21–30 of 71 posts
Your reader's mindset is contentious from the get-go, and they're going to want to prove you wrong if statement is controversial. It doesn't bode well for your point if you can't convincingly back it up.
The true point in this article is that visual cues within UIs are great and nice. It's a huge victory when you can educate your user naturally (see: the popular Super Mario Bros example), but it just doesn't apply to everything. Not everything is innate; some new things need to be taught. How do we learn most things? We observe someone doing the same thing.
This is utter nonsense. Spend even a small amount of time with someone who works outside of the computer hardware/software industry and observe how and why they use a smart phone or computer. UI walkthroughs are not only necessary, but desired. They act as the equivalent of standing next to someone and "showing" them how something works. As the OP correctly notes there is a very heavy reliance on mimicry for most lea…
Self-evident interfaces (i.e. lots of affordances, very little tutorial needed to get started) can be good for people who just want to pick up an app and understand it.
BUT, there are also people who want to interact with something in the fastest, most efficient way possible. If a novel new UI can shave even milliseconds off of common repeated tasks, a 60 second tutorial is definitely worth it.
If you need to teach people how to use your product you failed at UX. And the time spend on walkthroughs and quick tips would have been better spend on rethinking the whole interaction model.
That being said, it doesn't mean your product is going to fail just because your UI sucks! Sometimes the problem a product is solving is so big that users don't care how clunky it is to use...great examples: Banking, Cars and most Email clients for example.
This is utter nonsense. Spend even a small amount of time with someone who works outside of the computer hardware/software industry and observe how and why they use a smart phone or computer. UI walkthroughs are not only necessary, but desired. They act as the equivalent of standing next to someone and "showing" them how something works. As the OP correctly notes there is a very heavy reliance on mimicry for most lea…
One of irks I have with "slight visual cues and subtle animations" is that they assume all users will give the same amount of attention and have the same reasoning process as the designer does. They then call the design "obvious", as if that is an objective quality---but even a short conversation (or usability study) with a sample of their users will tell them it's anything but.
The 'obvious' lock screen camera thing on the iPhone is a perfect example of something that I haven't seen anyone figure out on their own. It doesn't look or behave like anything else on the iPhone, including the only other interactive element in that same lock screen. Once you DO know, the cues are nice reminders.
The Pudding Monsters example is terrible too, as it precisely a UI walkthrough. Minimal, because well, the UI in that game is minimal, but it is explicitly telling you what to do and how to do it. (BTW the game is wonderful)
I never realized how many apps on my iPhone was such shit :(. FML.
This is utter nonsense. Spend even a small amount of time with someone who works outside of the computer hardware/software industry and observe how and why they use a smart phone or computer. UI walkthroughs are not only necessary, but desired. They act as the equivalent of standing next to someone and "showing" them how something works. As the OP correctly notes there is a very heavy reliance on mimicry for most lea…
Discoverability needs to be layered. Come over and watch my Dad use your app. It's astonishing how much we take for granted.
If you have to be taught how to drive a car, they blew it.
The reason why UX has to be so much more discoverable on apps, websites etc. is that there is a hell of a lot more of them and they often are created by clever fucks that decide to do things in novel ways.
