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Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

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Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#111

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

bierjunge wrote: post #75
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who don't know anything get confused, but this is going to be older people who are struggling to use computers, the people that call the Microsoft Edge icon "the internet". You'd be surprised. Research has found that the "digital native" generations (younger people born into/after the internet age) are no better at these things than the "older people" - the whole "digital native" thing is a myth in this rega…

10-15 years ago a lot of people were saying, that the "digital native" generation will be tech savvy and will surpass everyone with their IT knowledge. Yeah, right. A few months back in 2021 I was asked how to "make an app on the phone". Not FOR a phone, ON a phone, the complete development only using a phone. WTF? And no, it wasn't a 12 year old kid, it was a 21 year old guy with a Bachelor of science degree.

> Yeah, right. A few months back in 2021 I was asked how to "make an app on the phone". Not FOR a phone, ON a phone, the complete development only using a phone. WTF?

You jest, but it's possible. There is an Android IDE that includes a compiler that runs on Android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl...

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#112

Post by Avicebron »

xattt wrote: post #74
nend wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well. It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what googl…

I wonder if there’s any stories of anyone suddenly becoming technoliterate after feigning ignorance after a number of years.

Anecdotally, my grandfather ~78, works very hard to understand how to navigate and use the computer they have, not sure to the extant you would call "technoliterate", but certainly he puts in the effort to learn how to navigate and use the device without asking for much help.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#113

Post by rudian »

tobr wrote: post #50

A similar problem I’ve ran into both in tech support and user studies is momentary blindness for the scope of search. For example on your Mac, you have Spotlight, Finder search, Google search, help menu search, and various application-specific or website-specific search fields. In my experience if two of those are on screen at the same time, it’s very easy to get confused about which one to use to get which type of r…

Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate universe.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#114

Post by lowlevel »

phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

Not only allow, but forcefully redirect their search input up into the address bar. In my opinion this has been a deliberate and concerted effort by google to get everyone to 'search' instead of go directly to sites and this ux behaviour has been bothering me for a very long time now. I am not at all surprised people are searching for https after all this time. That being said, there is likely a large number of urls pasted into the search box vs the address bar. (Hardly anyone can tell the difference anymore.)

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#115

Post by dylan604 »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

In the 1980's, taking away the 'choke' lever which assisted starting a car was seen by some as removing a critical control. Yet automatic chokes became standard, and today's drivers usually don't even know or care what a choke even is. Todays people have other things to spend their time learning. People of tomorrow may not need to know or care what the difference is between a search box and a URL bar. All they know i…

A choke on an engine does not do anything other than control the flow of air to the engine. That's it. That's all it does.

Allowing the URL bar to also act as search or vice versa, the simple act of trying to do the one thing now does something else that you might or might not have intended or been aware of being possible is not the same as a single purpose choke. When that possible thing is sending your data to a 3rd party, then that is just bad.

Edit: finished an incomplete thought

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#116

Post by dylan604 »

coldpie wrote: post #100
dylan604 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, It's bad, very very bad

I tend to agree, but at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling. It may be we're just wrong and there really is a better way to do it, I've certainly been wrong about plenty of other things. Dunno. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722

My counter to that is that if you think you are submitting a URL to go to a website but instead that data is sent to 3rd party which allows them to continue their tracking of everything you do, then this is bad.

Be upfront and clear with your users. If you are sending data to a 3rd party in a way that is not 100% obvious, then it's bad UI leaning towards dark patterns. If you are a UI dev and it never occurred to you a user would do something like this, then that's typical. If after you learn that users are doing something you as the dev finds not normal, then maybe the UI needs to be tweaked. If you design the UI to confuse/trick people, then you are just an asshole.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#117

Post by saba2008 »

admax88qqq wrote: post #54
phkahler wrote: post #12

This is because Google and Microsoft have confused the users by allowing them to type whatever into wherever and they just figure it out. Some would call that good UI - probably myself included - but it teaches bad behavior and makes people dumber by obscuring what things really are.

> but it teaches bad behavior I wouldn't call it bad behaviour. Why are the users behaving bad and not the interfaces? Computers are meant to serve users.

Because it confuses and pushes users toward wrong mental model of surrounding world.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#118

Post by lowlevel »

nathancahill wrote: post #86
mfext wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was Mozilla

Firefox 3. The "AwesomeBar". https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/a-little-something-aweso... Looking at those old screenshots shows me how much the current autocomplete has regressed. The suggestions used to be so much better since it was a literal text search across titles and URLs. I remember you could configure how many results were displayed, I always set it to the max. The 2-line rich display was awesome for sca…

I think this is because AwesomeBar had a design goal of helping end users instead of total global search domination. Just a hunch.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#119

Post by Rabei »

windowsrookie wrote: post #106
jabroni_salad wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you it is younger people too. I train bank workers from freshly minted tellers to longtime officers, none of them can navigate to a URL unless it is a clickable hyperlink. The URL is one of the most foundational elements of internet usage, it is the way to get directly to where you want to go. Having a map is nice, but don't you need to know how to walk in order to get where you are going? Heck, there have…

I've actually been hearing and interesting theory that the younger generation is becoming even more computer illiterate than the generation before them. The younger generation was raised on iPads and iPhones where everything is easy to use and "just works". They've never had to do anything beyond tap the icon for the App they want. Edit: Was going to talk about that same article about File directories.

I have seen this hiring, 10 years ago in general everybody fresh out of college had a good grasp of a linux box inner workings as they had fought through the install process of a Gentoo or LFS machine.

Today is fairly common for me to have to explain in detail what is needed or how things work.

Re: Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

#120

Post by entropicdrifter »

jeffasinger wrote: post #78
nend wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well. It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what googl…

Interestingly, I think we're seeing less people grow up with general purpose computers, and instead just have an iPad or an android tablet, or a chromebook. I wonder what things will look in 20 years.

At least chromebooks have the capacity to become general purpose computers by installing Linux. But yeah, anyone who doesn't grow up with a Raspberry Pi or the like is gonna have a hard time.
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