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Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

lobste.rs

51–60 of 326 posts

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#51
post #2

I thinks this guy is missing the point. Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules. In the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use. The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.

Well, they can go back to the drawing board and do some more research. This was an example posted here a few weeks ago, by a heavy Calendar user. Look at the old and new app and see if you can answer a common question for a calendar user, like when do I have some free time in the next month: http://imgur.com/a/Qo91p

Also, not that it matters, but the old app is 2 MB and works flawlessly, the new one is more than 20 and chugs a bit when scrolling on a quad core processor.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#52
Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo!

The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful.

And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone app instead of unlocking the phone is becoming obscene. I often have my phone landscape while using it as a mini-tablet and in that orientation it's easy to do. Perhaps I'm paranoid but I think the screen now locks faster than it used to and I haven't been able to find the setting to slow it down yet, which exacerbates the problem, when you're lounging and intermittently transferring your attention between tv and internet browsing.

And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day.

The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're constantly fighting the brightness of your phone at night.

The new notification have to be double tapped, which again is awkward, especially as they register the first tap and then "helpfully" tell you to make a 2nd one. But the first tap is behind a button press of the lock screen so it's actually a triple press.

I'm also slightly perplexed as to the home button icon change, to a circle of all things. It actually offends me a bit, it's so tiny and yet completely devoid of meaning. It's different for Apple's circle button as that was a real button, Google's tiny circle just kinda floats there. And the "back" triangle changes orientation for no discernible reason other than the designer obviously wanted to animate something.

The new phone app is strange, the buttons are too small, the volume of the button presses doesn't turn down as you turn down the speaker volume.

And this is in a day and a half of use. It honestly feels like anyone testing it would have hit most of these issues. I suspect Google's designers then turned round to the testers and said "As designed. Material, you know. It's just a new way", rather than admit they'd screwed up.

The worst part is, it's not added anything. I've not come across a single thing yet that I've gone, oh, cool! Not one.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#53

"There are a bunch of new ‘transitions’ between elements. I don’t know what the battery cost actually is for this, but as a user I just don’t care about cute transitions between elements. I want fast interaction with my mobile device." This is poorly phrased at best. Transitions exist to make it obvious what is happening: e.g. you minimize a window and it zooms into the taskbar/dock, as a visual reminder that it's no…

At best their training wheels for a UI. As such if you can't turn them off your building a poor UI. Worse, if your UI needs them then clearly your using a bad design.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#54
post #14

Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!

More than one year after it happened the new GMaps interface still looks like crap, and on top of that it feels slow, on a Mac Mini with 4GB of memory. I still (don't know exactly how, could be a cookie thing, not sure) manage to have access to the old interface in one of my browsers, and the old interface works like a charm, both in terms of UI and speed.

And about GMail, nothing more to say, only that once you've managed to break the "Open in new tab" button and the "Back" button then you have no business doing UI-stuff in a browser.

Yes, I know both products are free as in I'm not paying anything for them, it's just that is really, really frustrating to compare them with how they used to behave.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#55
post #15

If only every application was just a backend with a well-defined API and a default UI, then we could have independently sourced UIs that every person could choose (and customize) on demand!

In this case - isn't it? Samsung is happy to almost completely change the whole look and feel. HTC has its own additions. Components like keyboards are completely separate apps. Nokia released their launcher. What's missing apart from people actually writing and releasing those independent UIs?

AFAIK, different OEMs just change the system's look and feel (desktop, launcher, keyboards, maybe some built-in apps that are usually crap/adware/spyware), not the UI of the actual applications (e.g. GMail).

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#56
post #14

Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!

I think it depends on what your complaint is. This article has a mix of solid complaints (they keyboard has been rearranged) and bad (transitions are gross!).

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#57

"There are a bunch of new ‘transitions’ between elements. I don’t know what the battery cost actually is for this, but as a user I just don’t care about cute transitions between elements. I want fast interaction with my mobile device." This is poorly phrased at best. Transitions exist to make it obvious what is happening: e.g. you minimize a window and it zooms into the taskbar/dock, as a visual reminder that it's no…

As a long time Android user I had the same complaint about the transitions that the author did. I've already had plenty of time to figure out how things work, so I don't need those visual cues, and it just makes the whole experience feel more laggy. At the same time I can see your point for new users. Random idea: what if those transitions just sped up over time so that the longer I use the app (and the more experienced I am with it) the more the UI would prioritize speed of use over friendly reminders about how UI elements work (ie. transitions).

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#58
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google sucks at UI. Period. They had one good UI: the original Google home page. Everything since then has not been about making their products more usable, it's been about finding ways to cram more advertising into their products. This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.

> This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you. I do not think that necessarily follows. Even if you are not the customer, they likely (think they) are designing it for you. Because they need you to keep giving them your data, they need you to find the UI easy to use and easy to hand over data.

Data is easy for them to get since, you know, they control the OS behind your phone and will get the data anyway.

The new Google Maps UI is fucking custom tailored to showing you advertisements. It's much less useful now for things like driving directions or finding businesses that don't pay for sponsorship (i.e. if I search for "Rite Aid" from my house, it shows me a Rite Aid 3 miles away instead of the one literally 50 feet from my front door.)

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#59
post #22

This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI. One phrase I hear a lot is “The future is longer than the past”. It's relevant here as well – spending all of your time worrying about existing users have to spend a couple minutes getting used to a new keyboard design isn't a good reason not to make improvements w…

>Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI. Off course he will. It's his point. He alreadey stated that it is not the ui that is bad. It's the practice of constantly changing things for no good reason that is bad.

Re: Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason

#60
>> "why is the Compose button a floating button taking up space in my Inbox list"

Because it's a button people use a lot and putting it there makes it much easier to get to. It doesn't 'cover' anything. You can scroll the inbox past it. It's a new design pattern in Android and used very well in Inbox imo by making the button expand and show most used actions.

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