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The Decline of Usability (2020)

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Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#11
post #5

Ok so where are the good examples, anyone doing anything of note to address this?

It's not unlike a tragedy of the commons, clicking through Wikipedia maybe "Collective action problem" is even more apt? Individual app makers do things which they like and want without considering the wider implications of cross-app usability in the operating system.

In isolation many apps may be acceptable, but that falls down in the wider context.

The problem would be less of a problem if everyone did the same thing (bad or good UI) in a similar manner, because then there is predictability which is a powerful concept in user interaction.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#12
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed about discoverability issues. Everything is hidden. Hiding power user features is one thing, but you can't hide the basic stuff. IMHO UI usability hasn't been Apple's strong suit for a long time. In fact, as someone who has to use both Mac and PC, MacOS is just as terrible in many ways in not worse. What they do well device integration usability across their ecosystem.

Agreed. For me personally macOS (or OS X back then) usability peaked at around ~Snow Leopard and it's been _mostly_ though not entirely downhill from there on. Hard to pick a 'worst offender', the System Settings panel in Ventura may be a good example, it is a literal struggle every single time I need to change something, typically as a result of some setting mysteriously changing itself back to what I do not want.

This thread correctly identifies "discoverability", perhaps aka "progressive disclosure", or "some form of incrementalism" as the measure by which good user interfaces are evaluated. Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity, and multiple modules, not all of which are necessarily in use by the users at any given time.

Therefore, the problem of GUI design becomes one of navigating the complexity/depth-of-knowledge curve, as much as it does creating a usable set of features at each point along it.

The most egregious offenders are the latest Windows, 10 and later, IMHO. When I was a kid, (coming from the world of RISC OS which had a much shallower GUI) trying to understand the big deep Windows interface, I joined the dots by telling myself "This is how they put it together. This is how they are trying to make the things work consistently and in concert." I rarely broke out of that story-telling loop.

Now, when using Windows 10 or later, and a few clicks brings one to a Windows 2000 and before-era network dialogue box, the "fourth wall" as it were, of GUI design is broken, the story-telling loop above is replaced by a jarring feeling of bewilderment or all-too familiar frustration, and it's obvious they are shipping the org chart, and doing so over time, as much older GUI components are still available.

At the risk of sounding nihilistic, I fear that both OS X and Windows have reached their respective local maximas of design, and we won't see any changes for the better (by the above metric) any time soon.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#13
He's right about Gnome for sure. I used to use Ubuntu 14.04-16.04 from 2014 to 2019 along with macOS all these years.

Although macOS has a lot of problems, I returned to Ubuntu (22.04) since July in a new workplace, and it is horrible. This weird empty horizontal top panel and menus behind the hamburger button are just madness.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#14

All true. It goes even farther: hiding the file structure, and even the concept of files. Ask a nontechnical Windows or Mac user where their files are stored - they have no idea. Ask if they are in the cloud - no idea. Worse - just as with UIs - there is no consistency where different apps store their data. We also shouldn't forget the idiocy of hiding file-extensions. To add insult to injury Windows lies to non-Engl…

> In German, for example, it will tell you your home directory is in "Benutzer", but there actually is no such directory, there is only "Users".

Fantastisch. /s

Reminds me of a different issue we had back at my first permanent iOS role. We wrote about a "button" in the app description, the German translation of which is "Knopf"; this triggered Apple's naughty word filter, presumably because "Knopf" is also a translation of "knob", but "Knopf" doesn't have the penile connotations in German that "knob" has in English.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#15
post #8

I for one miss the 3-D buttons of the Windows 95 era. It was obvious what could be clicked and what could not.

Absolutely agree; I think the anti-skeuomorphic "clean" fashion of the last decade has been terrible for discoverability even in mobile apps, and it's somewhat ironic that the same design cues have gone back to WIMP devices, giving us interfaces designed to look like touch screen mobile apps even though the tech is different — and design cues matching a different technology in order to give a sense of familiarity is…

Tbf, Apples baroque "skeuomorphic phase" with wood paneling, shiny metal and cloth was absolutely terrible even back then and most likely responsible for the "skeumorphic backlash" that followed. Subtle 3D hints for interactive elements always made sense, and don't need to look "old fashioned".

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#16
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For me personally macOS (or OS X back then) usability peaked at around ~Snow Leopard and it's been _mostly_ though not entirely downhill from there on. Hard to pick a 'worst offender', the System Settings panel in Ventura may be a good example, it is a literal struggle every single time I need to change something, typically as a result of some setting mysteriously changing itself back to what I do not want.

From just a UI point of view, my preference is MacOS 8 — and I don't mean Mountain Lion, I mean Classic. The rest of the OS would be a nightmare today for so many reasons; but the UI was fantastic.

Ah yes, Mac OS 8, I have very, very limited experience with it, mostly in the form of one/two-week bursts on taking over from a coworker whenever he went on holiday. It's loooong time ago but on the negatives I remember getting very annoyed with this app called Toaster, on the positives I remember thinking how extremely pretty everything looked (still does) and being blown away by little things like, to set the icon for a folder or document you could just copy and paste one over from another file :)

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#17
When iOS introduced the long press, that pretty much did it for me: I couldn't tell what user interface element did what when I pressed on it, so I tried tapping everything. And now we have to long-press on things to make them do other things. I can't spend time tapping then long-pressing on elements to do what I think or hope the app can do.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#18
post #2

The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…

Recently I bought a MBP and I'm surprised by how hard to use it is.

Printing by both sides? Not supported, you must do it by hand. And some apps print the pages in reverse order, so you end up having to sort the pages.

Use numberpad . as . instead of ,? You have to download an app to use a sane default.

Alt+. in terminal? No luck if you aren't using an English keyboard.

Run a downloaded app? Run it, accept failure, settings, security, look for blocked app, enable it. It is even worse than Windows Vista.

Give some app permissions? Yeah, you must know which permissions, as you cannot search by app...

And so on...

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#19
post #2

The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…

Recently I bought a MBP and I'm surprised by how hard to use it is. Printing by both sides? Not supported, you must do it by hand. And some apps print the pages in reverse order, so you end up having to sort the pages. Use numberpad . as . instead of ,? You have to download an app to use a sane default. Alt+. in terminal? No luck if you aren't using an English keyboard. Run a downloaded app? Run it, accept failure, s…

It has been possible to print double-sided since at least Lion/2008…

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#20
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed about discoverability issues. Everything is hidden. Hiding power user features is one thing, but you can't hide the basic stuff. IMHO UI usability hasn't been Apple's strong suit for a long time. In fact, as someone who has to use both Mac and PC, MacOS is just as terrible in many ways in not worse. What they do well device integration usability across their ecosystem.

Agreed. For me personally macOS (or OS X back then) usability peaked at around ~Snow Leopard and it's been _mostly_ though not entirely downhill from there on. Hard to pick a 'worst offender', the System Settings panel in Ventura may be a good example, it is a literal struggle every single time I need to change something, typically as a result of some setting mysteriously changing itself back to what I do not want.

I am not afraid of the decadence they’ve made of the settings panel because I use Alfred.

I haven’t yet installed Ventura. I had to downgrade from Monterey because the cmd-L keyboard shortcut had stopped working on Contacs.app

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