Good. I always felt weird for not knowing any of the advanced gestures. I also didn't know that shaking == undo.
I've been using iPhones since 2009.
How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
131–140 of 149 posts
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incorrect. I have a 5-year old here, and they do have trouble figuring things out. What they learn are simple patterns the bring success. There are some things that are simple. Press the home button to go back to the screen with the boxes. Press a box to open the thing that plays kids singing! Yay. But then none of what they are dealing with, for the most part, is made by Apple. They are using apps built by others, a…
Can you elaborate on the windowing issue? I don't have a mac anymore, and always disliked the menu at the top of the screen UX (which is the same as my Ubuntu). I'm not sure what the windowing issue you're referring to is. Also, how is OS X moving away from UNIX? Or is it that major companies are moving away from UNIX? I'm not sure I've seen evidence of either of these.
First, apologies on the confusion on Unix. That was my fault.
> is supported by major companies, but even that is going away, so there is less incentive.
I meant that companies supporting OS X, not Unix. The two reasons were:
1) Unix 2) OS X support
The second point is what I meant was going away. I see companies that matter to me supporting OS X less and less. The latest company to do so is Blizzard. Again, apologies for the confusion.
As for the windowing issue, I have to download a third party app to handle most of the stuff I get for free on every other major and many non-major windowing systems from a decade ago. This includes snapping and auto sizing and moving windows among monitors.
Couple this with OS X's horrible support for external monitors on it's laptops. Several times a week I have issues when I disconnect my mac. Either my sees a phantom monitor that is not there and so windows still exist there that I can't reach or bring over. I have to close the lid and open it up again.
The full screen support is still an absolute insult. And the when they changed what the stop light did and made it maximize is annoying.
The only reason people started using their computers again was because of Unix.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#133"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people do…
A good article with data from facebook and others on the value of discovery over cleanliness: http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ It contradicts current trends and the preferences of many designers.
The issue is really a catch-22 usability testing rather than saying 1 way works better than another. On mobile app's you have more screen real-estate to play with, while in the browser you have less. A website with a header anf floating footer cause many site's to become un-readable and un-navagatable. You then have the issue of responsive design that allows for the bun to come into play nicely rather than having to change a site's design to fit within multiple viewport sizes. I get the argument in a mobile application, but in a browser-based site you are left with either mystery meat, leaving out part of the navigation, or changing a responsive design completely to allow for easier mobile navigation. Options are limited and purely based upon time and budget - and even then it's a geusing game without proper split testing.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#134I'm surprised at how many people are agreeing with this article.
I need a new phone soon, and all of my family members have iPhones, which is nice for group chat (maybe photo sharing too). I worry about getting an iPhone because I feel like Apple is going nowhere these days. If your biggest innovation is "make it bigger", "make it smaller" (macbook air, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch), we've got some things to work on. I felt like everyone struggled with Yosemite, too.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#135It's sad to see Norman and Tognazinni-- men whose books I've read-- giving themselves a bad name. The bashing Apple bandwagon has been going on for 35 years now, and while being able to put up a headline like that guarantees publication, the quality of the articles below them has not improved. Clearly this is an article written by guys who have not been regularly using other products to see the competition- the lack…
Maybe it's just that I never got on the iphone bandwagon, but I've never found anything about the Android UI confusing or frustrating, other than the inherent frustration that comes with the limitations of a tiny touchscreen-based interface. What exactly do you have in mind?
I agree, I find that overall the android user experience is enjoyable and polished, not that you can't find anything important to criticize, but way above average for sure.
On the other hand, I also know a lot of people having a mediocre feeling with it.
This is an interesting perception gap to investigate.
And I would suggest that a big reason of that is that there much more Samsung customers than Nexus owners.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common refrain, but is it possible that adults have learned valid paradigms that make using the iPhone as it is today, more difficult? If you want to design for 5-year-olds and have them retain that forever, I guess it can work, but maybe it's a design failure if the people who actually buy your product have a harder time using it. To use another analogy, it's somewhat like saying "Well, people literate in…
I think a 5 year old with no preconceived notions of a user interface is probably the best validation of whether a device is "usable." Also my 93 year old grandmother took to her iPhone almost instantaneously. As did my technically challenged parents, all of their friends and pretty much any of the hundreds of people who I have ever seen pick up an iPhone. I have actually never even heard of a single person picking u…
> I think a 5 year old with no preconceived notions of a user interface is probably the best validation of whether a device is "usable."
But Western 5-year-olds have already had 5 years to watch their parents use contemporary technology. I'm not sure there's such thing as a "blank slate" here. And I doubt the average 5-year-old from a rural town in a third-world country is going to pick up an iPhone as easily as an American one. You're picking like 1% of the world population and making them the benchmark for universal design. I suppose the ultimate end to this line of reasoning is that there is no such thing as perfectly universal design, and I'm OK with that.
> I have actually never even heard of a single person picking up and iPhone and saying "I can't figure this out - it's unusable!" until your post.
When did I say that? You might have me confused with the GP poster.
> Perhaps you feel Apple should have designed a beautiful rotary phone?
Why not? Many 5-year-olds probably could use rotary phones just fine back in the day. Maybe Apple doesn't actually have a monopoly on making it possible for 5-year-olds to use technology.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#137What Apple has been focusing on in later releases is not design, but fashion - form without function.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is the novice-expert transition in Apple devices is nonexistant. To become an expert you basically have to read a manual, or do things that a) have no affordance, b) have no clear feedforward, c) have an unknown effect and may be destructive, with no clear undo. It's very poor design.
> read a manual Quelle horror!
Heh, I should qualify that to become an expert some manual-reading is required. But the interface should at least help you with the transition.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#139I have tried to use a Mac on several occasions but I see so much to adapt to. The apps still crash, some applications still feel slow, gestures/click pattern using 1-2-3-4 fingers, window system is not really obvious. It can obviously be learned but I find linux to be more much obvious and user friendly than Mac specially GNOME which is my current favorite. In any case windows has come a long way from windows xp to w…
I can't speak for Windows, but Linux is miles behind OS X in terms of usability in my opinion. The trackpad gestures are fantastic and very intuitive for me to the point where I hate using a crippled trackpad on linux. I can see the appeal of Gnome, which is very simple and intuitive to use. But modern gnome is adopting more and more features of the OS X window management system, like ctrl-tab switching applications…
Hmm I guess you are right on when you say "its different from what I'm used to" . Also I am more of a keyboard guy so I have limited trackpad usage, keeping it limited to just scroll and click works for me. Anyways the default way to switch applications is Super + Tab, in mac super key is command key whereas in windows laptops its the windows key.
Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name
#140"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people do…
A good article with data from facebook and others on the value of discovery over cleanliness: http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ It contradicts current trends and the preferences of many designers.
I think that guy is seriously wrong, not every hidden part of a user interface is evil. The hamburger menu tells the user that he will find the first-level navigation if he taps it.
It is about as bad as a right-click context menu on the desktop.