I'd suggest you explore the world of Stoicism. You could start with https://twitter.com/dailystoic
No point getting angry about things you cannot and never will be able to control. Focus on what you can control and take pride in that.
Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#52If this bothers you enough, you may want to seek out a therapist. I don't want to and can't diagnose you over the internet, but certain phrases you use suggest to me there are some elements that they may be able to help you with. On the self-help front, you may want to pursue mindfulness studies, with an eye towards the sort that helps you interrogate your own mind about why you feel the way you do. You may be surpri…
> If this bothers you enough, you may want to seek out a therapist. This is probably good advice, though I am skeptical it would help. I think it would be helpful if you could tell me which elements that they may be able to help me with.
I am very reluctant to do that. I am not a therapist, but I know enough to know there's some danger in applying labels to people in this sort of situation willy-nilly. commandersaki was less reluctant, and they did pick up on one of the things I heard, so I guess I'll at least endorse that post from that perspective.
I would actually recommend taking your post as-is to a therapist as a starting session. (I wouldn't bother with the HN conversation itself.) It's a good starting point.
I'd say this... going to see a therapist once is not itself a commitment. If after the first time you don't feel like it's going to help, you will be free to stop. But I do believe there is some significant and true help that you can get from one... even if I am very reluctant to put into words the reasons why I believe that. I apologize for that, but I am trying my best to be helpful, and to not hurt you unnecessarily or out of unprofessional clumsiness.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#53>So, I think to myself, is the whole world just lazy? Stupid? Apathetic? Why would somebody make this thing the way it is, and think it is acceptable? In my personal opinion, yes, the designers probably don't care about your use case, or about the product at all. The designers were probably happy to collect a check and go home.
I often arrive at this same conclusion, and I find it depressing. I find it difficult to sum up the feeling beyond "losing faith in humanity".
As others stated, I think you might need to adjust your expectations and think of the big picture. Humanity is amazing, but far from perfect, and will always fall short if you compare it to some imaginary ideal.
Try thinking of it this way:The closest living species to humans practices casual rape, murder, and infanticide. There were closer species, but humans likely hunted and raped them to extinction.
With these humble beginnings, it is amazing that most people can walk down the street safely (and that the street was built at all). More than 7 billion humans now live on this planet and for the most part peacefully coexist. Life expectancy and quality of life has never been higher and violence has never been lower. These metrics continue to improve over time.
Viewed from this perspective, issues of crappy UX seem insignificant.
Hope this helps
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#54I'm not a UX person by any means but do appreciate good ergonomics and begrudgingly tolerate the bad. My first thought is that you should create a website with the worst offenders found day-to-day and tag them with the manners in which they fail. It would be both fun and crowdsource the popular opinion of what really bugs people. The second part is why it should affect you so personally. My guess would be that you ha…
I appreciate your feedback, and you are mostly correct. I have actually thought of making a website to document "shitty" things.. from annoying graffiti, to terrible websites, to awful interfaces on popular products and software. It's an issue of time and commitment, both of which are in short supply lately. > The second part is why it should affect you so personally. When it's a public service where exorbitant amoun…
I really feel for the position you're in. I've been in similar ones, but in smaller, more direct scopes (e.g. within a company) regarding technical issues other than UX.
This reminds me of "23 Minutes in Hell" which I've never read but was struck by the description of hell as 'annoying'. At first I thought that seemed lame, but then on further thought I realized at over eternity we could get used to many intense things. Annoying things no matter how annoying will always be annoying unless you can somehow psychologically reframe it.
Similarly, a girlfriend of mine used to always complain about a particular garage door which took forever to open. After hearing this many times and having shared her annoyance, I said that she should either do something about it or don't mention it as it will only linger in her mind amplifying it.
It's really unfortunate that these things are below the level where you're motivated to take action but elevated to the point of being intolerable. In hopes that you can get to the bottom of this, I'll just point out that you described this as 'an injustice that were happen to you' as where I would say that the injustice was inflicted on the public at large. I think it was something about you being hypersensitive to bad UX since you've come up with a plausible rational explanation of the situation but it doesn't lessen the experience. At least you don't also have an exceptional sense of smell. I'm always moving myself about in public transit to minimize my exposure to the wafting trails of former passengers.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#55Become an open source contributor. OSS has some of the worst UX in the world. Look at Inkscape. Look at the GIMP - probably the only piece of software in existence where the name is bad UX in itself. But because it’s open source, you can fix it. You won’t be able to fix all the bad UX in the world. But you could make a massive difference by applying yourself to just one project like this.
One problem with a lot of projects is that they have a poor developer experience for new contributors. For those who are already working on the project, these developer experience problems aren't impactful. So, by selection bias, the project leadership doesn't see them as a priority.
The people who do have the necessary perspective to see the impact of the problems are those whom they impede. These programmers don't yet have the project-knowledge to efficiently design a fix nor the relationships with the existing maintainers to persuade them that the fix is worth it. These people could produce a description of the nature of the problem. That takes effort and all it would be is...
Whining: Descriptions of problems by those who aren't taking steps to fix them.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#56Must be nice to live such a privileged life where you worry about trivial imperfections.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#57People would suggest two main solutions:
1) Avoid things with bad design.
2) Find a way to accept bad design, so it doesn't affect your emotions.
The real solution is to fix the world so it has less bad design. This is about both making people act more intelligently in the present, and ensuring that at the very least, people do not become stupider in the far future (and, hopefully, become at least a little smarter).
This solution involves significant changes to the entire world.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#58Good UX requires empathy. Your feelings are the understandable result of this, i.e. the lack thereof in products. In general, decision makers hardly care, even if they say they do. A good UX is expensive. Results are extremely difficult to quantize and good design is at best the promise to enhance the experience. Furthermore, the methods of the practically ubiquitous UCD are almost entirely focused on maximizing profits, not make good tools. If you want to learn or get insight how to make a difference with good tools (not products) take a look at activity theory-based interaction design.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#59People would suggest two main solutions: 1) Avoid things with bad design. 2) Find a way to accept bad design, so it doesn't affect your emotions. The real solution is to fix the world so it has less bad design. This is about both making people act more intelligently in the present, and ensuring that at the very least, people do not become stupider in the far future (and, hopefully, become at least a little smarter).…
> fix the world
I'd say "combat entropy", make it a more difficult and pernicious problem.
Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?
#60Shouldn't you adjust your expectations as the evidence comes in? If you think something should have been done differently, next time don't expect so much? By updating your priors as evidence comes in, your disappointment is reduced. I see incompetence everywhere, but I don't feel angry and depressed. One thing that I've found essential is to have a reservoir of people who are dependably competent. A few guys who can…
> I see incompetence everywhere, but I don't feel angry and depressed. Well, that's where you and I differ, I suppose. It upsets me that I'm often on the other end of this incompetence, and that I am powerless to change it. My only recourse is to endure it. It feels wrong, and it bothers me.
> It feels wrong, and it bothers me.
Nobody else is responsible for your feelings.
Nothing we experience is novel.
Many solutions to our inevitable suffering have been proposed and practiced for over two thousand years. Find one that fits. They're all pointing at the same things, but wear different clothes.