live up to them and sometimes
| egregiously violates them, but I take a Stephensonian view of
| this hypocrisy ("That we occasionally violate our own stated
| moral code ... does not imply that we are insincere in espousing
| that code. ... No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a
| strict code of conduct"). I prefer that the document exists and
| they fail to live up to it, rather than the document be changed
| to reflect how they do operate.
| psychoslave wrote:
| >That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code ...
| does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.
| ... No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code
| of conduct
|
| Interesting point. I think the statement miss an important
| additional point: it's hard to come upfront with a rule set
| that is reality proof. More than the rules, what matter is why
| the rules was first uttered. To my mind, provided you agree
| with the underlying spirit, it's better to break the exact rule
| and keep its purpose guidance in mind than strictly and blindly
| apply the literal interpretation of the rule and sap its
| genius.
| Version467 wrote:
| I remember when I got my first Mac (right around the time Snow
| Leopard got released) and all the programs looked and felt so
| consistent. Not just those made by apple, but also third party
| applications downloaded from some random corner of the
| internet.
|
| What really blew me away (and still does) is that apple somehow
| got people to care about their Human Interface Guidelines. At
| the time this was an entirely foreign concept to me. All the
| windows applications I used had very inconsistent behaviour,
| even though all the ui elements came from the same native
| toolkit.
|
| There wasn't even an App Store or a centralised repository to
| enforce this, and yet people thought it important to adhere to
| those guidelines.
|
| I think this is the reason why even today iOS apps feel like
| they have a slight advantage in quality. All of this comes with
| significant disadvantages, but there are upsides that are
| seemingly impossible to achieve otherwise.
| karmelapple wrote:
| And this existed long before Mac OS X, too - it goes pretty
| much all the way back to the inception of the Mac. Even back
| with MacOS 6 vs Windows 95 when I was a child, I could easily
| see the difference.
| temporallobe wrote:
| I generally agree, though with a huge exception for iTunes
| back in the day. The baffling changes from version to version
| were frustrating and the UI seemed to hide obvious
| functionality, causing me to constantly ask "why can't I <do
| X>?". IMO Apple really struggled with iTunes' identity for
| the past 22 years as it split off into other independent
| apps.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Exactly, the Mac/iOS UX is coherent on a level that nothing
| else even comes close to. It's a great example of doing many
| small things correctly, and the experience overall coming
| together as a result.
|
| Going back to using Windows or Android afterwards is painful.
| (Windows especially now that they insult their users with
| advertisements within their operating system by default,
| something Apple would never do in a million years).
| smoldesu wrote:
| > advertisements within their operating system by default,
| something Apple would never do in a million years
|
| That's outright not true. MacOS (by default) gives you pop-
| ups asking you to try the new Safari, and when you put on
| your headphones it launches Apple Music with a pop-up
| asking you to try their subscription. The settings app begs
| you to sign in and pay for iCloud storage. The default dock
| is loaded with useless SaaS that would be better-off
| uninstalled. _I still have the friggin U2 promo!_
|
| That's just MacOS. The water started to rise on iOS years
| ago, and it all contributed to me leaving Apple's ecosystem
| for good. This "premium" experience is meaningless if you
| just use it as premium ad space for your premium products.
| I'm going to pass on being a premium customer.
| super256 wrote:
| The settings app on iOS is full with prompts to subscribe
| to iCloud and appletv (even showing you a red alert, which
| makes it looks like there is something wrong with your
| phone).
|
| They only go away if you subscribe. I still get the prompt
| for 1 year free appletv, although I already used that. When
| I click on it gets stuck on an infinite loading screen.
|
| Oh, and apple care prompts on new phones until your device
| is not eligible for that anymore.
| nicce wrote:
| They are first-party ads linked directly to the services
| you are already using at some level. Microsoft
| distributes third-party ads.
| pityJuke wrote:
| a) Apple TV is not necessarily a service I use. Neither
| is Apple News.
|
| b) Why does the ads being first-party suddenly make it
| more acceptable? Ads are ads, and I don't want them on my
| device, even if they are ads for my computer
| manufacturer's services.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Windows/Microsoft in $lang != en_US is also degrading
| constantly for some years to add salt to the wound. These
| days I see more and more of what are essentially
| adversarial examples that "compile" into English through
| machine translations.
| secretsatan wrote:
| They've alway been included in the pages describing how to
| prepare your app for submission, I always thought they were
| almost part of the review process, but they're mostly just
| good advice and worth following, and won't hurt your
| submission
| swyx wrote:
| who is the Stephenson whom you are quoting here and what was
| his context?
| airstrike wrote:
| The one and only Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/119463-that-we-
| occasionally...
| Narishma wrote:
| Microsoft's UI guidelines were good too in the Windows 95-98
| era before they went downhill. Their problem was that they
| didn't follow them in their own major applications like Office.
| mattknightlewis wrote:
| I'd rather read overly technical language that assumes
| intelligence or curiosity on the part of the reader, rather than
| comforting euphemisms. When I was a kid I thought SimCity1993
| really was "reticulating splines" during the loading screen and
| it didn't scare me off. Now Windows (which ought to be a lot less
| cheeky than Maxis) will print something like "We (who?) are just
| (just?) finishing some things (things?!) up for you"
| bentcorner wrote:
| I've long thought that it would be really great to have
| log/internals viewing be a first class citizen of an OS.
|
| Windows has a variety of tools that let you see debug message
| and trace events but they're not really useful for casual
| perusal. I don't know what the ecosystem looks like on Linux.
|
| I suppose I'm not sure what I'm asking for. But in the
| aforementioned example (Window's post update/install OOBE with
| "We are just finishing some things for you") it would be nice
| to press something like Shift+F11 and open up a log viewer that
| knows you're interested in the main thing on screen to see what
| it's actually doing.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Linux is quite nice actually, getting a broad overview of
| "what the system is doing" is as easy as opening a text file
| or running a command. If you have a single app misbehaving,
| you can often run it from a terminal to see extra debugging
| information. (This trick usually works on Mac OS as well)
|
| Windows has no such equivalent; event viewer is incredibly
| clunky
| neon_electro wrote:
| Do you think your opinion is representative of the majority of
| folks who use technology?
| mattknightlewis wrote:
| Of course not, but I see that fact as an indicator of the
| collateral damage in the continued "War on General Computing"
| more than anything else. The customer is not always right -
| what they may want is to be infantilized, but what they need
| is to be educated.
| neon_electro wrote:
| I've been witness to this "War on General Computing", being
| a 31 year old human who's used computers for the better
| part of 28-29 years of that time.
|
| I'm not convinced the shift you're describing as far as UX
| writing is anywhere near as concerning as the actual war on
| general computing with respect to running the OS you want,
| the software you want, with restrictions as necessary for
| security but not for vendor lock-in.
| mattknightlewis wrote:
| UX writing tone, of course, is only a tiny piece of the
| overall foreclosure of customization that the current era
| of UX designers is complicit in. I see a continuum
| between cutesy UX writing and reduced ability to
| customize any and all settings by the end user; You think
| there is an "actual war" separate from the propaganda
| used to manufacture consent for it. Gilded cages need
| gilt - that gold leaf takes the form of emojis etc.
| Razengan wrote:
| Yes! I've always found Microsoft's "welcome" messages in Windows
| installation to be extremely condescending and obnoxious
| (something they have an history of, even if unintentionally,
| going back to Clippy and beyond)
|
| On the other hand, Apple is guilty of sparse and vague error
| messages, or not giving any messages at all and letting things
| fail silently (like when AirDrop or Personal Hotspot magically
| just not work)
| politelemon wrote:
| I don't see it, it's sparse yes, but condescending and
| obnoxious is an excessive description. It might be that you're
| going in to Windows installation with a preset prejudice.
| chungy wrote:
| That's always been my read.
|
| "Hello" "Step back while we take care of things for you"
| "Just a few minutes longer"
|
| I don't know the script verbatim, but it always read as very
| creepy and "This isn't your computer, it's Microsoft's." I
| would Ctrl-Alt-Delete just to have the pleasure of not seeing
| those messages.
| markdown wrote:
| Airdrop fails randomly at least 50% of the time I use it. And
| this experience is pretty consistent across over a decade of
| use with macbooks, mac minis, iphones (right up to the current
| 14) and tablets for an entire family.
|
| It's just garbage 50% of the time, and you end up trying random
| things...
|
| "restart your bluetooth"
|
| "ok that didn't work, now I'll restart mine."
|
| "ok still not working, lets both restart our bluetooth at the
| same time while chanting Jobs Jobs Jobs"
|
| "ok now let's try a restart of both devices."
|
| "fuck it, just use viber or email."
| Razengan wrote:
| The debugger in me wants to think that it tries the local
| WiFi network first and something in your router or whatever
| messes it up
|
| but since the whole point is for Apple-Apple communication,
| shouldn't the devices talk to each other directly first?
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| AFAIK they do, via Bluetooth to negotiate the connection.
| The actual payload is then transferred via WiFi.
| wruza wrote:
| The "it looks like you've blah blah" example is terrible, imo.
| The last thing I'd want to deal with after a hard fall is this
| chatter.
|
| The correct way to do it is: (Attention sound)
| Did you just fall? ((SOS) swipe for help) [I'm okay]
|
| The original message _doesn't even mention_ it's a swipe. I can
| imagine a stressed person trying to tap that message or icon
| without realizing it doesn't work. Targeting at eldery you must
| be crystal clear, not subtle-UX-clear.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| _Strong_ disagree. "Did you just fall?" is more confusing: in
| that case, the watch is not directly telling you what it thinks
| happened; instead, it is asking a leading question.
|
| It's _way_ less clear. You're relying on implication to convey
| the fact that the watch thinks you've fallen, rather than just
| saying it.
|
| If you've hit your head and are concussed, that extra level of
| indirection and confusion that your question introduces could
| have a significant effect on the outcome of the situation.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I don't understand your point of view. There is no
| indirection. It's just a simple question, yes or no, did you
| just fall?
| nkrisc wrote:
| But what is it going to do if I answer yes? If I _did_ fall
| but don 't need medical attention, is answering "yes" going
| call emergency services anyway? I don't want that. But if I
| lie and answer "no", is it going to somehow modify its
| detection criteria and not work the next time I fall and
| really do need help? I don't know, I have no idea what it
| will do.
|
| Besides, it's all a moot point because it's the wrong
| question to ask. It doesn't really matter if you actually
| fell or not. It detected what it "thinks" was likely a fall
| and the real question to ask is: do you need help?
|
| If you turn the corner and see someone laying on the
| ground, do you ask them if they they just fell, or do you
| ask them if they need help?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| It's entirely unclear to me what the consequences of the
| yes/no choice would be.
|
| Furthermore, falling is not binary, so there's the question
| about where the boundary is. In an emergency situation, I
| don't want to have to deal with any of this. It's terrible
| UX.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| So maybe a message like
|
| "Call emergency services?"
|
| "Yes" "No"
|
| Although it removes the context of the watch' reasoning.
| nkrisc wrote:
| "Fall detected. Call {911 || regionally appropriate
| number/name}?"
| marvel_boy wrote:
| Exactly.
| nippoo wrote:
| Again "fall detected" is quite un-human and mechanical.
| Is this a technical term? Who/what fell? Are you talking
| about the season? I think the existing Apple language is
| good and has clearly been through a lot of discussion!
| Karunamon wrote:
| As befits a nonhuman, mechanical device like a watch.
| airstrike wrote:
| Which makes it sound like the watch fell, not me
| Karunamon wrote:
| Given the consensus understanding of physics and gravity,
| it did. It just so happened that it was attached to a
| larger thing that also fell, and the larger thing likely
| either knows it and can comprehend this message
| trivially, or does not and summoning help is the proper
| action to take.
|
| Reminder that the screen is a false positive protection
| mechanism and will only ever be seen in a specific
| context.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > the larger thing likely either knows [about the fall]
| and can comprehend this message trivially, or does not
| and summoning help is the proper action to take.
|
| You did say "likely" but to provide an example: skiers
| who know they fell cannot comprehend the message
| trivially (not having noticed it's existence) and
| summoning help is often not the proper action to take.
| Call centers serving ski towns are swamped with false
| positives due to this issue.
| airstrike wrote:
| Sorry, but that's just a pedantic take when we're
| discussing what is the best UI /UX for wearers to know
| how to instinctively react in a possibly stressful
| moment.
|
| You have to solve for the lowest common denominator, not
| the hacker's technically correct preference.
|
| This ain't about the watch falling, it's about someone
| possibly needing to call emergency services and contacts
| when they're hurt. "I'm OK" is a great prompt in that
| context, even if it's not an explicitly accurate response
| to whether the watch or wearer fell (which in turn is why
| the focus is not on the fall but on their need for help).
| Hackbraten wrote:
| There also must be some joke about special relativity
| hidden in that wearer-and-their-watch-falling incident.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Asking a yes or no after you hit your head may get confusing
| and dismiss a quick call
| gowld wrote:
| I only got as far as the distracting needlessly too-small
| corner margins. Is everything on Apple Watch that ugly?
|
| On Swiping, though, it's kind of a lost cause on iOS/WatchOS.
| If you don't know to do the goofy swipes everywhere, your
| experience is miserable.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Don't worry, this setting is so sensitive that you've likely
| seen the screen a few tens of times before you are actually in
| a hard fall.
| arrrg wrote:
| Your prompt doesn't take into account what this feature
| actually does.
|
| Asking whether you did fall is not really the right question in
| that situation.
|
| For example: I did have a serious fall (that hurt a lot) with
| my bike that triggered this feature - but I was conscious
| afterwards and seemed somewhat ok. As such I didn't want my
| watch to make an SOS call (dialing emergency services and
| contacting my emergency contacts). I wanted to give myself time
| to assess the situation first.
|
| However, I did fall and the Watch correctly detected that fall.
| So to this yes/no question I would have to technically answer
| yes.
|
| In that context the "I'm OK" button is actually pretty great.
| It works both if you didn't actually fall (a false positive)
| and also if you did fall but it's not serious enough to call an
| ambulance. (If you say I'm OK it actually asks follow up
| questions to determine whether it was a false positive or
| whether you did actually fall.)
|
| When the watch detects a fall there is a countdown and noise
| and vibration and after that the watch will make an SOS call
| automatically. As such it's not so important to make it super
| clear and easy to make that SOS call manually. In that context
| it seems like a fine tradeoff to me to prevent accidentally
| making that SOS call.
|
| I think it's exactly right for the watch to put front and
| center why it's doing what it's doing in those situations,
| while also making it very clear that there can be false
| positives.
| [deleted]
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > The original message doesn't even mention it's a swipe.
|
| The actual message includes a countdown which automatically
| makes an SOS call if you do nothing.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| It isn't static. It jiggles a bit to show it's moving.
| senttoschool wrote:
| I'm guessing that a great deal of this warning is false
| positive. Thus, using "Did you fall?" when a false positive
| occurs doesn't provide enough context for the alert.
|
| Remember that the Apple Watch is just guessing. Hence, using
| "It looks like" is more appropriate. Otherwise, a tech
| illiterate senior might not understand why the Apple is
| suddenly asking if he/she fell so directly when there is a
| false positive.
|
| I like Apple's version more.
| gowld wrote:
| "I think you fell".
|
| "Fall detected"
|
| "Sudden motion - Injury suspected".
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| No first person language please. My iDevice shouldn't be
| saying "I think..." about anything. This is both a personal
| preference and, I suspect, better "design"/language.
| mayoff wrote:
| Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I mostly agree with you on this one. But regarding "swipe for
| help": typically I avoid UI labels that reference the action to
| be taken ("tap", "swipe", etc).
|
| Good UI design should render the action obvious - a button
| should look tappable, a slider slidable and so on. That way the
| label can use its minimal estate to focus on describing the
| action instead.
|
| "Swipe for help" might also be suitably ambiguous that some
| users think it means "get help" in the sense of an info page,
| or assistance.
|
| I'd go with something like "(SOS) Make emergency call" or
| regional equivalent. Combined with a more obviously swipable UI
| design.
|
| Ideally then usability test on 50 people to seen if it works!
| layer8 wrote:
| The original iPhone UI had "slide to unlock" written on the
| lock screen slider, because it's not obvious until you learn
| it. On the emergency/power-off screen, there's still "slide
| to power off" written on the slider. Recently I tried to
| explain to my father remotely how to restart his iPad.
| However, in his local language, there is only the equivalent
| of "power off" written on the slider (possibly due to space
| constraints, as the language is more verbose than English),
| and so he was at a loss of what to do, since he didn't
| recognize that it was a slider.
|
| Looking at the screenshot of the SOS slider, I would have a
| hard time recognizing it as a slider myself, when seeing it
| for the first time.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Ideally then usability test on 50 people to seen if it
| works!_
|
| Might want to run it by the ethics board, though, before
| subjecting 50 people to traumatic events.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| > _Good UI design should render the action obvious - a button
| should look tappable, a slider slidable and so on_
|
| That's basically what every designer says. What these people
| usually forget is that these intuitive Interfaces are only
| intuitive for people that think like _them_.
|
| Nothing about that screenshot indicates that I'd have to
| swipe to take action. There is a very high chance I'd be
| unable to figure it out in a stressful situation while
| hurting... Unless I've already encountered the same interface
| in a less stressful environment.
|
| The SOS could just be a button with the label to the right.
| kbf wrote:
| >Nothing about that screenshot indicates that I'd have to
| swipe to take action.
|
| Users are not interacting with a screenshot. If you try to
| tap the slider it will slide a little to the right and fall
| back to indicate it's a slider. There are also other
| actions on the watch that use this kind of interaction. And
| if you fail to either call ems or confirm you're OK, it
| will call them for you.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > If you try to tap the slider it will slide a little to
| the right and fall back to indicate it's a slider.
|
| People can't interpret that kind of nonverbal/abstract
| cues. It's quite an inner circle thing of nerds that
| those seem ultra obvious.
| gowld wrote:
| Apple's whole thing is "computers for non nerds".
|
| Nerds would type SOS at a command prompt.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That's why Jobs-era iPhone always visually AND verbally
| instructed "[-] slide to unlock", where nowadays it's
| just a ----- at the bottom that are supposed to be
| extremely discoverable and immediately obvious and
| magnificently intuitive.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Users are not interacting with a screenshot.
|
| Yes, they are. You seem want a distressed user to
| aimlessly wonder though the UI trying to learn how every
| object behaves. That's not only unreasonable, on this
| case it's mean.
|
| You would be correct if it was a game.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Only if you assume a fall would be the first encounter
| with this UI element on an Apple device, that is
| extremely unlikely.
|
| Though a return to a little bit of depth in interface
| design would help. Even plain tappable buttons often have
| zero affordance these days.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > You seem want ...
|
| I agree with you more than the GP, but this isn't a good
| way to structure a rebuttal.
| elondaits wrote:
| That swipeable element is standard in the Apple Watch UI
| vocabulary. It only needs to be intuitive for Apple Watch
| users.
|
| It's not a button to avoid an accidental press, because the
| false positive means emergency services are dispatched...
| and with enough false positives, the service stops being
| useful (wolf crying).
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > It's not a button to avoid an accidental press
|
| so if I actually fell and broke my thumb, I won't be able
| to easily activate it.
|
| Swiping is a terrible gesture, nothing related to
| "emergency" should be linked to swiping.
|
| It's much better to put there a "DID NOT FALL" button
| than a swipable element to avoid false positives.
|
| False positives are still better than false negatives, in
| these circumstances.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Actually, the emergency services are called automatically
| after a timer countdown. Purpose of the dialog is to
| check if you are okay and NOT call the emergency
| services. The slider skips the countdown and calls
| immediately.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| I suspect you don't actually own an apple watch, because
| you're really reaching here. First of all, SOS is
| dispatched after a period of inactivity.
|
| Otherwise, you can use your remaining four fingers to
| swipe. Or your nose. Or Siri. Or remove the watch with
| your teeth and use the other hand.
|
| But more obviously, broken thumbs still swipe too.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| not contesting the Apple watch, but the claim that
| swiping should be used to avoid false positives.
|
| Swiping should be used for low priority confirmations,
| like confirming you want to buy a subscription or pay for
| some in-game addon.
|
| In my opinion it shouldn't be used to answer phone calls
| either.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Please never design any interface I have to use.
|
| A button would mean I'd answer endless calls by accident,
| in my pocket. No, sensors don't prevent this. Yes, my
| leg, through my pocket fabric, can push buttons.
|
| Did you test all of this, before deciding a button is
| better?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > A button would mean I'd answer endless calls by
| accident
|
| That's honestly not a design issue.
|
| The design of the following device was never criticized
| because answering a phone call was "too easy"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310
|
| Anyway, I've never said to use a button, I said "swiping
| is a terrible gesture"
|
| My parents have enormous issues swiping to answer phone
| calls. So they answer by accident to a lot more calls
| than they did when the phone had buttons, because they
| answer while trying to hung up. It's not clear at all
| that they could not do anything and the call will
| automatically end after a while. It's not clear at all
| that they could silence that phone call, without
| silencing _all phone calls_.
|
| It's even worse than that: most of the times they call me
| back because they could not swipe "the right way" and
| were unable to answer.
|
| But they are not stupid, they've gone through life pretty
| well, they worked with precision instruments in health
| care, where people lives were at stake, it's the
| interface design that is stupid!
|
| There was a time when things were designed to be used by
| people leveraging human natural abilities, not forced
| onto people because they look cool in ADS.
|
| > Yes, my leg, through my pocket fabric, can push buttons
| on
|
| Don't keep your phone in you front pocket then!
|
| Anyway, I don't know how big you are, but the pockets of
| my jeans can't handle more than half a smartphone.
|
| And previous generations of phone never activated on
| their own while in my pockets (yes, they could fit,
| because they were sized to be _handhelds_ not small
| tablets)
|
| But, more importantly, you're not considering more
| ergonomic gestures than swiping, like a long press.
|
| You are assuming that your habits are the best possible
| implementation.
|
| EDIT: there's also this: swiping can reveal physical
| characteristics of the user which could be considered not
| exactly a good thing, in this era of data harvesting and
| targetization.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107158
| 191...
| notduncansmith wrote:
| Side note, while I don't know the trends in Ibiza, in the
| USA pants marketed to men usually have pockets that can
| hold a smartphone (and often wallet too, though mine gets
| a separate pocket).
|
| It's not really a matter of personal size so the unsubtle
| body-shaming "I don't know how big you are, but" is an
| irrelevant ad-hominem here, which weakens your comment.
| There's no need to bring yourself so low in an internet
| conversation about buttons and sliders.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification but I meant big as in a big
| person (think about Shaquille O'Neal), not a fat person.
|
| I'm not a native English speaker, sorry, big for me means
| big as per dictionary definition, not large or fat or
| "you should be ashamed of your body".
|
| Anyway, a search for "jeans pockets smartphone" produces
| the following results, which is exactly what I meant,
| pants here have the same pocket size you can see in the
| following pictures.
|
| https://previews.123rf.com/images/bacho12345/bacho1234515
| 08/...
|
| https://previews.123rf.com/images/wisawa222/wisawa2221707
| /wi...
|
| https://previews.123rf.com/images/aquapictures/aquapictur
| es1...
|
| https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_
| 144...
| bbarnett wrote:
| No offense at the 'big' thing here, I'm 190cm. But
| amusingly, I have grey hair, which means I am, by the
| laws of the universe, no longer allowed to wear jeans.
|
| I think looser pants are why ginormous phones fit,
| although I am sure upthread's comment about many pants
| being tailored differently now, is probably true too.
|
| My own usage case is, as with anyone, unique. The real
| problem is, singular thought in design.
|
| Look at chrome, and how google removed pinch zoom and
| reflow, to "force" websites to update for mobile.
|
| Thanks google, clearly you could care less about older
| eyes. About older websites.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > No offense at the 'big' thing here, I'm 190cm. But
| amusingly, I have grey hair, which means I am, by the
| laws of the universe, no longer allowed to wear jeans.
|
| ehehe I have grey hair and grey beard too.
|
| I still wear jeans when nobody watches, but in all
| honesty when I wear classic suit pants to go to the
| office, the pockets are even smaller than the jeans ones,
| so my phone stays in the pocket of my (suit) jacket.
|
| My issue with swiping is that when phones fitted entirely
| in one hand, for example the Samsung Galaxy SII or the
| iPhone 4, swiping made sense, everything was close enough
| and you never lost grip.
|
| Now that they are so big, there's a lot of lateral
| movement to cover and it's becoming to be nonsensical. I
| usually drop my phone 2/3 times a day because of needing
| to swipe, it never happened so often before. I have also
| started to suffer from joint pain on my right thumb due
| to phone gestures.
|
| I've watched my parents trying to do it with both hands -
| with one hand they keep the phone, with the other hand
| they try to swipe-up to answer using their index finger -
| and the movement 90% of the time falls too short and the
| swipe fails.
|
| It's painful to watch, I think we should rethink gestures
| or phones' dimensions.
| gowld wrote:
| > I have grey hair, which means I am, by the laws of the
| universe, no longer allowed to wear jeans
|
| Stop mentally enslaving yourself.
| retrac wrote:
| Taking a joke too seriously is a form of mental self-
| enslavement.
| slackdog wrote:
| > _so if I actually fell and broke my thumb,_
|
| Thankfully most people have four backup fingers on the
| same hand..
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| yeah but it's called _opposable thumb_ for a reason.
|
| try to do what you do every day without using a thumb and
| tell me how good it is to have 4 "backup" fingers.
| slackdog wrote:
| All my fingers work fine on a touch screen. If your thumb
| was injured and you needed emergency assistance, would
| you really give up instead of trying to use your index
| finger? _Really?_ You would just lay there and die
| because you can 't or won't use your index finger instead
| of your thumb to call for help? _Really?!?_
|
| I hope this isn't true and you've merely lost track of
| the context of this discussion.
| gowld wrote:
| > hope this isn't true and you've merely lost track of
| the context of this discussion
|
| On a smartphone it's hard to keep track of a long thread
| if I have a broken thumb.
| alexdbird wrote:
| On a related note, I wish there was a swipeable element
| in the flow to prevent a Watch(tm) falsely entering PINs
| in your pocket until it locks permanently and needs to be
| completely reset. It can happen in minutes.
|
| It's pretty crazy that people might be depending* on an
| Ultra model doing some extreme outdoors activity, and it
| turns itself into a little brick because it's tapping
| against something slightly conductive.
|
| *--Don't do this with any tech.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > What these people usually forget is that these intuitive
| Interfaces are only intuitive for people that think like
| them.
|
| Which is why a successful interface designer understands
| who will be using the interface. There's nothing natural
| about any touch interface. It's all learned. When designers
| say "a button should look tappable", that's a design
| requirement, not a design solution. What solution achieves
| that requirement will depend on the audience the interface
| is intended for.
| kdkwsndne wrote:
| To be fair to the parent the label was:
|
| > ((SOS) swipe for help)
| layer8 wrote:
| I agree that the "It looks like you've..." informal-chatty
| style is terrible. It's hilarious that they describe it as
| "straightforward and direct". It should rather be something
| short and matter-of-fact like "Hard fall detected."
| tshaddox wrote:
| A yes or no question doesn't make much sense when there isn't a
| way to respond to that question. And even if there was, perhaps
| to help train Apple's detection algorithm, that really
| shouldn't be the main call to action. The point of the feature
| isn't to impress you with how accurately it detected falls.
| It's to get you help if you need it.
| KronisLV wrote:
| The images don't load for me for whatever reason, but the alt
| text is set up nicely, which is great to see!
| Image: /design/human-interface-
| guidelines/foundations/writing/images/fall-detection-message.png
| Alt: A screenshot of a Fall Detection message that reads: it
| looks like you've taken a hard fall. Image:
| /design/human-interface-
| guidelines/foundations/writing/images/move-streak-message.png
| Alt: A screenshot of an Activity message that reads: you set a
| personal record for your longest daily Move streak, 35 days!
| Image: /design/human-interface-
| guidelines/foundations/writing/images/handwashing-settings.png
| Alt: A screenshot showing the Handwashing Timer description,
| which reads: Apple Watch can detect when you're washing your
| hands and start a 20-second timer.
|
| These are pretty useful for not just when using a screen reader
| or maybe a text based browser or something, but also when the
| images themselves break.
| toastal wrote:
| Just as important of a side note for supporting text-based
| browsers and screen readers: if the images are purely
| decorative, you should make it alt="".
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decorative/
|
| Don't do: <h1><img src alt="ACME logo">ACME</h1>.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Well the logo might not be a great example, as it is often
| clickable to the home page and should have alt text so people
| know what it is.
|
| A better example is when a site has little stock photo
| thumbnails with article titles on a navigational page. The
| screen reader can read the title text; knowing what's in the
| thumbnail adds nothing.
|
| Images should only have alt text when they contain "real"
| content (for example if it is an original photo that is
| relevant to the associated story).
| toastal wrote:
| A logo is a perfect example _because_ so many sites are
| failing to do it correctly. When you do
| <h1><img src alt="ACME logo">ACME</h1>
|
| What gets rendered and read is what you would never want
| ACME logoACME
|
| If you _don 't_ have or use actual text nearby then you
| just do this: <h1><img src
| alt="ACME"></h1>
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Got it, thanks for following up
| ryanjamurphy wrote:
| Huh, this is a good tip. I've always provided a rich
| description of decorative images, because I didn't want
| screen readers to "miss out," but apparently that was a bad
| idea!
| grumple wrote:
| Same. Getting 403 Forbidden.
| qwertox wrote:
| I'm getting a 404, at least for one of the images [0].
|
| [0] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
| guideline...
| familiartime wrote:
| Is the fall detection alt-text actually that good here? There
| were more elements in that image, which I assume people who use
| screen readers or are reading the alt-text for broken images
| would want to know.
|
| The "EMERGENCY SOS" slider and "I'm OK" button give more
| examples of the "straightforward and direct" language that the
| article text references. I also learned something about that
| feature itself (besides that it existed in the first place) -
| Apple's design choices to make the "SOS" a slider, followed by
| a larger/easier to press button for "I'm OK". Even though it
| wasn't related to the point of the article, it was information
| that I wouldn't have learned had I just read that alt-text.
|
| Is this part of accessibility guidelines for alt-text?
| Shouldn't they convey the same information, whether it's in
| image or text form, even if it's not directly relevant to the
| point of an article?
|
| I can also imagine that people have different preferences -
| maybe some want all the information like I mentioned, whereas
| others don't want to distract from the point of what they're
| reading. I wonder which way the alt-text guidelines lean in
| practice.
| inthefells wrote:
| Monzo have an interesting "tone of voice" guide that they've made
| public https://monzo.com/tone-of-voice/
|
| I've found it at least to be another useful starting point for
| things to consider.
| jmbwell wrote:
| This thread is full of great discussion. Writing clearly can
| clearly be hard. It takes practice and skill.
|
| This is why technology programs in schools require (or should
| require) technical writing courses. It might not seem important
| to know how to write for humans when you're learning to write for
| machines, but writing for humans is one of the most important
| things you can learn, in any discipline.
| tnel77 wrote:
| As an engineer, I hate writing. That being said, one of the
| best classes I took during my undergraduate studies was a class
| called "Technical Communication." We learned how to write a
| good email, memo, and even technical instructions.
|
| For one of our big projects, we were given a box of Dots (gummy
| candy) and a box of toothpicks. We had to create a structure
| and then write instructions for another group of students to
| recreate said structure.
|
| Many students did poorly because they would simply write out
| their instructions like "put a toothpick in the side of the
| dot." What does that even mean? They never established top or
| bottom, so side could be anything.
| visarga wrote:
| > Writing clearly can clearly be hard.
|
| I'm wondering if GPT3 + a set of copyrighting instructions +
| your draft can generate a list of suggestions for improvement.
| piperswe wrote:
| Looks like the screenshots on this page are dead, they're giving
| me 404s
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Strange. Works for me. Maybe they can't handle the hn-induced
| traffic? ;)
| chungy wrote:
| Doesn't work for me either.
| [deleted]
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