251–260 of 267 posts
Gosh, if only there was some kind of curated App Store run by Apple which only sold apps which had been reviewed and vetted by human beings who could check for this kind of thing.
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I agree with this. I think design has a serious principle-agent problem. A beautiful design will live forever on your personal portfolio, but no one can directly experience usability there. So designers are fighting competing incentives to do what’s right for this product, and what’s right for their professional image. I think this is partly the cause for trend toward stylish-but-less-useable.
Furthermore, many designers--at least those developing mobile apps etc.--are young people with good eyesight. There's also a general fashion element but I suspect this is one factor in the popularity of thin, small fonts today. (TBF, there's also a general trend towards simpler logos and the like which render well on mobile.)
And on iOS if you use the system font and standard styles, text automatically adjusts to accessibility settings. So I always suggest that but every designer wants to “make their mark” with custom fonts that either font work with accessibility or require a bunch of extra coding that the product owner never gives time for.
A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…
Let’s not get me started on tiny tap areas. Virtually every graphic designer I have ever worked with is ignorant of Apples 44 by 44 point recommendation. They just want their designs to look good, but give no though to how they feel, especially when trying to use them one handed or with disabilities.
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I guess much like aria attributes it varies based on the quality of the product/motivation of the business. I just tried one of my banking apps and a Reddit client and found neither provided tooltips - perhaps they thought those particular icons are too self explanatory or perhaps they didn't bother/used a cross platform tech that didn't make it easy. Actually even on Google maps I don't seem to get tooltips for the…
You say "even Google Maps", and something surprised me when I explored their SDK. So I don't know about Android, but the Google Maps SDK on iOS does not use the iOS widgets. They draw everything themselves. Integrating Google Maps is a pain, because standard layout techniques don't work (for example for labels on markers). The whole thing felt really ancient. It doesn't surprise me in the least that it didn't work as…
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Furthermore, many designers--at least those developing mobile apps etc.--are young people with good eyesight. There's also a general fashion element but I suspect this is one factor in the popularity of thin, small fonts today. (TBF, there's also a general trend towards simpler logos and the like which render well on mobile.)
Don’t get me started on font sizes. I’m older now and theee designs hurt my eyes. And on iOS if you use the system font and standard styles, text automatically adjusts to accessibility settings. So I always suggest that but every designer wants to “make their mark” with custom fonts that either font work with accessibility or require a bunch of extra coding that the product owner never gives time for.
The Google Maps thing isn’t entirely about screen size (though I would hope it wouldn’t be quite so bad on larger screens—but I’m only familiar with how it looks on a small-by-modern-standards Android phone, where it’s about the same as on the iPhone depicted in this article, or even a little less); it’s about the product’s overarching philosophy, which has changed over the past decade (in a direction I strongly disl…
Google Maps is not much better on larger screens unfortunately. It’s almost as if it wants to obscure the map area, no matter what you try. When using it you kind of feel how a once pioneering piece of tech and UX initially built by a small team got taken over by corporate Google which knows best what their users need...
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You say "even Google Maps", and something surprised me when I explored their SDK. So I don't know about Android, but the Google Maps SDK on iOS does not use the iOS widgets. They draw everything themselves. Integrating Google Maps is a pain, because standard layout techniques don't work (for example for labels on markers). The whole thing felt really ancient. It doesn't surprise me in the least that it didn't work as…
Writing a map view is like writing a game, you have no choice but to draw everything yourself if you want decent performance.
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Yep, too many UX professionals spend 95% of their energy on the look and maybe 5% on the feel.
In my experience, designers work in Figma. Then they play with and give feedback on what the mobile engineers actually built, same as the rest of us. Their critiques become backlog items and it is ultimately up to the PM which of them to prioritize and whether they are launch blockers. They may very well be fanatical about feel, but at the end of the day there is a long line of people who want mobile engineers to cha…
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The main problem here isn’t that apps/services don’t follow the guidelines per-se but that more and more software is designed not to solve a particular problem efficiently and get paid honest money for that effort but to waste as much of the user’s time as possible showing them “offers”. The industry calls this “engagement” and a large chunk of people’s salaries and careers (including mine at the beginning) is based…
This is kind of kicking an open door but the guideline explicitly is to design your app ‘to solve a particular problem efficiently’
Let’s stop sending paper bills because ads on there are too easy to ignore and make a labyrinthine app where the bill can be eventually accessed if users know the menu cheat code which will change regularly.
Did the guidelines mean you should solve a problem of the users or the company?
> Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users. Thanks. This attutude of respect on the UI side is why I'm tempted by the Apple platform. Unfortunately it looks like it's not as perfect as hoped initially and there's a lot of disrespect on other ends.
I am by myself, I have no money backing my sites, how much time spent catering to outliers do you think is reasonable?
Is it really that hard to test against them? Android developers would love to have it so easy I’m sure.