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UI Design Dos and Don'ts

developer.apple.com

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Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#81

Post by b15h0p »

vbezhenar wrote: post #78
johnnyo wrote: post #22

Agree with these, but in my opinion, the date selector wheels in iOS are a terrible design. Three rolling wheels just doesn't map to most people's concept of a calendar

What I absolutely hate is minute picker. 60 items is just too much to scroll. For most usages 5 minutes step is enough and 12 items much better. As for calendar, I never had any problems with it. Of course it's not standard way that most people get used to, but I think any person will understand what to do.

A double tap on the minute picker switches between 1- and 5-minute increments, afaik.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#82

Post by kagamine »

wampus wrote: post #31

Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more refl…

Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences, whereas on the header it is not necessary, it's just one word, there is no train of thought to follow there. This would be considered good UX [source: I don't have anything to link to right now, but I do have a degree in Interaction Design]

The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at Apple is listening. The power button on the keyboard is retarded (no other word for it, sorry), super glossy screens so you can't even see it in your own house.

As for Apple shortcuts, well, many make perfect sense and this isn't something anyone else does better. MS Word even changes them depending upon system language, so Word in Norwegian uses Ctrl+F for "fett" or bold. Imagine how annoying that is when someone asks you for help. It happens at application level too, especially with non-US keyboards, just press ctrl+[ to access this feature, and no you cannot remap the shortcuts. Well, dandy, I can't access [ without pressing 2 other keys already. So I'll just press the X in the corner instead.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#83

Post by kagamine »

b15h0p wrote: post #81
vbezhenar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I absolutely hate is minute picker. 60 items is just too much to scroll. For most usages 5 minutes step is enough and 12 items much better. As for calendar, I never had any problems with it. Of course it's not standard way that most people get used to, but I think any person will understand what to do.

A double tap on the minute picker switches between 1- and 5-minute increments, afaik.

That's a perfect example of "Apple thought of everything" except how well that feature is hidden from the user. I mean, who was the first person to discover that? And I'll bet money it was by accident.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#84

Post by kagamine »

radley wrote: post #13
Mandatum wrote: post #12

These are common sense design "do's" and "don'ts". Most developers, and any designer worth their salt should know these.

Sadly, Apple is guilty of these often, with too many examples to list (but particularly contrast). (eg. @eli_schiff - he's been ranting about them today).

They're all guilty and they should all be hanged, only today I was asked to set up 2-step auth for a Google account and I see that Google are still using "ex" to mean example for telephone numbers. For those of old enough to remember this looks awfully like the old "ext." meaning extension. Since when did "eg." become too hard for people, it is the established abbreviation for example in English. The only reference i could find to "ex" outside of google was a wiki-something page using it. Is this something I should have been made aware of before now in my decades long life?

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#85

Post by kagamine »

rimantas wrote: post #68
erlkonig wrote: post #48

Their "contrast" section belies their determination, since the text there is grey on a white background, and true black on white would unquestionably be more readable. (looking at UI designers more generally:) I'm so sick of UIs that have repetitive, huge, contrasty, readable headings... only to have the core useful text be grey-on-something, tiny, possibly italic, and so on. Idiots, and they are legion. More subtle…

Black on white is actually bad combination, it strains the eyes.

Black on white is a hand-me-down from print that made it's way to web without anyone giving it much thought. It is indeed too great a contrast for back-lit screens. Google results also show the page descriptions using grey on white. Surprising that so few people know of this.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#86

Post by kagamine »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #51

Android be like: been there done that

Android be like, press anywhere on the row to check the box on the right. And anywhere on the row to go to the next page in the menu. And anywhere on the row to do nothing, but press the arrow all the way to the right to go to the next page. Android be liek: we didn't think this through. At all.

Not defending some of the choices Apple make, but if you want to get into an old-style flame war of Apple UX versus Android / Win / Linux / anything, you better come with a better argument than that.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#87

Post by TuringTest »

kagamine wrote: post #82
wampus wrote: post #31

Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more refl…

Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences, whereas on the header it is not necessary, it's just one word, there is no train of thought to follow there. This would be considered good UX [source: I don't have anything to link to right now, but I do have a degree in Interaction Design] The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at App…

> Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences

That may the single most propagated unfounded myth in UI design this decade. [1] While it's true that pure black on pure white causes problems for some dyslexic users, there is also a _minimum_ required contrast [2], which is routileny ignored by many "stylish" web sites.

The plague of contrast-less "light grey on white" have been adopted by plenty of "web 3.0" sites out of following fashionable trends, to the point of making them unreadable.

I've been forced to place a "Contrast" bookmarklet on the toolbar of all my browsers to fix all those terrible contrast-less pages I found everywhere, and I'm forced to use it dozens of times a day to alleviate my aching eyes. (Hexadecimal #333 is my personal upper level of comfort on white backgrounds, anything above that begins physically hurting my eyes when reading any kind of long text).

[1] http://contrastrebellion.com/

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#88

Post by coldpie »

kagamine wrote: post #82
wampus wrote: post #31

Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more refl…

Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences, whereas on the header it is not necessary, it's just one word, there is no train of thought to follow there. This would be considered good UX [source: I don't have anything to link to right now, but I do have a degree in Interaction Design] The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at App…

> Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences

This sounds like wives-tale baloney. Please disregard this "advice" and make your text readable. The text on this page from Apple is too low contrast.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#89

Post by coldpie »

TuringTest wrote: post #87
kagamine wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences, whereas on the header it is not necessary, it's just one word, there is no train of thought to follow there. This would be considered good UX [source: I don't have anything to link to right now, but I do have a degree in Interaction Design] The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at App…

> Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences That may the single most propagated unfounded myth in UI design this decade. [1] While it's true that pure black on pure white causes problems for some dyslexic users, there is also a _minimum_ required contrast [2], which is routileny ignored by many "stylish" web sites. The plague of contrast-less "light grey on…

> I've been forced to place a "Contrast" bookmarklet on the toolbar of all my browsers

Could you please share these? I'm not web-programming-savvy enough to make anything that'd be generally useful.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#90

Post by k-mcgrady »

johnnyo wrote: post #22

Agree with these, but in my opinion, the date selector wheels in iOS are a terrible design. Three rolling wheels just doesn't map to most people's concept of a calendar

Personally I love them. I hate when apps put in their own calendar control. It's always more time consuming to get where I want whereas with the wheel I can quickly spin it to move to where I want quickly.
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