See also this author's Short Thoughts on Computers and Programming:
The Decline of Usability (2020)
121–130 of 241 posts
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#122Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fucking scrollbar back now? I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious befor…
Slide switches are just awful. A skeuomorphism that doesn't work. Checkboxes are far better, assuming there aren't double negatives in the label text (e.g. a check means something is disabled.... the developers who do this should be shot at dawn).
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#123UX designer here who has done nothing but design web, mobile and related UI since about 2000, mostly working for or at large consumer brands (and now thinking of retiring). I'd definitely agree with the idea that change for change's sake is responsible for a lot of usability problems. But a bigger problem is the near extinction of any professional discussion or capable analysis of design by the people who are doing i…
Sounds like the syndrome plaguing GNOME. :)
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#124I cannot prove it, but I think some of these UI and UX horrors are caused by the ever present need for software to change in order to demonstrate it is alive. Imagine you reach peak usability in $YourApp, in the year of our lord 2023. It's maybe not perfect , but there's no conceivable way your app's usability can improved past this point. Users are reasonable proficient, everything mostly clicks into place past the…
Completely agree: change for the sake of change. I held my breath for a while after Office 2007, hoping the Open/Libre Office developers wouldn't be tripping over themselves to implement the Ribbon, too. That they've held fast all these years is one small bright spot.
The "ribbon" is when I stopped using Office.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#125It has taken me a least a year to learn the right gesture combination to close apps on iPhone 13. Many operations are very subtle. However, I seem to be far less bothered by modern usability than some others. My brain is hard wired for novelty it seems. I would not want to use Windows 2000 for example.
That sounds like a good thing. Apps should almost never be killed. The OS automatically kills suspended apps when it needs more ram
Apple support recently told me to kill all other apps to make the Files app work. It was taking ages to download and save data.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#126Usability has increased, the problem is we are not the intended users, we are cattle to be sold as data or attention to the users who publish their adds.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#127The past decade or so, I've found myself in a constant battle with UI/UX team members.
A big part of the battle seems to be a shift from power/tool user to consumer design paradigms. 20 years ago, most software was tools for professionals, now most software (on a usage level at least) is consumer software (literally consumers of video, social media etc.) Designers can't seem to switch modes and keep trying to apply "content consumption" rules and techniques to "jobs to be done" projects.
A favourite is removing visible tools with 3-dot menus in the name of "cleaner" or "more intuitive" user interface that turns one-click actions into two clicks: 2 clicks hundreds of times a day for the tool users. Tables that show 10 items with 4 details each in the same screen real estate that used to show 20 items with 6-8 details. Dashboards that show 4 graphs instead of 10. Menus that take up the top 10-20% of the app. Massive H1 titles.
One of my aunts changes around her furniture constantly, not because she has an idea of a better layout but because she's bored with the current layout. This seems to be a common personality trait in PMs and/or UX people. Adding a 4th table view to the product? ... "we should use this entirely different style" not because it's "better". Since COVID, I've run a weekly Google meet with friends ... it changes in some way pretty much every time we get together, most recently the request to join process has changed, again, and not for the better.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#128100% on target. Windows, which advanced the state of the GUI nicely in the ‘90s, has regressed into an absolutely infuriating, incompetent UI disaster.
I have always felt that the pinnacle of Windows usability was Windows 2000 Professional. Clean, mostly intuitive, few gratuitous animations. It's been downhill ever since.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#129Even worse, the trend away from good UX is leaking from software to hardware. Who at Kia thought this was a good idea? Three steps to open the door. Requires two hands. Good luck if you’re an amputee, have arthritis, can’t see the door unlock touch zone, or just can’t figure it out. https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=Rv5so7szIMM Then there’s Elon’s obsession with that stupid F1-style steering wheel. And V…
Cars are particularly bad these days, where once they were a model of streamlined usability. My father-in-law's van has three large knobs next to each other on the dash. Which one adjusts the volume, which one the fan speed, and which one switches gears? Hope you don't pick the wrong one while driving at highway speeds!
Steering wheel buttons are another one. They do different things at different times, depending on what mode your dash display is in.
Ever wonder why old airplane dashboards look so complicated? It's because each switch and dial does one thing and that thing never changes.
Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)
#130Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fucking scrollbar back now? I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious befor…
> I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. I've done that, man. Quite embarrassing.
Embarrassing for the app/os designers.