101–110 of 303 posts
I'm surprised we are still iterating on ideas like this, to be honest. Seems flight decks have been rather successful on complicated dashboards for a long time. Same with boats. Why can we take approximately no lessons from them?
Perhaps what we do on a pc is not really that complicated or critical compared to flying a plane or steering an oil tanker. Just a thought.
RIP Checkbox, 1990-2009, you were perfect and unambiguous but for some reason smartphone designers hated you.
I agree that checkboxes are perfect; but that's because I never try to fill forms on a smartphone. Native browser checkboxes are often unusable on smartphones; too small to hit with a thumb.
In defense of the ambiguity of digital toggles, I’d like to add that this is unsolved on most, if not all, physical light switches in homes and offices. Despite having existed for more than 50 years and most people are using multiple toggles a day with its labels, most people are unaware of the meaning of power symbol ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol )
While the NEC does not specify light switch toggle orientation, there seems to be a general convention among electricians and installers for the toggle switch to be positioned up for "on" and down for "off."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone make a car which has none of the complicated stuff? List of features I want: - automatic transmission (if ICE) - bluetooth and FM radio - no self steering - cruise control with "follow speed" - not-batshit-insane self-brake-system (use whatever Volvo uses, it works!) - good airbags and decent structural integrity - classic sedan height
> cruise control with "follow speed" If I'm reading you right, you want your car to follow the speed of the car in front of you? Usually delivered by radar assisted cruise control? That's complicated stuff, and you'll probably get lane keeping assistance too, because it's a package. At least on my car with lane keeping, there's a big button in the center console to disable it.
In defense of the ambiguity of digital toggles, I’d like to add that this is unsolved on most, if not all, physical light switches in homes and offices. Despite having existed for more than 50 years and most people are using multiple toggles a day with its labels, most people are unaware of the meaning of power symbol ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol )
Because language works through association and analogy, you don't actually need to know the etymology of a word or symbol to use or understand it. Any English speaker can understand perfectly well the words manual, manufacture and manicure without ever reflecting on the fact that "manus" in latin means "hand". We clearly haven't needed to rename these words "handual", "handufacture" and "handicure" for these concepts…
Etymology, etc. helps to understand what other people mean and have meant by the word, and what others will understand.
In defense of the ambiguity of digital toggles, I’d like to add that this is unsolved on most, if not all, physical light switches in homes and offices. Despite having existed for more than 50 years and most people are using multiple toggles a day with its labels, most people are unaware of the meaning of power symbol ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol )
Really? For me this always made intuitive sense reading it as one and zero, where zero would be off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Mute" "Unmute" I want a button to tell me what it does if I click it. If you want to show the current status that is a different thing, not a button. A button exists to be clicked, it should communicate what it will do if you click it.
So, while the button is not interacted with (unmuted) and not hovered over you would like a mute button to be what? Would you like it to be black and white with a microphone symbol where the microphone is white and the background is black? When you hover your mouse over it should a no symbol in red appear over it which could appear black for color blind? When you toggle this mute button should that no symbol stay on…
So when sound is playing, the button should have a symbol that conveys "mute", like a speaker in a stop symbol. If you hover over it, the tool tip should say "Mute" or something to that effect.
If the button is clicked, then the sound is muted. Now you could change to a symbol that conveys "unmute" like just a speaker symbol. Or you could let go of the whole button concept here because it's pretty clumsy and ambiguous, and just use a toggle switch instead. Could just have the text "Sound on" - "Sound off" on either side, or symbols if you prefer that.
You should never assume that the user knows anything. The UI should convey everything the user needs to know, trying to use some sort of convention doesn't work because there is no convention. Avoid using signal colors because as you alluded to that also gets complicated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t find it but one of my favourite designs was a switch with a “light” beside it that lit up when the state was “on.” So when I revisit that page after a long time and see that the light is lit, does it mean that the state is currently ON or does it mean that the state will change to ON when I click it? How can I tell this by instantly looking at the lit light?
We should go back to checkboxes. The problem here is having the text change and be too clever. [x] Mute [ ] Mute "Oh the X means it's muted" Windows 95 and probably an older Mac had it all figured out.
[ ] Muted
[x] MutedThis has been really frustrating to me lately with Microsoft Teams. If I'm in their app, the mute button is a microphone with a line through it (if mute is activated, i.e. if the mic is off). And the icon changes to a microphone without the slash over it to indicate that you are no longer muted. Makes sense. But if I join using the phone app on my phone, the same microphone with a line through it (that means you are…
This has been really frustrating to me lately with Microsoft Teams. If I'm in their app, the mute button is a microphone with a line through it (if mute is activated, i.e. if the mic is off). And the icon changes to a microphone without the slash over it to indicate that you are no longer muted. Makes sense. But if I join using the phone app on my phone, the same microphone with a line through it (that means you are…