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The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

uxdesign.cc

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Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#41

Post by grawprog »

Zak wrote: post #33

Clippy may be a joke, but my phone actually does this (and yours likely does too). In principle, if my headphone volume was actually loud enough to damage my hearing, I'd like to be told about it, but a given reality is the volume setting doesn't produce the same loudness with different headphones, which usually results in an inconvenience when my headphones aren't actually very loud.

The worst is newer versions of android. You turn it up full, suddenly it's down to 3/4's full again and you have to acknowledge you want to turn it up, then turn it up again. If the headphones unplug, you gotta turn it up again.

The same thing happens with brightness too. Turn it up full, suddenly, down to 3/4's again until you acknowledge yes, you really do actually want to turn your brightness up full.

The first time it happened I was outside in the sun and couldn't actually see my screen to figure out why it dimmed again, i kept trying to brighten it and it kept dimming, I finally noticed the popup on the bottom in the brief second of lightness I had after the 4th or 5th try.

I really hate the way devices try to control you rather than allowing you to control them.

On my old rooted android phone from years ago, I had alsamixer installed and could turn the volume up however I pleased, even above the artificial software limits present in all android versions.

I miss those days.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#42

Post by heywire »

temporallobe wrote: post #7

Car manufacturers are easily the winners here. If your car’s audio system doesn’t have a simple knob you can grab and twist, well, that just sucks.

Mazda got this right on the CX5 (at least in my 2016). Not only is there a knob, but it is on the center console where you can easily reach it without looking. Same goes with the controls (the touch screen is disabled when the vehicle is moving)

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#43

Post by varenc »

stefan_ wrote: post #36

I think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume . Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, y…

I understand the motivation. A user might set an app's volume low and raise the system volume very high to compensate. But then audio from another program, likely Teams, might blow your ears out when it starts. In a vacuum, I like the idea, but given that the standard on Desktop is in-app volume control Teams' behavior sounds worse.

In iOS I've never seen an in-app volume control (I assume its forbidden) and all volume adjustments affect the system volume.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#45

Post by egypturnash »

Sharlin wrote: post #29
FroshKiller wrote: post #2

This started out entertaining, then I realized that there is no attribution for the designs, and even though there are several links that say things like "the original thread," they are all just links to search results for "volume" on the ProgrammerHumor subreddit.

It never was a single thread but a meme that lasted for a while, with people making lots of different top-level posts. So linking to search results is the best you can do.

You could... link to the particular post, instead of the search you found it in?

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#46

Post by keithnz »

aidenn0 wrote: post #40

worst real-life one I saw was shaped like a knob. You had to move the mouse in a circle to move the volume up and down. I don't recall what software now, I think it was some random MP3 player crapware that came preinstalled on a computer.

yeah, this is the worse, even worse is if your mouse moves outside the circle of the knob it resets back to where ever it was, which I experienced on some random audio thing back in the 90s.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#47

Post by machello13 »

beezischillin wrote: post #21

The iPhone lovingly reducing the volume claiming to protect your hearing (a feature that seems impossible to disable even after changing the phone’s region) as an added iOS 14 feature was a volume control “option” that I found annoying and insanely unsafe. I don’t even think there was initially an option to disable it for specific outputs. The best part was at that stage when it kept nearly muting itself in my car wh…

Which regions have this? I'm in the US and haven't seen it.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#48

Post by mianos »

stefan_ wrote: post #36

I think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume . Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, y…

Teams is the reference for bad UI. Paste a code block. Select a word in the code block. Copy and you get the whole block copied not the selected word.

I could write a page of the issues like this. Maybe it would not be so bad if you only used Teams but when you use slack at the same time it is like someone is wacking you in the back of the head every few minutes.

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