Wow, this site is horrible to read on a desktop...
Perfectly Cropped
151–160 of 571 posts
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite unintuitive iOS feature is “shake to undo”
I was out with a group of friends last night and had an interesting conversation when no one else realized you can search iMessages. From the main Messages window, swipe down and previously hidden search bar appears. There's no indication this is an option or it exists. As far as I know it's been there since at least iOS 9.0 (probably longer) and 6 people hadn't found it yet.
This is a common iOS design pattern now. I'm sure there are lots of search bars you are missing.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#153I need to use a MacBook Pro for work. Discovering that there is an option to make scrollbars always visible when there is scrolling to be done was, by a significant margin, the best QOL improvement I have discovered. This happens to me so often it's ridiculous. Maybe because I'm just used to seeing a scrollbar if there is a Y-overflow, and people that grew up with this system know to -- I guess just like try scrollin…
> people that grew up with this system know to -- I guess just like try scrolling every interface and see if it scrolls or something? I dunno.
Yes, it seems like the younger generation is conditioned to a different form of UI "discoverability" than those of us who learned computing in the desktop era. I look for visual indicators, even on touch user interfaces, so I am always missing functionality that is hidden behind a non-visual interaction. "Pull down to refresh" is something I would have probably never found in many applications if it had not been pointed out to me. iOS is especially notorious for hiding features behind odd/innovative UI behaviors such as press-extra-hard or shake.
I almost feel as if "just show me visual indicators of all functionality because I am old-fashioned" needs to be a new accessibility concept or setting.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#154I need to use a MacBook Pro for work. Discovering that there is an option to make scrollbars always visible when there is scrolling to be done was, by a significant margin, the best QOL improvement I have discovered. This happens to me so often it's ridiculous. Maybe because I'm just used to seeing a scrollbar if there is a Y-overflow, and people that grew up with this system know to -- I guess just like try scrollin…
On Windows 10 this setting is in
Settings > Ease of Access > Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows > Off
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
We, as an industry, used to do a lot of UX research. Today's designers ignore all of it because they don't like what it says. Spacial file managers? Global menu bars? 3D buttons? Ew. Let's just make shit up.
Today's designers, just like kids these days. In reality, most design work these days is shifting to research and usability testing. Any designer who doesn't consider these things is just not a great designer and has much to learn.
Nearest I can figure, all the tuning is based on "engagement", which is a metric of how long a user spends on a thing. That's a useful metric to tune for if you only care about shoving ads at people, but is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you want if you're trying to help people get shit done.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#156"But I see them impact my aging parents all the time."
I've realized lately that I'm actually entering this zone. For the last 20 years I've been talking about how stuff like this is a nightmare for the "aging" community.
20 years is a long time, and now I'm falling into it.
The big one for me in this new version of iOS was that:
1) I couldn't figure out how to move my cursor around. It used to be perfect. I held my finger down, it let me move the cursor around in a word. Now you have to swipe the cursor to "grab" it and move it around under your finger. It feels like change for the sake of change when it worked perfectly before.
2) And I can't do a "select all" anymore. I don't even know where that option is and I used it all the time. Something tells me I have to swipe somewhere now.
We all become the "aging" population no matter how much we think we know tech, design, etc.
I think my biggest problem with all of this is that things worked. I liked that things worked, and I liked that I knew how to use things. I cannot figure out why things have to change. Or at least, put an option in settings to change back/forth from previous functionality. When I wake up one morning with nothing to worry about except work, and find out I now have to relearn how to use the same phone that has been in my pocket for 2 years.... this is irritating.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#157My non techie friend experienced the same thing, upgraded to iOS 13, went to see him and he started cursing about "how the f do I save a photo from my messages why the f does Apple got to remove something like that WTF!!!!" I immediately thought no way they would remove that he must be mistaken, I just upgraded too and hand't tried to do that action. Looked at his phone and sure enough it was gone, tried all sorts of…
Tip: long press the image you want to save, tap Save.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the USA is different but here in Japan the odds of seeing an iPhone without either a case or a ring are probably 1 in 1000. Problem solved. Further, there rows and rows and rows and rows of cases for sale. I'm not saying the phone shouldn't sit flat (though I personally don't care). But just in looking around most people seem to want to customize their phone by adding a case so at least in Japan it's a non-issu…
But why do I spend so much money to get a thin phone and then spend even more to make it thicker?
I used my iPhone X un-cased for nearly two years based on that reasoning. My replacement is cased.
And I've realized: regardless of how thick the phone is, people are likely to drop them, and give the materials nature of these things, a case is going to be required. So I'd rather start with something as thin as possible, given that I'm going to add a case either way. The end result is therefore as thin as possible.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#159I need to use a MacBook Pro for work. Discovering that there is an option to make scrollbars always visible when there is scrolling to be done was, by a significant margin, the best QOL improvement I have discovered. This happens to me so often it's ridiculous. Maybe because I'm just used to seeing a scrollbar if there is a Y-overflow, and people that grew up with this system know to -- I guess just like try scrollin…
Peak OSX / MacOS was Snow Leopard. From next version they hid scrollbars, swapped default scroll direction and started a steady move to make it seem everything should be hidden like iOS.
Re: Perfectly Cropped
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, speaking of Bob, one thing I've been meaning to experiment with is a Minecraft-based desktop UI. I'm completely serious. Minecraft is relatively intuitive, the space is completely malleable, human minds are already tuned to navigating such spaces... There's even some precedent in Bob and PSDoom, among others.
A couple months ago, after 5-6 years of not playing it, I installed Minecraft again fiddled around for a week or so. It took me a good day or two to get a solid grasp on all the UI changes that had happened since I stopped playing. I had to get on Google just to figure out how to eat . I agree that it's relatively intuitive. Emphasis on the "relatively" part - I'm thinking here that it's intuitive compared to the UX…
I'm specifically talking about moving around and building things in the space, not so much the specific "game ui" elements.