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Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

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Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#71

Post by vogt »

cgriswald wrote: post #63
vogt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a UX designer I have seen a lot of this stuff over the years and I always find it funny. DesignerNews.com, which is an imitation of this site, is chock full of articles like this. The big thing to understand is a lot of people in The Blogosphere(TM) who post articles about UX don't really give a rip about anything other than the pageviews whether it's for ad revenue, establishing themselves as a thought leader, or…

I literally know nothing about UX, but I have to say a visit to UXPin's website instantly turned me off. First, they put this great big demand for my email front and center when I barely even know what their site is (and a single line explaining it is not enough to get me to sign up). The entire website is covered over with "modal grey" with no X box or anything else showing me I can close it, just some links at the…

Yeah, the product isn't great. To the point about UX blogs though, theirs is pretty solid https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/. It isn't bogged down by social sharing widgets, scroll jacking, or pop ups (last I checked)

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#72

Post by tajen »

jorvi wrote: post #55
nailer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the angle you're facing is a mid blue triangle, and it's the same color of mid blue as the route. Additionally the mid blue for the route obscures the street name. Also 'Home' works on some GMaps but will take you to Home hardware, the Home Office etc in other versions. Basically Google Maps is a summary of Google itself: the best data and pretty damn poor UX.

Type `ho`, stop there, and it will suggest your home location (if you have it set). Continue typing and it will serve up results that have `home` somewhere in the name. Its typical Google, I can imagine an engineer going 'hmm, this way if they want to go to their actual home location, they can just tap on it, and if they continue typing, they can quickly find home depot!" not realizing this blatantly violates the Pri…

> Ho..., Home...

What astonishes me is how much GMaps doesn't learn. Every time I use the map to go to a place by car, my way back is back home. But it doesn't suggest it by default, and doesn't even get the hint when I type "home"...

To me, this is how IA will look. It knows you perfectly from a Bayesian perspective, but some product manager decided that the bayesian suggestion is the only place that won't be suggested to you...

Same for distance. There may be a restaurant called "The Place To Be" next to you, but it will ask for anything named "Place" within 1000km...

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#73

Post by kuschku »

Swizec wrote: post #5
coldpie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limit, though. I end up browsing most modern websites at ~60% zoom, because the text is so huge I find it distracting. Luckily the browser zoom feature is pretty great these days, so users can view at any size they like.

There's a limit, though. I end up browsing most modern websites at ~120% zoom when I'm tired, because it's more comfortable. Lay back in chair, still read comfortably. There's so much wasted whitespace it usually doesn't even break the layout. I'm 29 and my eyesight with glasses is ok. Been wearing 'em for 22 years. But really the worst offenders are gray text on lighter gray background websites. Whyyyy designers why…

> But really the worst offenders are gray text on lighter gray background websites. Whyyyy designers why?

Color calibration.

On a good monitor, 10 or 12bit depth, 1000 to 10000nits of contrast, which designers tend to have, black text on white background has such a high contrast that it creates actual pain, and migraine.

So they use dark grey on light grey instead, and then, for them, it looks exactly like newspaper text.

A customer on a cheap, garbage monitor – maybe just 6bit of colors, 50nits of contrast – on the other hand, can’t even reach the contrast of a newspaper if they’d go full black on white contrast.

The contrast between the darkest black and the brightest white on a cheap monitor is equivalent to the contrast ratio between 40% (approx #666666) and 60% grey (approx #aaaaaa) on a designer’s monitor.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#74

Post by kuschku »

leni536 wrote: post #21
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limit, though. I end up browsing most modern websites at ~120% zoom when I'm tired, because it's more comfortable. Lay back in chair, still read comfortably. There's so much wasted whitespace it usually doesn't even break the layout. I'm 29 and my eyesight with glasses is ok. Been wearing 'em for 22 years. But really the worst offenders are gray text on lighter gray background websites. Whyyyy designers why…

I would bet those designers never try to read the text on the site, they just adjust the contrast until it "looks good" with Lorem ipsum.

The problem is the contrast ratios. The contrast between 0% black and 100% white on a good screen is so high, it physically causes pain, even migraines. Which is why on HDR screens, the colors of CSS are actually limited to avoid ever going darker than grey or brighter than grey, and the contrast is still very large.

#000000 on a cheap screen is equivalent to #666666 on an HDR screen, #ffffff on a cheap screen is equivalent to #aaaaaa on an HDR screen.

So if a designer uses something that looks exactly like newspaper contrast to them, it’ll look unreadable on a cheap screen.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#75

Post by nailer »

ashark wrote: post #26
nailer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flat design, washed out colors I think these are positive for UX: compare the shotgun blast of color on OS X default icons to the simple, clear shapes of Windows 10's default icons.

Being able to tell things apart at a glance equals a "shotgun blast of color"? We're not talking about the Hotdog Stand theme, you know. The more methods you use to differentiate things from one another the easier it is to navigate an interface. Abandoning depth so completely was already stupid, mostly-white-on-blue-uniform-squares? You have color, use it! That shit was awesome when I was 19 and wanted to make my XFC…

Overuse of color was done because designers could do things like photographic icons, gloss, gradients etc rather than because it makes things more distinguishable for the user.

OS X in particular had multiple levels of shininess which made it hard to distinguish the actual shape of the objects - they learnt their mistake and are attempting to roll it back years after Microsoft popularised digital first design. The Linux DE's haven't even learnt that yet.

Windows mail uses an envelope symbol. It's far more obviously mail than a picture of an eagle flying in the sky with a white scalloped, stamp-like border. Do people even use stamps anymore?

Compare with the OS X-style "Cars: fast as lightning" which I guess is a car but is so detailed I can't really tell.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#76

Post by s_kilk »

ralusek wrote: post #66
s_kilk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whyyyy designers why? Because A E S T H E T I C I've yet to see any designer articulate a reasonable defense of this shit.

Wait, aesthetic is not a valid reason for a designer to do something?

Not if it results in piss-poor UX

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#77

Post by ashark »

nailer wrote: post #75
ashark wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to tell things apart at a glance equals a "shotgun blast of color"? We're not talking about the Hotdog Stand theme, you know. The more methods you use to differentiate things from one another the easier it is to navigate an interface. Abandoning depth so completely was already stupid, mostly-white-on-blue-uniform-squares? You have color, use it! That shit was awesome when I was 19 and wanted to make my XFC…

Overuse of color was done because designers could do things like photographic icons, gloss, gradients etc rather than because it makes things more distinguishable for the user. OS X in particular had multiple levels of shininess which made it hard to distinguish the actual shape of the objects - they learnt their mistake and are attempting to roll it back years after Microsoft popularised digital first design. The Li…

I won't defend the stamp thing's discoverability (though it's not that bad—and besides, if you know what an envelope is you probably know what a stamp is, and if you don't then it's because you're somehow encountering envelopes exclusively in non-mail contexts so how is that going to be associated with mail for you? Anyway...) but I don't think it matters how appropriate an icon they use if half of them are same-proportioned, white, and sitting in identical blue squares that are mostly wasted ("negative") space, compared with MacOS icons that are larger in proportion to the space they're granted and use color so you can tell what they are without having to look directly at them.

Looking back at Leopard screenshots (I assume that's part of the era with the supposed excessive-shininess?) those icons were slightly worse because smaller (probably configurable though? I don't remember) but their shape seems to be a bit more apparent and distinctive (most of mine on Sierra are squares or circles) so I'd call it a wash, usability-wise. Maybe slightly favoring the new ones because color is easier to distinguish in peripheral vision than shape. I'm not seeing a practical problem with the use of depth, aside from "depth is bad now, because reasons".

Microsoft's Win10 design is like the kind of thing developers come up with when they manage to banish designers from a project—not saying that's what happened, and I doubt it is, but it really looks like it (I can't get over that drop-down box, god, it's like I tried to style it). It's incredibly bad. It reminds me of really old "how to make your web forms pretty" tutorials from the pre-CSS days. I seriously thought I was in some kind of safe-mode when I started it up the first time.

[EDIT] actually, rather than pre-CSS, let's specifically go with "when people used the term DHTML". STRONGLY reminiscent of that time period—but not of finished websites, of web design tutorials from that time period.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#78

Post by nailer »

ashark wrote: post #77
nailer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overuse of color was done because designers could do things like photographic icons, gloss, gradients etc rather than because it makes things more distinguishable for the user. OS X in particular had multiple levels of shininess which made it hard to distinguish the actual shape of the objects - they learnt their mistake and are attempting to roll it back years after Microsoft popularised digital first design. The Li…

I won't defend the stamp thing's discoverability (though it's not that bad—and besides, if you know what an envelope is you probably know what a stamp is, and if you don't then it's because you're somehow encountering envelopes exclusively in non-mail contexts so how is that going to be associated with mail for you? Anyway...) but I don't think it matters how appropriate an icon they use if half of them are same-prop…

> besides, if you know what an envelope is you probably know what a stamp

An envelope is an arbitrary thing that means email. Much like a floppy disk is an arbitrary thing that means save. The postal system and floppy drives are about as relevant as each other.

I prefer the taskbar icon look - ie, raw shape - than the colored background look too. But the raw shapes certainly are far more better than the distracting, detailed pictures which serve only their designers.

The Win10 design is what happens when designers consider users over themselves. I think you're favouring OS X simply because you're familiar with it. But it's clear that Android since 4, OS X since 10.10 are all following the same direction that Microsoft popularised way back in the Zune era.

If you got 1000 people who'd never used a computer before, and asked them to find 'mail' between the 'envelope' and the 'picture of the eagle with the scalloped background' were mail it's predictable what the outcome would be.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#79

Post by Androider »

noir_lord wrote: post #11
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limit, though. I end up browsing most modern websites at ~120% zoom when I'm tired, because it's more comfortable. Lay back in chair, still read comfortably. There's so much wasted whitespace it usually doesn't even break the layout. I'm 29 and my eyesight with glasses is ok. Been wearing 'em for 22 years. But really the worst offenders are gray text on lighter gray background websites. Whyyyy designers why…

Since the browsers remember zoom level I just set it to be comfortable for whatever it is and forget all about it, I had to check what I have HN set to on my desktop and it's 190%. It's not that I can't read it at 100 it's just tiring and I have mild astigmatism so I get eye strain.

The HN default of tiny text is headache inducing. I have pretty good vision, but HN is one of the few sites where I have to crank it up to 150% zoom minimum.

https://blog.attackthefront.io/your-body-text-is-too-small-5... makes a pretty compelling argument that 18px is the new minimum, and I think I'll be following this advice on any of my future sites.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#80

Post by ashark »

nailer wrote: post #78
ashark wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't defend the stamp thing's discoverability (though it's not that bad—and besides, if you know what an envelope is you probably know what a stamp is, and if you don't then it's because you're somehow encountering envelopes exclusively in non-mail contexts so how is that going to be associated with mail for you? Anyway...) but I don't think it matters how appropriate an icon they use if half of them are same-prop…

> besides, if you know what an envelope is you probably know what a stamp An envelope is an arbitrary thing that means email. Much like a floppy disk is an arbitrary thing that means save. The postal system and floppy drives are about as relevant as each other. I prefer the taskbar icon look - ie, raw shape - than the colored background look too. But the raw shapes certainly are far more better than the distracting,…

You... really think icons are more user-friendly if you take away color differentiation? I find that entirely confusing. It's the result of a "make this interface look like something out of a Mission Impossible movie, we want those screenshots to look slick!" directive, not a user-friendliness effort.

[EDIT] As for familiarity, I started on DOS, was a Windows user from 3.1 through 10 (finally ditched 10 a couple weeks ago because it pissed me off one too many times) including NT3.5 and 4, plus 2K, and mixed in a ton of Linux plus a fair amount of BeOS and a touch of QNX starting around the Win98 era. I've used KDE since IIRC late version 1 or early 2, Gnome since before it was bad, and spent lots of time in both Windowmaker and XFCE for good measure. I've used CDE on Solaris in anger. I only jumped on Apple devices ~5-6 years ago for work. With all that context, I feel confident asserting that the Win10 interface looks like the punchline to a joke that I just don't get—it's got nothing to do with exclusive familiarity with Apple.

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