Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Confusing UI in iOS7

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 192 posts

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#161

Post by hahainternet »

aufreak3 wrote: post #159
coldtea wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. Wrong on all counts. What the author complaints about are examples of broken standard usability guidelines that all experts agree upon. Like consistency, affordances, the pr…

> The similar looking button in the Timer screen DID give visual feedback when pressed. In a consistent UI, either this button would do too, or neither would. Visual feedback needs to serve a purpose. This is a stop watch we're talking about - one that shows time in tens of milliseconds, which is less than one frame interval at 60fps. Any animation done would hinder the function of the stop watch and raise ambiguity…

That is a ludicrous argument. An animation does not affect timer functionality unless you are an incompetent coder.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#162

Post by latj »

callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

I didnt like the article either. I had different experiences than the ones he described and I also doubt he even had those experiences himself.

Also, while some of the experiences are not consistent within the time apps, they are artifacts that users already recognize- did he really get confused by the "cross?" Its a plus and its in the upper right hand corner of an app where you can add alarms...

This kinds of reminds me of an anthropologist trying to get a paper published in an journal for psychologists. Where is the rigorous application of science? Where are the statistics?

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#163

Post by andrewfong »

callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

The general point of consistency is valid though. On the add alarm screen, I personally couldn't tell at first how you would add an alarm because the + was small and had no outline -- i.e. inconsistent with buttons elsewhere in the app.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#164

Post by ShirtlessRod »

hahainternet wrote: post #161
aufreak3 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The similar looking button in the Timer screen DID give visual feedback when pressed. In a consistent UI, either this button would do too, or neither would. Visual feedback needs to serve a purpose. This is a stop watch we're talking about - one that shows time in tens of milliseconds, which is less than one frame interval at 60fps. Any animation done would hinder the function of the stop watch and raise ambiguity…

That is a ludicrous argument. An animation does not affect timer functionality unless you are an incompetent coder.

Yes, but it's equally ludicrous to say that the stopwatch "didn't give the visual feedback". It started incrementing those huge numbers, didn't it?

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#165

Post by gurkendoktor »

x0054 wrote: post #100

What I find worrisome is that these UI ideas are bleeding over into OSX. Take a look at the new Build Phases tab in Xcode. It used to be nice and clear, now it's just a see of white, and it's hard to visually see how different elements on that page relate to each other, especially on a large screen. As I often say, life is about balance. Apple used to have way too much UI chrome. Now they have way too little. I hope…

Also: Good luck figuring out which part of the Xcode UI has the focus right now. Code editor? Assistant editor? Debugger console? File hierarchy? The clues are so subtle that they might as well not be there. Having to look for the blinking cursor on a big screen is annoying.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#166

Post by lstamour »

masklinn wrote: post #128
arrrg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bug, working as intended. German region format obviously also emtails German day and month names. That's really quite obvious.

> German region format obviously also emtails German day and month names. That's really quite obvious. It's not. In fact, it's nonsensical. If I have a language setting, I want things in that language, not in an other one. The format spells out where items are relative to one another, what the various separators and interspersed characters are and if applicable what size the various elements are (e.g. months could be…

The confusion appears to be that there's an English - Germany setting and a German - Germany setting, as you point out in this comment. You have to distinguish between countries and languages when requesting a date format. It's unfortunately just that complicated. Why? Because some people never learn another date style even if they prefer a different language. This isn't as much of a problem when dates are represented in a straightforward way, but some regions are really different and if travelling in a different country, you may want to borrow that country's date formats without changing the rest of your system language. It's equally possible that some date representations don't "translate" and so to properly support all date formats, languages may need to be overridden. I'm not saying it's obvious -- but then country restrictions were always man-made and rarely make sense in the first place. Personally, I blame languages named after countries. ;-)

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#167

Post by lstamour »

shurcooL wrote: post #134

Nice article, I agree with most points. Just one comment. Don't people know you can drag and drop alarms; you just have to tap and hold? Similar to rearranging apps on home screen.

People were mentally comparing it to how the calendar works ("drag and drop") as opposed to the home screen ("hold to enter edit mode so icons wiggle in fear, then drag and drop"). In part this is because we intuitively assume that the only thing we should be able to do with such icons is either click once to select, or hold to drag and drop. It doesn't occur to us that hold might do something else, as in the home screen's swipe, for instance. This makes even less sense when you realize a calendar has many reasons to enable dragging blank space to move around to new dates and times, while a schedule of alarms auto-repeats every 7 days and has no need for horizontal scrolling as a result. It was simply rushed for iPad. Neat idea, needs more work. :)

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#168

Post by robmcm »

mmuro wrote: post #101

The timer circles go gray when touched to indicate you can hold the button and then let go when you are ready.

Can you not do the same with the stop watch? Or is the idea that as soon as you touch is starts, to reduce lag?

If so that is quite clever...

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#169

Post by wildgift »

andrewfong wrote: post #163
callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

The general point of consistency is valid though. On the add alarm screen, I personally couldn't tell at first how you would add an alarm because the + was small and had no outline -- i.e. inconsistent with buttons elsewhere in the app.

Same here. These thin-lined icons also slow me down.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#170

Post by ryall »

hellweaver666 wrote: post #43
andyhmltn wrote: post #2

Nice post. The one that REALLY annoys me is reminders. If I want to add a reminder, I would assume subconsciously I have to press the add symbol. But that adds a new list. To add a new item you have to tap an empty white box with no visual cue . Brilliant.

For me the big annoyance are the "shuffle" and "repeat" buttons in the music app. Identical buttons right next to each other in the interface and they behave differently. I can't even tell if the shuffle is active or not as the labels toggle between "shuffle" and "shuffle all". Which one is "off" ?

I take it you haven't tried to rate a song yet? I spent 5 minutes mashing the screen before I noticed the 'Rating' text. Then spent another 5 minutes tapping, swiping up down left right on that text before I gave up. I finally figured out that you have to tap the track (silly me, thought that would play it over again) to rate it. I still don't actually know if that 'Rating' text does anything
Post reply on HN