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How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

fastcompany.com

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Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#11

Post by rangibaby »

duncanawoods wrote: post #4

Its a good article. Force touch is a good example of this. Adding a new action without any signifier for its availability or its purpose when we already have a baffling mix of durations and gestures. Madness. An innovation by a platform would be to invent a new way to aid discovery / learnability of a UI not just add a new input. For example gestures - there should be a system standard way to be told about the availa…

Steve Jobs was against hiding features in modes, which is why the iOS lacked any kind of context menu until version 3, and Apple mice lacked right click for a long time.

Speaking of Apple's mice, they are some of the worst offenders in "looks good but don't try using it". There's the infamous hockey puck, and currently the Magic Mouse.

I use one when I'm desperate, but usually give up when it magically gives me hand cramps due to it's shape. A bar of soap is more ergonomic, and slides around better too.

This article isn't served well by it's sensational tone. If children can pick up something up and use it without training, then it's already doing a better job than a mouse, or even a keyboard, which you basically have to be literate to use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Practice

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#12

Post by duncanawoods »

MereInterest wrote: post #9
duncanawoods wrote: post #4

Its a good article. Force touch is a good example of this. Adding a new action without any signifier for its availability or its purpose when we already have a baffling mix of durations and gestures. Madness. An innovation by a platform would be to invent a new way to aid discovery / learnability of a UI not just add a new input. For example gestures - there should be a system standard way to be told about the availa…

I would say that even a tutorial mode doesn't get back all the usability, because you need to explicitly look for the tutorial. In a desktop GUI, you have buttons, and they are obviously buttons. You can figure out what they do by clicking on them. You can usually find the keyboard shortcut by hovering over the button. Even with a tutorial, there is no smooth transition in a touch interface. Nothing to indicate that…

Yeah, I miss hover mode on touch devices.

Ironically, I see hover as the computer equivalent of touching a physical object to help work out how something might work without initiating any operation. With current touch devices, we only have "do" we don't have "feel".

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#13

Post by cja »

Moved from Windows to OSX a couple of years ago after hearing for so long how much better the Mac experience and usability was.

Some examples of why this was wrong:

1. Cmd-Tab lets me select a hidden window but it won't show it!

2. Many frequently used click targets are too small. For example, the close, minimise and maximise buttons.

3. The close minimise and maximise buttons reveal their functions only when the mouse is over them.

4. There's no reliable way to maximise a window.

5. Despite really trying to go keyboard-only, it's very difficult to avoid using the mouse.

6. The file browser doesn't show the aggregate size of selected files.

7. Cmd+Down to open the selected file! Why not Enter?!

8. I still have no idea which button Enter will press on a dialog box. There seems no way to make this clearer or to activate something like Alt+underlined_letter_of_desired_button_caption.

9. There's no Cut operation, only Copy and Paste.

My MacBook Pro is awesome hardware but Windows is way ahead of OSX.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#14

Post by cloudwalking »

duncanawoods wrote: post #4

Its a good article. Force touch is a good example of this. Adding a new action without any signifier for its availability or its purpose when we already have a baffling mix of durations and gestures. Madness. An innovation by a platform would be to invent a new way to aid discovery / learnability of a UI not just add a new input. For example gestures - there should be a system standard way to be told about the availa…

I don't disagree with you that 3D Touch is rather undiscoverable. However, Apple have provided guidance that 3D Touch should only be used as a "preview" of an action -- never to reveal new behavior unavailable in other places. We all think of it as right click, but Apple's guidance is very much against the notion.

It's possible -- unlikely, I think, but possible -- that 3D Touch will alleviate some of the concerns in this article. 3D Touch should ideally provide a preview of an action -- quite useful in a world without undo.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#15

Post by izacus »

rangibaby wrote: post #11
duncanawoods wrote: post #4

Its a good article. Force touch is a good example of this. Adding a new action without any signifier for its availability or its purpose when we already have a baffling mix of durations and gestures. Madness. An innovation by a platform would be to invent a new way to aid discovery / learnability of a UI not just add a new input. For example gestures - there should be a system standard way to be told about the availa…

Steve Jobs was against hiding features in modes, which is why the iOS lacked any kind of context menu until version 3, and Apple mice lacked right click for a long time. Speaking of Apple's mice, they are some of the worst offenders in "looks good but don't try using it". There's the infamous hockey puck, and currently the Magic Mouse. I use one when I'm desperate, but usually give up when it magically gives me hand…

I thought I was the only one that gets wrist pains after using the Magic Mouse. There's something really wrong with how that piece of hardware is designed it seems :/

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#16

Post by joosters »

duncanawoods wrote: post #4

Its a good article. Force touch is a good example of this. Adding a new action without any signifier for its availability or its purpose when we already have a baffling mix of durations and gestures. Madness. An innovation by a platform would be to invent a new way to aid discovery / learnability of a UI not just add a new input. For example gestures - there should be a system standard way to be told about the availa…

Force Touch is an oddity; at least for now, any FT actions can only be shortcuts that are reachable in other ways too, since most iOS devices lack force touch. IMO it's fine for shortcuts to be non-obvious (think of all the keyboard shortcuts in any decent desktop app)

The problems will emerge if/when developers rely upon force touch for primary actions.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#17

Post by jbrooksuk »

cja wrote: post #13

Moved from Windows to OSX a couple of years ago after hearing for so long how much better the Mac experience and usability was. Some examples of why this was wrong: 1. Cmd-Tab lets me select a hidden window but it won't show it! 2. Many frequently used click targets are too small. For example, the close, minimise and maximise buttons. 3. The close minimise and maximise buttons reveal their functions only when the mou…

Cut can be done with CMD+C and then I think it's CMD+Alt+V for paste and remove original.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#18

Post by on_and_off »

bko wrote: post #2

I think Android has surpassed iOS in terms of design and usability. I upgraded to a Android 5.0 recently (lightly modded by One Plus), and the design is really stunning. The icons have been redesigned to appear as though they they are made of actual flat material adding almost a hybrid 3d flat design that looks great. The colors are vibrant without being overwhelming. Messenger and Contacts applies a new color to you…

I also think that Google has found a sweet spot.

The implementation is far from perfect, but the use of z-position + color creates a really good UX IMO.

They took pretty much the only thing they got right design wise (a sense of depth applied to buttons & popups) with the first versions of the OS and used it very well.

There are still some things that need improvement though :

- Consistency. The platform is slowly becoming more consistent but there is still a way to go. We now have a design library. It is a great step in the right direction but it needs to evolve a lot. Particularly, Google apps should always use the same implementation of a widget (whether it comes from the public design lib or a private one). With the nav drawer, at first there was no common implementation in the support/design lib, so each team implemented one with small differences, for 6 months it was very maddening.

- Navigation patterns. Google encourages the use of tabs for 0-depth apps with a few options. Good, that's indeed a strong pattern. For more complex apps though, the only solution pushed by the system is the Navigation Drawer. I have got to admit that Google uses it well with all the important features accessible from the first screen and only the secondary use cases hidden in the drawer. Third party apps generally get that entirely wrong. That's not always a good pattern though and I would really like to have an alternative for complex apps pushed by the platform. (yes in most cases the response is to simplify the app, but that's not always possible.

-System navigation. the back versus up paradigm is almost always badly implemented so it might be time to just abandon it. The home + drawer idea is confusing for lambda users.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#19

Post by look_lookatme »

jonhohle wrote: post #6
bko wrote: post #2

I think Android has surpassed iOS in terms of design and usability. I upgraded to a Android 5.0 recently (lightly modded by One Plus), and the design is really stunning. The icons have been redesigned to appear as though they they are made of actual flat material adding almost a hybrid 3d flat design that looks great. The colors are vibrant without being overwhelming. Messenger and Contacts applies a new color to you…

> The production of beautiful objects is only one > small component of modern design… As the authors say, and as Steve Jobs and Jony Ive have reiterated in almost every Apple product launch, how something looks is only a small part of the design Apple focuses on. Historically, the priority is how things _work_. This is probably the most misunderstood aspect of Apple products. A screenshot of software XYZ may look jus…

What has OP misunderstood? That he or she _should_ prefer iOS over Android because of a demagogoic quote? It's unclear what your point is here.

That said, the other day I was using Google Maps for iOS and could not figure out how to switch directions from public transit to car. It seriously took me a few minutes of playing to realize how to do it. I feel like people implementing Material do it in a kind of perfunctory way and that can be lossy usability wise. On the other hand the Google Maps have a history of myopically introducing big UX changes that make the product worse, so why would I expect anything more from the team when implementing Material on iOS?

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#20

Post by collyw »

duncanawoods wrote: post #12
MereInterest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that even a tutorial mode doesn't get back all the usability, because you need to explicitly look for the tutorial. In a desktop GUI, you have buttons, and they are obviously buttons. You can figure out what they do by clicking on them. You can usually find the keyboard shortcut by hovering over the button. Even with a tutorial, there is no smooth transition in a touch interface. Nothing to indicate that…

Yeah, I miss hover mode on touch devices. Ironically, I see hover as the computer equivalent of touching a physical object to help work out how something might work without initiating any operation. With current touch devices, we only have "do" we don't have "feel".

If you could detect the difference between your index finger and middle finger, that would be a fairly cool right buttton emulation. Would that even be possible?
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