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Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

bitonic.org

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Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#51

Post by ZenPsycho »

dvdhsu wrote: post #27
stephth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My work involves designing interfaces and this discussion could help me understand this topic better; but like the author of the article, your post shows some intense frustration towards rollover-only elements, but none made it very evident to me as to why it's so frustrating and why it's so "stupid". We all experience things differently, and I'd love to picture a perspective where it's so frustrating. Here's how I s…

I don't know anything about design. The solution that I propose seems obvious though; am I missing something? > Too many elements are a distraction. > What is the affordance of invisibility? There is a middle though: instead of either making it invisible OR cluttered, couldn't you just design it with a small clue, such as an arrow, which would open a drop-down menu when rolled over (on a computer) or tapped on (on a…

That's just hiding functionality again. MS started doing this by hiding vital functionality in a stupid looking windows logo jewel in the upper left hand corner. I had to ask other experienced people where the file menu was- it was not obvious that thing was anything more than decoration.

The solution to clutter isn't to hide functionality. It's to have your software do /less things/. If you need it to do more things, make those few things your software does a flexible set of tools that can be combined in novel ways.

Update: (I got downvoted so I thought I'd modify the post a bit, hopefully it's better?)

in any case, when it comes to software design, clutter isn't the worst thing software can do. Hiding things is, however, pretty close to the worst thing you can do. At least, without a consistent and obvious method of discovering the hidden things.

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#52

Post by masklinn »

enjo wrote: post #14
SquareWheel wrote: post #3

I find the behavior can cut down on clutter when pulled off correctly, though. Twitter offering context-based actions, for instance.

I'm not sure I agree. It completely breaks on tablets for one thing.

Does not have to though, Tweetbot's UI behaves nicely in this regard. It does not have hover, but its equivalent is to tap a tweet. This opens a small "drawer" of 5 tweet-specific buttons (reply, retweet, favorite, detail and "actions", which include posting a link to the tweet, copying the tweet's content, emailing the tweet's content and translating the tweet's content).

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#53

Post by azernik »

stephth wrote: post #47
droithomme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordance is a used extensively in the usability field and is a fundamental part of the vocabulary. Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen and Alan Cooper all use it quite a bit in their writings, so anyone who has background studying the literature of the field will be familiar with it. Not knowing it is something of a shibboleth that suggests one isn't familiar with the basics of the profession. It would be difficult to be in…

Not knowing it is something of a shibboleth that suggests one isn't familiar with the basics of the profession. I appreciate that it isn't too much of a shibboleth for you and that you could stick around, I'd be interested in knowing a little more about the literature you mentioned. Do they propose specific techniques to usability testing? Which one do you use? In my case it's watching friends/family/expo attendants…

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing for a description.

A quick overview - in usability testing, testers are chosen, given an introduction to the software, and observed while they try to get stuff done with your product. This ideally involves two people aside from the tester - the "greeter", who interacts with the user/tester and guides them through the process, and an observer who focuses completely on watching the user at work.

Usually, two types of measures should be taken: numerical (number of errors, amount of time taken to find functionality, etc.), and qualitative (the user's attitude, comments - all the things you didn't think to measure in advance).

Quantitative measures are very important because then comparisons can be made - do users find functionality more easily/complete tasks faster with the "Edit" button hidden? By how much? How much longer do they take (if at all) to find that functionality when the button is hidden?

In sum, a usability study should be systematic - more like a psychology experiment or ethnography study than a product demo.

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#55

Post by droithomme »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #51
dvdhsu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about design. The solution that I propose seems obvious though; am I missing something? > Too many elements are a distraction. > What is the affordance of invisibility? There is a middle though: instead of either making it invisible OR cluttered, couldn't you just design it with a small clue, such as an arrow, which would open a drop-down menu when rolled over (on a computer) or tapped on (on a…

That's just hiding functionality again. MS started doing this by hiding vital functionality in a stupid looking windows logo jewel in the upper left hand corner. I had to ask other experienced people where the file menu was- it was not obvious that thing was anything more than decoration. The solution to clutter isn't to hide functionality. It's to have your software do /less things/. If you need it to do more things…

I liked the first post! The bit you removed: "Now you have two problems" I had just pasted it into my quote file, so it's not gone. I'm going to bring it back because it is a stylish way to say a lot. Ok I'll fiddle with it a bit too, play at being an editor.

> When it comes to software design, clutter isn't the worst thing software can do. Hiding things is. So, to paraphrase JWZ: "You have a problem with clutter, so you hide it. Now you have two problems." Thus, the solution to clutter isn't to hide the functionality because that creates more problems not less. The solution to clutter is to have fewer functions.

That's really good. Some reading this might be confused by fewer functions as meaning dumbing down and restricting the user, so let me expand that. That's not what it is. Fewer functions means making things simpler to the point that they are generic enough to have much more functionality, but with fewer explicit functions. For example, the unix command line is pretty simple to look it, but unlimited in what you can do. Type whatever you like there. The pipe thing lets you stitch things together in combination.

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#56

Post by ZenPsycho »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #51
dvdhsu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about design. The solution that I propose seems obvious though; am I missing something? > Too many elements are a distraction. > What is the affordance of invisibility? There is a middle though: instead of either making it invisible OR cluttered, couldn't you just design it with a small clue, such as an arrow, which would open a drop-down menu when rolled over (on a computer) or tapped on (on a…

That's just hiding functionality again. MS started doing this by hiding vital functionality in a stupid looking windows logo jewel in the upper left hand corner. I had to ask other experienced people where the file menu was- it was not obvious that thing was anything more than decoration. The solution to clutter isn't to hide functionality. It's to have your software do /less things/. If you need it to do more things…

thank you for clarifying and expanding my post. And for complimenting my (now missing) paraphrase. :)

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#57

Post by buster »

Strongly disagree with the article. you have to ask yourself: How often are you searching for a contact and want to edit it and not only view it? On average, most people won't edit it, so it's useless to have an edit button 90% of the time.

I think it's a pretty neat solution. The poster only has to get accustomed to 21st century technology, it's not 1990 anymore with textfields and buttons all over the place. It's like the typical rant of an old grandfather, complaining that something has changed and that everything was better decades ago. Bullshit. Just be a bit more flexible.

The placement of the hidden edit button can be discussed though. I am wondering why the github button is so far away from the content to edit...

Another example: The G+ profile editing is one of the best i have ever seen. It's "this is how your profile looks like to another person, hover the field and edit it". It's just easy and it's change something where it is shown, not going to another page and edit some values and go back and forth to see the changes.

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#58

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

modeless wrote: post #22

That isn't the "delete contact" button. Did he even try it? The "delete contact" button is in the toolbar, which makes perfect sense. The trash can next to the name field simply clears the name field. So why not always show it? This is not just the "edit contact" screen, it's also the "view contact" screen, and cluttering it up with trash cans next to every field would absolutely detract from the scannability of the…

Context sensitivity is a great justification for hidden elements. Litter your page with visible edit buttons and, in a poorly designed UI, you might forget what part of the page each edit button binds to.

It makes sense to show only some controls when your mouse or cursor is focussed in the right place, because then you know those controls are relevant to what you're doing.

What I think was overlooked with the two examples - Github and google - is the replacement of text-based controls with icon-based ones. Github's top nav is now just tiny icons, the Google pages are all icons. You can barely tell what these are unless you hover over them long enough to see an explanation. This is the real problem, I think.

Re: Open Letter to sites with annoying interfaces

#59

Post by dhx »

azernik wrote: post #53
stephth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knowing it is something of a shibboleth that suggests one isn't familiar with the basics of the profession. I appreciate that it isn't too much of a shibboleth for you and that you could stick around, I'd be interested in knowing a little more about the literature you mentioned. Do they propose specific techniques to usability testing? Which one do you use? In my case it's watching friends/family/expo attendants…

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing for a description. A quick overview - in usability testing, testers are chosen, given an introduction to the software, and observed while they try to get stuff done with your product. This ideally involves two people aside from the tester - the "greeter", who interacts with the user/tester and guides them through the process, and an observer who focuses completely on…

Usability testing should involve more than just "time taken for a new user to become familiar with the interface". Experienced users also need to be observed to ensure that prolonged use also shows desirable usability results.

Pop-ups providing first use advice to users may improve usability results for new users. For experienced users, pop-ups are likely to decrease usability.

Placing many buttons on a screen will likely make it harder for new users to start using the interface. They will have to investigate many more options amongst the clutter, leading to more decision making ("what is this button? do I click it?") and a corresponding decrease in usability.

In the case of GitHub, the question of whether new and/or experienced users regularly need to use the "Edit" button needs to be investigated. The cost of making an interface control highly visible to new users may exceed the cost of experienced users needing to search for help on how to perform the rare action.

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