Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem So Readable?

The question what role aethstetics should play in design is very interesting.

A lossy audio compression algorithm relies on quirks of human hearing. Those who designed it used their precise understanding of how human hearing works. How would you go about designing a lossy audio compression algorithm without being allowed to learn anything about human hearing?

I believe it would be very much impossible. Humans have no intuitive understanding of the details of human hearing and there are an huge amount of possible ways of reducing the size of an audio file (like throwing away every second bit). There is no possible way you can A/B test all the possible ways and humans have no intuitive understanding of the details of hearing. You can’t intuitively decrease the search space. Aethstetics don’t help you, an understanding of how humans actually work is necessary.

Not everything is like lossy audio compression but I believe there are parallels. Aethstetics do sometimes help you decrease the search space and A/B tests get you the rest of the way but my suspicion is that a true understanding of how humans actually work would always be preferable.

I find Android a lot easier to use than iOS. What I've noticed when using an iOS device is that I often can't figure out how to do something. Then I research it and discover that it simply can't be done. Easy to learn, but unusable.

Android, on the other hand, trades discoverability for usability. I have heard that some Android users don't even know that they can pull down the notification bar. But once you learn to do that, it's a wonderfully usable system. (Same for long-press. What to do something with a thing you see? Press and hold. Works every time, but not something you would necessarily think to do.)

I think when people say "Android is unusable" they really mean, "Apple's icons are prettier", which is absolutely true. iOS devices look stunning on billboards and on TV. Android devices? Meh. (I blame the tastelessness of the carriers, though. A big fucking robot eyeball as the background? NASCAR and Sprint logos all over the place? Fuck off and die. AOSP is nice looking, though.)

(Want to see the biggest software disaster ever in the history of humanity? The Nook Color with Android. B&N's effort to cripple Android was so half-hearted that they unintentionally created the worst computing device ever made. Examples: you can select text and choose "copy", but they removed "paste" from the long-tap menu on text fields. You can copy, but not paste. They also made their own "buttons" that work like Android's; Back (which is an undiscoverable gesture, not a button), Menu, Home. But sometimes, you also get the normal Android buttons. So you have two menus (that work alike, but have different items), two back buttons (that work differently, sometimes), and so on. WHAT WERE THEY ON WHEN THEY DESIGNED THIS.

I'm going to be honest. I've never been so upset by anything ever. Using one of these things made me want to strangle the life out of everyone involved with the project and then go buy an iPad.

And oh yeah, the fucking screen flickers like a dying fluorescent light. HOW CAN YOU FAIL SO BADLY.

The one good thing is that they do not advertise that they are using Android.

But I digress.)

My girlfriend admits Chrome is faster and generally better, but still uses Firefox because it's friendlier and designed more to her tastes.

Chrome on OSX is fantastic, my only beef being that some options are in unintuitive places. For example, 'Extensions' is under 'Window'. Why? There's a perfectly good crescent wrench just sitting by its lonesome self over there there in the corner. I've found Chrome to be the only browser that broke away from the traditional browser format, and pulled it off beautifully. By contrast, FF 3.6 on OSX is hideous.

Is it wrong of me to scoff? It's pretty obvious from the screenshots that the text density and outlines are the most important and easily noticed factors.