151–160 of 451 posts
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If I unplug my internet connection, my box won't let me do much at all. If I press pause or fast forward it just tells me the operation isn't authorized.
That's a weird system, certainly not the standard way of doing things on a traditional cable TV system.
There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…
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The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…
Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
I see no reason that supporting this thing that old mapping software used to support would elevate it "above" other use cases. If you just want a single route, you do one search and you see the result and you never click the "add" button, no problem.
I should dig out an old Delorme Street Atlas CDROM and install it in a VM, to get some sense of how many clicks it took to do the things I used to do. I don't think it was many. It was definitely pickier about address entry; that's one place Google has absolutely improved. But aside from that, it was way more powerful at pretty much everything else.
There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…
The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…
Bret Victor has a great essay on building information software called “Magic Ink” [1]:
> Information software, by contrast, mimics the experience of reading, not working. It is used for achieving an understanding—constructing a model within the mind. Thus, the user must listen to the software and think about what it says… but any manipulation happens mentally. Except possibly for signaling a decision, such as clicking a “buy” button, but that concludes, not constitutes, a session. The only reason to complete the full interaction cycle and speak is to explicitly provide some context that the software can’t otherwise infer—that is, to indicate a relevant subset of information. For information software, all interaction is essentially navigation around a data space.
Of course, guessing poorly is a problem, but that’s an issue with execution.
[1] http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#interactivity_considered_har...
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Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
How would not erasing information when you move the map compromise the current use case, though?
give it a go.
if I open up maps, type in the location i want to go to, click 'directions' and add my starting location i click and drag all over and move the map around, zoom in and out to look at the route and my info does not disappear. I click add a destination if i want to add a destination. if i want distance from the center of town, I change the starting location of my directions to the center of town.
For the people who face issues with google maps, can they please describe to me what you are trying to accomplish and the steps you take that results in the info on screen disappearing? I'm genuinely curious on what I might be doing differently to have such a seamless experience vs the awful experience described.
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Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
I hadn't even thought of this specifically, but after it was mentioned in the initial post I realized just how much that is my use case most of the time and how often I am fighting with google maps to accomplish what are relatively simple tasks like adding an additional point along a route. If you are trying to add multiple additional points on a route it gets even worse. This is all much worse on the Android app as…
That seems pretty decent UX wise?
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I feel like a large part of the unintuitiveness of keyboard interfaces is not actually an intrinsic quality of keyboard interfaces since they're so often conflated with command-line or TUI interfaces. There might be an alternative but yet undiscovered paradigm which combines the best of both worlds: keyboard control and intuitive, beautiful, graphical widgets. To motivate this with a somewhat blunt example, what if w…
>To motivate this with a somewhat blunt example, what if we had a typical GUI but named each control (button, field, etc) with a short code (1-2 letters), in the style of Vimperator/Tridactyl/Vimium? Excel basically does this. If you hold down alt it hovers the companion hotkey above each function on the ribbon. It is very handy for learning your way around. I think this is actually the big challenge with keyboard in…
But I'd like to argue that a mouse also takes a bit of time to grok when you first encounter it. A simple interface like "each thing on the screen has a two-letter code; type the code to select it" doesn't sound intrinsically harder to explain to me than teaching someone how to use a mouse the first time. Especially when you consider that there's often a lot of subtlety in when to use the right or the left button. I find this is something that often trips up people that are encountering a mouse for the first time.