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Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

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Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#171

Post by andai »

OJFord wrote: post #141
andai wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilarious, but I'm puzzled by his reaction to a hamburger menu: > Oh-oh. Drag-n-drop icon used for a dropdown menu - May 8, 2021 https://grumpy.website/post/0V_dyk3EP

You're only puzzled because of its ubiquity, and your accustom to it. Nothing about it inherently says 'opens a menu from the side'.

Late "edit": Turns out I'm the confused one! (Bit of sleep dep...) I thought this was the main menu for a page, just in a weird low position, but it's the menu that appears on hover for each item and in this context indeed would be interpreted as a drag handle. In this context perhaps something unambiguous like three vertical dots would have been better?

Also I agree with you -- perhaps the three lines represent a pictogram of a list (vertically stacked menu items?). And the triple dot version is either a compacted version of the same, or a vertical ellipsis?

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#172

Post by mikelward »

jonas21 wrote: post #167

On my Android phone, and probably the vast majority of Android phones, there is a UI affordance that the share options are scrollable. The rightmost icon is only partially visible, which makes it clear that there is more content that lies offscreen. This is the same affordance that's used on iOS devices. The author's phone happens to have a screen width that displays an exact number of icons, so this affordance break…

Not on my Pixel 4a. And not in the screenshot on the Android Developer site.

https://developer.android.com/training/sharing/send https://developer.android.com/images/training/sharing/shares...

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#173

Post by mikelward »

jonas21 wrote: post #167

On my Android phone, and probably the vast majority of Android phones, there is a UI affordance that the share options are scrollable. The rightmost icon is only partially visible, which makes it clear that there is more content that lies offscreen. This is the same affordance that's used on iOS devices. The author's phone happens to have a screen width that displays an exact number of icons, so this affordance break…

Are you sure you're looking at the native share sheet? It scrolls vertically, at least on Pixel on Android 11.

There's some intent: links on https://paul.kinlan.me/sharing-natively-on-android-from-the-... that you can use to trigger it. The first one there doesn't work for me, but the second one does.

     intent:#Intent;action=android.intent.action.SEND;type=text/plain;end

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#174

Post by axegon_ »

As much as I'm used to android(though still adjusting to the changes in android 12), I admit, every time a major change pops up, it takes me forever to get used to it. I remember when they removed the navigation buttons in favor of sliding your finger over the edge of the display. I can't describe how much I hated that. Sometimes I wonder what was wrong with ncurses for user interfaces and why on earth did people bother making and using anything.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#176

Post by jackson1442 »

mixedCase wrote: post #161
jackson1442 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how this one might be confusing- https://grumpy.website/post/0Vp0pSilq but the site is misrepresenting the state. That user's state is still "muted," the red line indicates that it is a client side mute (so the user who checked the mute box can't hear them, but everyone else can) while the mute icon without a red line indicates that the other user has muted themselves; they're not transmitting audio. There…

The Discord mute icon having three states is no excuse for it being bad. Unmuted -> The mic, no diagonal line. User muted -> Red diagonal line. Server muted -> Could be the muted icon with a lock next to it; or the diagonal red line replaced by vertical bars like a jail cell; or even a cross instead of a diagonal, maybe within a circle for further distinction.

Those are still three states with just different shapes. If you hover the symbol it tells you what it is and if that changed it to your system tomorrow I’d still need to hover to figure out what everything means. Unless replaced by text, I don’t see how changing the icons that all mean some form of “muted” really does anything.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#177

Post by dr_dshiv »

seanwilson wrote: post #43
dr_dshiv wrote: post #15

Sorry for this pedantic comment, but he is asking for signifiers not affordances. He wants affordances to be more perceptible. See Design of Everyday Things.

Is there a more intuitive word for "affordances" or similar? I find its definition is always debated or confused in the comments so I prefer to avoid it where possible.

The affordances of an object are with respect to the observer-- the object affords opportunities to the observer. It's like "resonance", which is not in the object or the perceiver but describes the relationship. Signifiers are on or in the object.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#178

Post by valuearb »

jp57 wrote: post #52

> Apple are slowly undoing their great usability work in the name of elegance. Not slowly, or recently. The big removal of affordances happened with IOS 7, and Jony Ive's "flat" UI aesthetic. Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini, former Apple UI researchers and champions of UI affordances, wrote an essay[1] complaining about this problem in 2015. It seems like this era might be slowly _ending_ now that Ive is gone. [1] ht…

What about when MacOS started hiding scrollbars? Ugh.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#179

Post by RedShift1 »

datavirtue wrote: post #103
recursivedoubts wrote: post #2

UI affordances have been going away for a long time. FlatUI was the first nearly universal obviously-user-hostile movement. It happened out of boredom and the slow intrusion of the contempt-for-the-audience attitude of art and architecture into web design. Unfortunately, unlike art, we can't ignore architecture or UI design.

It happened out of an explosion of pretentious eccentricity flowing out of people who never sat with a user.

This 1000x over. Lots of times I think to myself, there is absolutely no way whoever designed this, has actually tried to use it.

Re: Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?

#180

Post by RedShift1 »

atatatat wrote: post #37
mikelward wrote: post #21

The share sheet on Android is super confusing. It doesn't help that several apps implement their own, and some of them scroll horizontally while others scroll vertically. Edit: apparently they're forcing apps to use the native share sheet in Android 12? https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/06/01/android-12-will-spe...

Only one problem with the Share dialog: Doesn't "hint" at horizontal scrollability, just shows four apps as if that's all there is. I've seen this trip up advanced users and parents alike.

UI designers hate scrollbars. They must be eliminated. But why? I don't understand.
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