Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

jnd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 509 posts

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#151

Post by catalogia »

ajmurmann wrote: post #88
vardump wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so confused and panicked once I accidentally overwrote some text from an important note on an iPhone. For a few minutes I desperately searched for any menus, long presses, weird nearly hidden menus, finger gestures etc. but couldn't discover anything . Apparently there was no way to undo! After some googling I found out you have to shake the phone a few times. Seriously? I think there must be a lot of people wh…

I once shook my phone because I was annoyed by autocorrect repeatedly messing up. The shaking undid more than half the text I had written. I couldn't find a way to redo.

Just shake it backwards of course.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#152

Post by [deleted] »

drusepth wrote: post #76
heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

Your opinion here is completely valid and probably pretty widespread, but I feel almost entirely the opposite. Every time I get one of those "what's new" pop-ups in an app I already enjoy, it feels like Christmas morning for me and I almost always immediately go try out the new feature(s). I don't think I would find most of them (or wouldn't find them as quickly) for most apps without a nudge saying what to look for.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#153

Post by gnicholas »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

This is one of the reasons I disabled app auto updates. There are only a few apps that need to be updated regularly, like uber and some banking apps. The rest can wait until I decide to update them. Also saves space on my device by not always having the latest version.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#154

Post by FabHK »

scarface74 wrote: post #4

This article is just a rant without many concrete examples, studies, or suggestions for improvements.

This preliminary article has a link at the end to the “real” article, with concrete examples and suggestions:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi...

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#155

Post by saagarjha »

robomartin wrote: post #136
hs86 wrote: post #25

I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…

A couple of decades ago I worked at a company that had about 200 Mac's and a similar number of PC's. One of our favorite practical jokes was to disable the mouse on Mac's. The victim quite literally could not do a thing with the computer until the mouse was re-enabled. In sharp contrast to this most Windows users could function reasonably well without the mouse. This, of course, was a long time ago. My guess is that…

> My guess is that today this would be the case for any computer user, Windows or MacOS.

Not for everyone. I could probably get by fine, if slowly, if you took away my trackpad. I can navigate with full keyboard access and shortcuts, and VoiceOver if necessary.

> The simplest example I have of this is using the volume switch to take a picture, nobody does not.

I do :( It give me feedback on whether I took the picture or not.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#156

Post by saagarjha »

gnicholas wrote: post #153
heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

This is one of the reasons I disabled app auto updates. There are only a few apps that need to be updated regularly, like uber and some banking apps. The rest can wait until I decide to update them. Also saves space on my device by not always having the latest version.

> Also saves space on my device by not always having the latest version.

How so?

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#157

Post by saagarjha »

auraham wrote: post #62
heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

I feel the same. Recently, I updated Spark just for the dark theme option. I don't mind the short introduction of new features. However, I hate when the app dramatically changes, as Spark did. Now, the UI of this version is significantly different to the previous one. I experienced the same issue on Pocket. They removed the "Open with Firefox" option when sharing an URL. I don't like these kind of updates.

> They removed the "Open with Firefox" option when sharing an URL.

Surely Firefox exports an action to open the URL in the app?

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#158

Post by catalogia »

emidoots wrote: post #145
FpUser wrote: post #133

I have a desktop Windows only product that I sell (10s of thousands of clients). It does not have the most eye pleasing UI design but it is very functional and ergonomic. All possible actions are clearly visible and / or discoverable. And every action can be accessed in less clicks then in any of competitor's products. I actually get some praises for it. Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that…

I have had conversations with several "designers", some from FAANG, and all have held the general belief that having strong authority over how the UI looks and getting eye-candy at the cost of usability and ergonomics was 'without doubt the right choice'. In my frank opinion, many designers hold a position of subjective judgement and thrive on the power that comes with that. This is like a developer making arbitrary…

Be careful with data-driven design, you can easily end up fooling yourself into seeing evidence in the metrics for whatever you want to be true, I've seen it happen plenty. Accidental p-hacking by well meaning but misguided "data driven" programmers is not at all uncommon.

Furthermore, in my experience the data doesn't necessarily mean what it's believed to mean, with the favored explanation for the data being assumed to be the correct explanation. (e.g. "We want more engagement. This data shows users are staying on this page longer, that's a measure of engagement." It may instead be a measure of your users getting confused, lost, etc.) My point here is that an earnest attempt to be data driven doesn't eliminate the matter of bias. Being cognizant of possible bias when evaluating the data is important, otherwise you'll have a false sense of confidence.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#159

Post by saagarjha »

blackhaz wrote: post #99
matthew-wegner wrote: post #60

New gestures introduced in iOS 13: Copy: three-finger pinch Cut: three-finger double pinch Paste: three-finger pinch out (expand) Undo: three-finger swipe left (or three-finger double tap) Redo: three-finger swipe right Shortcut menu: three-finger single tap

This is fucking horrible. Worth an episode in Silicon Valley horrible. What I hate most about the new Apple devices is that I always do something that produces a gesture or a hidden function. Grab iPhone quickly by the sides - get a screenshot. Swipe with four fingers looking North shaking - get something else. Who the hell needs all this crap?

> Grab iPhone quickly by the sides - get a screenshot.

That’s not a gesture, that’s you pressing the side buttons.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#160

Post by saagarjha »

judge2020 wrote: post #38
josteink wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hidden things like 3D Touch is the exact problem I’ve had an iPhone for around 5 years now and I still have no idea what 3D Touch is. I hear it’s not supported on all models, so my phone may be lacking it, but if it does, I wouldn’t even be able to tell.

Pressing hard on a UI element, like an app icon[0], tweet, etc will show certain actions. On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing. 0: https://imgur.com/a/wOTDT3s

> On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing.

On all devices that run iOS 13.

Post reply on HN