I would prefer if references were highlighted using single colour :)
It helps if you're on a phone or narrower window, in which case the color is like a separate mark.
Button Pushes You (2022)
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#12Gosh, yes, I find this style of obtuse labeling of buttons to be really annoying. It's especially prevalent when you're trying to get to API docs on some new framework you're checking out. Like, don't tell me I want to get started. Take me to the docs so I can decide if it's worth my time. On reflection, this progression from function to call to action to obfuscated self-help-ish verbiage seems more like a general tr…
Might be a tangent but trying to do end of tax year stuff when each service hides stuff like invoices behind screens of these kinds of buttons. Godaddy is horrendous: I think I had to click domain.name, manage, taken to a screen upselling me hosting them find some settings, click account, click my domain name again then something else then you get a list of invoices. On the plus side they exist! (as opposed to Amazon…
I mean, GoDaddy specifically and smaller hosting providers in general have been a humongous pile of hacks and semi-functional abandoned marketing pushes for 20+ years. They're a master study in surviving by your fingernails, but definitely not in how to build a well-functioning user interface. What's more surprising is how many brand new companies get it totally wrong, when they don't have all that technical debt saddling them and there are plenty of great design examples to choose from.
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#13Slightly off topic, but I love the way that blog design uses the right gutter for annotations. Keeps it in context beautifully.
Edward Tufte's sidenotes. https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/
"Sidenotes are like footnotes, except they don’t force the reader to jump their eye to the bottom of the page, but instead display off to the side in the margin."
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#14I don't buy the politically laden, existentially fraught spin being sold here.... "Users have to accept the spelled out mantra and change their attitude before accessing the next piece of information." "The user should transform themselves into a “doer,” rather than being considerate, evaluating options" "Before proceeding, users should identify with this new aristocratic class." C'mon. It's just a way to visually em…
It's infantilizing, though. Compared with marketing copy of old. Much of which can just be laid at the feet of a corporate nanny state that infantilizes everyone. Which is ultimately a political point.
Can you link to some examples of "marketing copy of old"? I'm curious to know how it differs.
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#15Sometimes, when faced with button choices "OK" and "Maybe Later", I open devtools and relabel the latter to "Fuck off" before clicking on it. I used to think it futile, but now I understand that this allows me to dismiss the modal without myself being pushed by a button.
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's infantilizing, though. Compared with marketing copy of old. Much of which can just be laid at the feet of a corporate nanny state that infantilizes everyone. Which is ultimately a political point.
Can you link to some examples of "marketing copy of old"? I'm curious to know how it differs.
Oh I mean, everything from the Marlboro man to "Just Do It" to Apple's "Think Different" was basically a corporate hook carefully crafted to be an appeal to individualism - although Apple threaded a needle with respect to exactly whom they chose to glorify as exemplars. The marketing pablum of the past decade that appeals to tribal identity, or a lack of sense of self searching for identity, (socially conscious identity or its opposite number), and which talks down to people, is bad marketing plain and simple. It's also corrosive to a state of affairs in which people learn to take responsibility for their own decisions, as it places the onus or impulse on external structures. I'd much rather hear that I'm a rugged individual for smoking Marlboros than that I'm joining a burgeoning herd by "exploring" some new NodeJS framework. But hey, I was conditioned to reject authority in the age when rejecting authority was genuinely difficult and not a paved road. And my generation's ad agencies had to write campaigns that contended with that, which as deceitful and devious as they were, reflected a reality about our society's impulse to rebuff control which largely no longer exists.
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#17I don't buy the politically laden, existentially fraught spin being sold here.... "Users have to accept the spelled out mantra and change their attitude before accessing the next piece of information." "The user should transform themselves into a “doer,” rather than being considerate, evaluating options" "Before proceeding, users should identify with this new aristocratic class." C'mon. It's just a way to visually em…
I find it interesting that you insist there is no value to word choice on buttons in this comment, but your previous comment thread four hours prior (and ongoing) on another post delves into very pedantic semantics on naming types. Would you please explain the difference between the two cases?
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#18tricks users into performing work for the system they’re using.
Yeah, I mean we have been doing work for these systems. We’re all basically data entry for a giant database that ends up I suppose getting mined for value and maybe producing AI.
That was Larry pages Initial goal with Google anyway, his goal was to create an AI not a search engine, and the search engine was simply a means to that, I feel sad for him as seems like openai got there first.
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#19I know ux/ui design is super important, but as an outsider, articles like this always seem like insane navel gazing
Re: Button Pushes You (2022)
#20Gosh, yes, I find this style of obtuse labeling of buttons to be really annoying. It's especially prevalent when you're trying to get to API docs on some new framework you're checking out. Like, don't tell me I want to get started. Take me to the docs so I can decide if it's worth my time. On reflection, this progression from function to call to action to obfuscated self-help-ish verbiage seems more like a general tr…
Regarding AB-testing, at which place do you think people enter more doors: In a clear accessible architecture or in an totally obscure maze?
More links clicked doesn't mean more people got to where they wanted to go, it could also just mean they had to try every link in order to find the one they looked for.
The most important thing to me is a clear structure and a button that takes me ro rhe clear structure. A website should be like a house. Ideally I already see at the entrance how the house is laid out and can decide where to go.