[HN Gopher] Whatever Happened to UI Affordances? ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-26 23:00 UTC)