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Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

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Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#201

Post by saagarjha »

wander_homer wrote: post #198
jlokier wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hidden scrollbars are great. They remove clutter, yet are always readily available when needed. Scrolling in MacOS is one of my favourite things about the UI compared with various versions of Linux and Windows I've used. This is due to the two-finger swipe gesture being really well done and the scroll bar being available when needed. I used Linux as my primary desktop non-stop for 19 years, and in the end…

I don't have a Mac to try it, so would you care to explain how the hidden scrollbar works? Like when you open a dialog, do the scrollbars of its scrollable elements always appear and then slowly fade out, or do how do you know something is scrollable without trying to scroll?

Yes, scrollbars are supposed to flash when a view appears. This can sometimes not happen, or be hidden (say you open something in a tab and the code is not correctly written to handle visibility, or the more obvious case that you just didn't see it happen) but it's intended to let you know that scrollers are there.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#203

Post by john-doe »

systemvoltage wrote: post #112
todfox wrote: post #5

For more of these daily annoyances: https://grumpy.website The growing user hostility of UIs makes me want to stop developing software and even stop using computers. I started using computers because they made more sense to me than a lot of things. Now, I'm encountering these little moments of illogic and unreason every hour of the day. It's not just beginners who need little cues. I'm deeply familiar with the APIs b…

I tried reading the footer to get the contact information for on https://grumpy.website but it keeps doom-scrolling and only visible for a fraction of a second. What an irony. I dream of a day when we go back to pagination. No, not just pagination numbers on the bottom of the page to flip through pages, but also the URL should reflect that and be able to share the 7th page with someone using a link.

See https://grumpy.website/post/0Q8s2Zc3p

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#204

Post by cratermoon »

perl4ever wrote: post #162
cratermoon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point skeuomorphism becomes anachronism, though. The canonical example is the continued use of the floppy disk icon for save. A mechanical stopwatch for a timer. A telephone with a switch hook and dial. A desk calendar with rings and pages. A pencil and paper for text editor.

The problem with trying to get rid of those "anachronistic" symbols is that when you task someone with it, they will come up with a bunch of very arbitrary symbols that are also simple permutations that are hard to distinguish. There was an example in a previous HN thread on this topic. For "save", they had a rounded rectangle and an arrow, and then a bunch of operations had something similar, but with the orientatio…

If we still used an ox head to mean the phoneme for 'A', that would be closer to the floppy disk icon for save. Consider, also, that the word 'save' predates computers. What, if the computer or floppy disk didn't exist, might we use to signify 'save'? Perhaps a currency symbol? A money bag? A bank? A life preserver? A piggy bank? Or maybe we don't even need a 'save' action any more (the best programs have autosave already) but some kind of "mark this state so I can come back to it (undo) later. Apple's Time Machine is one paradigm to consider as well: there's no never a "save" step, but you can go back to a previous state with not much effort.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#205

Post by [deleted] »

npinguy wrote: post #98
logbiscuitswave wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re being serious or not, but these stories seem awfully apocryphal to me. I can’t imagine anybody - not even a total novice - running away from their computer upon seeing a cartoony image of a bomb. It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a film of a train for the first time.

> It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a film of a train for the first time. The cultural recontextualization of stories like this in my lifetime has been one of the most fascinating aspects of our modern world for me. Of course, as I get older, I've seen my own stories and stories about events I participated in get told, re-told, and twisted and…

[deleted]

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#206

Post by bluGill »

yen223 wrote: post #144
bluGill wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the lack seems to be the lack of qualified designers in the first place. Or maybe designers who are not givens enough time to do the job.

A lot of times, the approach that the designer took is the right one, and the approach the engineer proposed is flawed when tested with real people.

Either way, a time wasn't spent to iterate on the design until it was good. Designers are good, but they make mistakes too.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#207

Post by HWR_14 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #112
todfox wrote: post #5

For more of these daily annoyances: https://grumpy.website The growing user hostility of UIs makes me want to stop developing software and even stop using computers. I started using computers because they made more sense to me than a lot of things. Now, I'm encountering these little moments of illogic and unreason every hour of the day. It's not just beginners who need little cues. I'm deeply familiar with the APIs b…

I tried reading the footer to get the contact information for on https://grumpy.website but it keeps doom-scrolling and only visible for a fraction of a second. What an irony. I dream of a day when we go back to pagination. No, not just pagination numbers on the bottom of the page to flip through pages, but also the URL should reflect that and be able to share the 7th page with someone using a link.

Or, if you have javascript off, you get no pagination and no scroll, making it look like there are only 6ish items

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#208

Post by HWR_14 »

valuearb wrote: post #178
jp57 wrote: post #52

> Apple are slowly undoing their great usability work in the name of elegance. Not slowly, or recently. The big removal of affordances happened with IOS 7, and Jony Ive's "flat" UI aesthetic. Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini, former Apple UI researchers and champions of UI affordances, wrote an essay[1] complaining about this problem in 2015. It seems like this era might be slowly _ending_ now that Ive is gone. [1] ht…

What about when MacOS started hiding scrollbars? Ugh.

MacOS hiding scrollbars isn't too bad. Google trying to make all scrollbars like 1 pixel wide, that's the worst.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#209

Post by valuearb »

jlokier wrote: post #196
valuearb wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about when MacOS started hiding scrollbars? Ugh.

I think the hidden scrollbars are great. They remove clutter, yet are always readily available when needed. Scrolling in MacOS is one of my favourite things about the UI compared with various versions of Linux and Windows I've used. This is due to the two-finger swipe gesture being really well done and the scroll bar being available when needed. I used Linux as my primary desktop non-stop for 19 years, and in the end…

Problem is the scrollbars often don’t appear when needed, so user has no idea they are there. Worse, even when they appear, they sometimes disappear when you reach for the thumb to move many pages. It’s excruciating on documents with hundreds of pages.

Disappearing scrollbars also violate the original Mac UI principles, which were based on an enormous amount of human factors research.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#210

Post by jwr »

crazygringo wrote: post #115
jwr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is that modern interfaces are self-centered. Or rather, the designers are self-centered: they believe that the world revolves around them, and Their Magnificent Design is the One Thing that everyone will want to learn, appreciate and admire. In reality, their design is one more thing among the hundreds or thousands of things that a user manages, and should mostly serve to get other things done. It's…

That's extremely ungenerous, and no more true about designers than coders. Perhaps some designers start out have this immature attitude, but professional designers I've worked with are user-centered, not self-centered. That's just a professional prerequisite, and what you learn in design school as well. And in any case, you could just as easily say about programmers starting out that they too often believe "Their Mag…

> If something seems like the best solution to you, it takes experience and perspective to realize it's not always the best solution to others.

I think this is exactly the point I was making.

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