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Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?

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61–64 of 64 posts

Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?

#61
The more you look for these patterns the more you'll notice. It's how our brains work. I myself notice a lot of what you mention as well, and I do my best to file it away in a "mistakes to avoid when I get to be the one making decisions" folder in my brain. Not much more I can do beyond that, because so much of this is a byproduct of poor incentive structures, bureaucracy, or plain negligence. Attacking it all at once will feel like trying to boil the ocean.

And specifically, on the doors issue. Vox has a great video on this.

"It's not you. Bad doors are everywhere."

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11120236/bad-doors-human-cente...

Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?

#62
Meditation helps compartmentalizing your thoughts, so if you meditate, you might still notice the problems and be angry at them, but you might be able to better control the anger and tame it.

Also, it sounds like you may be angered by something else, so you are on edge, and it’s easier to be angered at a door than at someone or at some situation. Going to a shrink may help disentangle the anger.

And yeah I am with you: fuck google maps.

Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?

#63
One thing that's important, I think, is to recognize in the moment that you're getting upset, that in that moment right there, it's not the design itself that's causing you pain, but your reaction to it. It's not gonna be like a "AHA! Cured." sort of revelation, but practiced repeatedly you'll start asking yourself whether that's the ONLY option available to you, or maybe there is something you yourself can do so as to not to suffer.

The second thing, and this I learned from Yoga, is to actively look for what's okay. When it gets pretty uncomfortable, I try to do what my teacher once said, which was to focus on the bits that feel well. In your case, the door might be shitty, but the roof ain't leaking; the new maps may be crap, but the electricity is on; Google maps is rubbish, but the phone's screen is working alright. It's not that one good design compensates for bad design, it's that the poor design is enmeshed in a far bigger picture, in which there are good things, and it's your freedom, perhaps the greatest freedom, to choose where to direct the attention to.

Third, I've rarely seen a brilliant first iteration of anything. Every so often it happens, but more likely is to start with something and get better. So the map replacement is one: the vision for these screens may be 1. As a revenue stream, 2. Help the visually impaired, 3. allow more functionality - like calling a staff member quickly (whatever, I don't live and NY, this is just examples). The implementation is rubbish, but if it's the first iteration, that was always ever going to be the case.

Finally, here's a bit of mirroring, do what you like with it: Clever people take great pride in their cleverness. They like that they're smart, and they like the sharpness in their brain. And so, this often creates a blind spot to how miserable that smart brain of theirs can make them. Like in your case, where you said: "oh, I don't think treatment can help, but if you could list some ways in which it might" etc - that's your proud clever brain speaking, entrenching you in a position where you're just angry all the time. But the rest of you recognizes this is a shitty way to be living, hence you posting to begin with.

So maybe there are some time when it's quite okay to tell yourself your clever brain is actually getting in the way, and use things that are not reason-based, like trust, and emotional monitoring, and get help from someone who worked their whole career at helping people deal with anxiety and anger.

Re: Ask HN: Bad user experience angers and depresses me – what can I do about it?

#64
Television has bad UX. To fix it, I can suggest: Don't use the cursor movement function. Allow the numbers to be used to specify channels, input selection, timer for sleep timer and recording duration and others, and whatever else you might use it for. Allow commands to have optional numeric prefixes (like vi does). Don't add functions that will delay after the command is entered and then execute it; if the user has not finished entering it, then the user has not finished entering it. Allow OSD to be disabled. Don't use so much fancy UI animations and that stuff. Don't use virtual channel numbers.
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