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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#331

Post by zzo38computer »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #328
philsnow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have avoided gnome as much as I can since the gnome2 days. The entire project is rife with UX decisions that leave a bad taste in my mouth. [0] is the example that always comes to mind. I guess this made sense to somebody at the time, but it adds overhead to a process that was simple before, and isn't enabled just for "Enterprise" deployments, it's just dumped on the user to figure out how to configure screensaver…

Between this and https://stopthemingmy.app/ and the various other systemd/freedesktop “anti-hacker” initiatives, I’ve been finding Linux to be more and more becoming the opposite of the operating system I’ve used for the last 20 years.

Still, I try to avoid GUI stuff and freedesktop stuff as much as possible (I do use a window manager, but not GNOME or KDE or whatever), and write better programs when possible, but a few things don't. I don't use any desktop environment at all. The web browser is one thing that isn't so good. Really, many things should be moved out of the web browser and made to work by simply nc, curl, etc. And some things work better with local programs, but others with remote, with whatever protocol is applicable e.g. IRC, NNTP, SMTP, etc, please.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#332

Post by javajosh »

dleslie wrote: post #280
EEMac wrote: post #222

Part of this is because the sensors are winning. Sensors (about 70% of the population) use an application by mapping: a click here does this . Based on literature and my experience with my husband, maps are made separately for each application no matter what the similarities are. Most computer programmers are intuitives: we want things to work the same way in one application as they work in another. That makes it eas…

Not all programmers are intuitives; there are a great many who are sensors who lack a mental model of how their device operates or how the software they're interfacing with at a DSL or API level operates. They have a mental map of commands and structures for everything they make, and make "new" things by following examples of new maps. Ie, copying code from SO.

I don't think programming by rote is actually possible past a relatively low threshold. Code is relatively delicate, so just "add strings to files; invoke" is not going to work for most strings.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#333

Post by guug »

philsnow wrote: post #254
swiley wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care how "user friendly" you think you are, not being able to log in is an absolute fail. Even getty has a better user interface, imagine that: regression all the way back in to the 70s. This is why I don't touch GUIs from the major binary distros or gnome3 with a 10 foot pole. If I can avoid it I don't ever install anything from those projects.

I have avoided gnome as much as I can since the gnome2 days. The entire project is rife with UX decisions that leave a bad taste in my mouth. [0] is the example that always comes to mind. I guess this made sense to somebody at the time, but it adds overhead to a process that was simple before, and isn't enabled just for "Enterprise" deployments, it's just dumped on the user to figure out how to configure screensaver…

The problem with gnome is that they don't seem to validate their ideas at all. As a result, gnome users are directly subjected to the unfiltered whims of gnome's UI "designers".

Instead of spending the substantial donations they received[1] on who knows what, the GNOME foundation should have spent some of it conducting proper focus groups.

1: https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1...

Re: The Decline of Usability

#334

Post by bendauphinee »

munk-a wrote: post #97

Oh yes gods slack in particular got a lot worse with the most recent update, but the site I think takes the cake is one we Canadians use for food delivery - skipthedishes.com . Gods this site breaks so many things, options to update things are hidden among menus that switch the current page while not being ctrl-clickable into a new tab (which can trash your current in-cart order) and the whole site loves "minimalism"…

As a user and driver, the intended experience is very obviously the app, not the site.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#335

Post by iso-8859-1 »

cirno wrote: post #51

I was so disappointed when Xfce, long my last bastion of consistent UI design, finally gave up the ghost and announced their move to client-side window decorations. It seems the days of the title bar + menubar + optional toolbar are numbered :(

There is still Trinity [0]. I think it will be very hard for them to switch to client-side decorations, even if they wanted ;)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Desktop_Environment

Re: The Decline of Usability

#336

Post by zzo38computer »

munk-a wrote: post #97

Oh yes gods slack in particular got a lot worse with the most recent update, but the site I think takes the cake is one we Canadians use for food delivery - skipthedishes.com . Gods this site breaks so many things, options to update things are hidden among menus that switch the current page while not being ctrl-clickable into a new tab (which can trash your current in-cart order) and the whole site loves "minimalism"…

Really, just let the delivery by requesting by telephone call instead is better.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#337

Post by thawaway1837 »

Animats wrote: post #10

Ubuntu got worse at 18.04. Logging in on desktop now requires "swiping up" with the mouse to get the password box. The "swiping" thing is to avoid problems with unwanted activation when the device is in your pocket. It's totally inappropriate to desktops. Then there's icon mania. I've recently converted from Blender 2.79 to Blender 2.82. Lots of new icons. They dim, they change color, they disappear as modes change,…

I’m on 19.04 and haven’t experienced the swiping up. Could it have to do with me running i3 instead of Gnome?

Re: The Decline of Usability

#338

Post by Aeolun »

MattGaiser wrote: post #323
pragmatic wrote: post #290

The designers took over. They finally gained power and with it, unfortunately, users lost out. In my unified theory of organizations, the organization is eventually taken over by the employees/"servants" and instead of serving the constituents it becomes about serving themselves. Think Congress, teacher's unions, USPS, IT depts. In programming it's resume driven development, playing with new toys constantly instead o…

All of that lies at the feet of management (defined broadly). The people re-elect Congress consistently. Employers reward resume driven development on the open market. UX people win prizes for how their UIs perform on high-resolution large monitors even when they will be used on mobile. I think it would be more correct to say that management exerted greater control and deferred to the UX designers who were focused on…

I love how the pretty mockup always assumes that text or images fit perfectly.

It’s probably the single biggest cause of issues we have.

It’s interesting, because the one time a designer asked for my feedback before handing the design to management (the best one I’ve met, but they left the org) they hadn’t even considered it, but were all too happy to take it into account.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#339

Post by yaktubi »

zzo38computer wrote: post #331
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between this and https://stopthemingmy.app/ and the various other systemd/freedesktop “anti-hacker” initiatives, I’ve been finding Linux to be more and more becoming the opposite of the operating system I’ve used for the last 20 years.

Still, I try to avoid GUI stuff and freedesktop stuff as much as possible (I do use a window manager, but not GNOME or KDE or whatever), and write better programs when possible, but a few things don't. I don't use any desktop environment at all. The web browser is one thing that isn't so good. Really, many things should be moved out of the web browser and made to work by simply nc, curl, etc. And some things work bet…

My goaty is a goaty goaty vibrating and oscillating goaty sac goaty

Re: The Decline of Usability

#340

Post by Aeolun »

bhauer wrote: post #259

Bravo to this article. The phenomenon is exemplified by Slack and open platforms that follows its design lead, such as the Riot client for Matrix. Legacy chat clients from the 1990s and 2000s could fit a hundred rows of chat text on a normal 30 inch monitor. Slack and Riot can display perhaps as many as 30 lines. The reason is a bunch of excess padding between lines, the injection of handles/names in the vertical spa…

Probably because a lot of us actually like this. I cannot deal with things like IRC where the whole screen is just a big blob of text. I need something to visually distinguish who the message is from.
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