The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over • Hacker News Board

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#21

Post by yakult » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

>>It's also not clear that the model of background apps requesting the user's attention works. How many iPhones have you seen with a red circle containing "23" on the home screen, indicating that 23 apps need updating...and it's been there for months?

I would argue this is working as intended. The advantage of background notification rather than modal is that the user gets a choice. The user could very well decide that your EXTRA SUPER URGENT notification is, in fact, unimportant, and this right here is a perfect example.

No, I don't care if your bullshit app that I've opened a grand total of twice needs a 200 MB update. If anything, there should be an option to force old notification circles to go away after two weeks or so except for legitimately important apps like email and messaging.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#22

Post by prawn » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:48 AM UTC

yakult wrote: post #21

>>It's also not clear that the model of background apps requesting the user's attention works. How many iPhones have you seen with a red circle containing "23" on the home screen, indicating that 23 apps need updating...and it's been there for months? I would argue this is working as intended. The advantage of background notification rather than modal is that the user gets a choice. The user could very well decide th…

Agree. I avoid updating apps that are working satisfactorily because many later add ads or other annoying functions.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#23

Post by srinivedantam » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:49 AM UTC

I'd say bootstrap and the likes are killing the need for a fresh look at design by offering templates. For me the savior has been Basecamp's design. Always made sense and looked great.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#24

Post by rpeden » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:53 AM UTC

musha68k wrote: post #8

collinglass wrote: post #3

was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs

Check out "About Face" by Alan Cooper et al. A well respected interaction designer was so kind to give me her 1st edition many years ago and I still find myself coming back to it regularly. New and updated 4th edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781118766...

I'll second this recommendation. I picked up the 4th edition a few months ago.

It's a great book, but also a very long read. As a developer who is interested in developing usable apps, but not in being a full-time UX designer, I've found that I've been able to pick and choose the bits of the book that are relevant to the tasks I'm working on. It helps if you've read the introductory bits, but later on it has sections about web, desktop, mobile, etc. that are useful on their own. It's almost like having several books in one.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#25

Post by jtolmar » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 2:58 AM UTC

Looking back through time for all the horrible UI sins cataloged in the opening paragraph, I'm pretty sure all of those were much more common in the past than they are now. Somehow, we actually have made those pieces of progress.

Except for cryptic icons, those seem on the rise again.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#26

Post by orf » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 3:33 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #14

mmatants wrote: post #7

If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD. Let's apply this met…

Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century. A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."

Lets say conservatively that 70% of Americans open at least one package a year, equalling 223,230,000 packages opened. 6,500 injuries is 0.0029%. Not bad I think.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#27

Post by columbo » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 3:34 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #14

mmatants wrote: post #7

If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD. Let's apply this met…

Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century. A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."

another example would be petrol/gas station pumps: http://www.olivierlorrain.com/2009/06/20/bad-design-gas-pump...

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#28

Post by x1798DE » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 3:35 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #14

mmatants wrote: post #7

If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD. Let's apply this met…

Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century. A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."

I don't think that's a good example. Packaging is deliberately designed to be hard to open as a theft deterrent mechanism.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#29

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 3:43 AM UTC

teyc wrote: post #18

Does anyone have enough experience with Tk and REBOL why these should be exemplar as far as UI and layout is concerned?

I implemented a gui for SimCity in Tk, and at the time (~1993) it was the best user interface toolkit for X11 available, but only because the competition was Motif and its ilk. The reason it was relatively good in that context is that it had a built-in scripting language: TCL. (So did WINTERP, but that was XLisp + Motif, so Motif made it suck a hell of a lot more than XLisp made it win.)

As a scripting language, TCL is terribly designed (but beautifully implemented). But all that mattered at the time was that there was a scripting language that was present at the time the GUI tooklit, Tk, was designed (so they did not overlap and squabble about what they were trying to do) -- not that the scripting language itself was any good. (Personally, I'd MUCH rather be programming GUIs in PostScript than TCL, which is what I did before, for the previous port of SimCity to NeWS.)

The fact that TCL was an integral part of the design of Tk from day 1 made it possible to use the scripting language for what it was good for, instead of Tk trying to do that in a half-assed non-turing-complete way: to glue everything together and do all the dynamic symbolic stuff, binding events to handlers, creating objects, naming them, plugging them together. All with wonderfully flexible simplicity and generality. Instead of trying to wrap the X Toolkit Intrinsic's and Motif's lame overlapping and incoherent attempts at object oriented programming, configuration, skinning and event handling in C and .XDefaults files.

Here's a typical TCL file that creates an instance of a SimCity editor window (it's more complex than a typical less dynamic TCL gui, since it's capable of creating any number of independent editor window instances, which is why it uses a $win prefix for everything it creates):

https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/blob/master/micropol...

No matter how much you love Lisp, WINTERP was still just using it to wrap Motif, even though Motif was suffering from a terminal case of Greenspun's tenth rule, and contained its own ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

Here's WINTERP:

http://nielsmayer.com/winterp/

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#30

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Jan 02, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

The review of the QuickTime 4.0 player [1] at the User Interface Hall of Shame [2] should be required reading for user interface designers. Apple can't even follow their own guidelines, and keeps making the same mistakes (and worse), even today.

[1] http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm

[2] http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/index.php?mode=original