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Toasts are bad UX

maxschmitt.me

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Re: Toasts are bad UX

#51

Post by lolinder »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #42

How about just getting rid of all food related jargon; salad bars, burgers, toasts, heroes etc.? As a backend developer this stuff is mind-boggling, just call it "notification widget", or a "confirmation widget" etc. Try explaining what toast is to an Indian subcontractor who has never eaten toasted bread in their life and then apply that to the UX usecase. Removing these terms will also improve accessibility and und…

While we're at it let's remove the jargon from other trades, too.

"P-trap" is a confusing word that plumbers use, we should instead have them say "gas barrier". And the word "fuse" makes very little sense in an electrical context—try explaining to someone who's never seen a stick of dynamite why the "overcurrent stopper" is named after a long gunpowder-infused cord! Traffic engineers shouldn't refer to "groups of cars" as "platoons" (they're not in the military!), and software developers should stop talking about "DDOS" and just say "lots of computers hitting my server at once"!

In all seriousness: jargon exists because it's useful to be able to refer to something that you use a lot conscisely and precisely. Your proposed replacements are not concise or precise, and they only solve the non-problem of people not understanding the etymology of the jargon. Part of learning a trade is learning the jargon associated with it, and that's true for every trade.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#52

Post by lagniappe »

snarfy wrote: post #48

They are bad UX if I can't disable them. I universally hate all notifications. Stop stealing my attention. It's cognitive abuse bordering on violence. If I want to know I will go look, you don't need to shove it in my face.

> It's cognitive abuse bordering on violence

Take a breath

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#53

Post by marcodiego »

There things worse than toasts: hidden slide panels. They are basically hidden toasts that are necessary for some actions and are completely unintuitive, unfindable and undiscoverable. My worst experience was with waze using the cellphone of someone else; I had to do something (don't remember what) and just stared at the screen (like a retard) trying to guess what I had to do; the person eventually got the phone, slid the hidden panel from the right and showed me what I had to do.

I understand how much this saves space, but it is absolutely ridiculous! How does an UX expert expects someone to guess that? Are current UI's supposed to be used by people who behave like children poking everywhere to discover things?

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#54

Post by cupantae »

lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

I agree. In the first example, you would assume the action completed even if you missed the toast. But in case you did notice it, that gives you a confirmation. Suboptimal? Maybe.

But the proposed solution is clearly worse, unless the loading circle turns into a tick to show completion

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#55

Post by fwip »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #42

How about just getting rid of all food related jargon; salad bars, burgers, toasts, heroes etc.? As a backend developer this stuff is mind-boggling, just call it "notification widget", or a "confirmation widget" etc. Try explaining what toast is to an Indian subcontractor who has never eaten toasted bread in their life and then apply that to the UX usecase. Removing these terms will also improve accessibility and und…

To a backend developer, the appearance of the "notification widget" doesn't matter.

To a front-end dev or designer, it does. That's who the jargon is for.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#56

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

marcodiego wrote: post #53

There things worse than toasts: hidden slide panels. They are basically hidden toasts that are necessary for some actions and are completely unintuitive, unfindable and undiscoverable. My worst experience was with waze using the cellphone of someone else; I had to do something (don't remember what) and just stared at the screen (like a retard) trying to guess what I had to do; the person eventually got the phone, sli…

I think most "toasts" (now I know the word for it!) are redundant and useless. I usually completely miss them. I think they are generally "harmless," but they should not be used to convey crucial information.

As for the "hidden panel," I have always assumed that this is a bug, but someone may have thought it was a good idea:

I use the Apple Connect App (for managing apps on the App Store) frequently.

If I use it on my iPad Mini, in portrait mode (how I usually use it), and select one of my apps, the back button often disappears, which means that I can't select another account (I have several), or another app within the current account.

Until I physically turn the iPad sideways.

Then, a Navigator appears on the left, and I can select other apps, or change accounts.

Frankly, I'm really quite disappointed in the whole UX for the Apple App Store backend (I'm not so thrilled with the frontend, either, but I use the backend all the time). It's a bit jarring, when you think about how much care they put into the rest of the user experience on the platform.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#57

Post by cowsandmilk »

lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing.

Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was actually archived.

I would much rather only get the toast if there is a failure to commit the change. Generally, them flashing up is a distraction from what I’m trying to accomplish. And being far on the screen from where I’m taking an action makes them even more of a distraction.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#58

Post by yxhuvud »

ervine wrote: post #7

Maybe bad UX, but global error / success handling of network requests is way easier than handling in every component that triggers one.

Then refactor your app to make it easy. If it is hard in your tool, choose a different tool that make it easy.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#59

Post by lolinder »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #57
lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing. Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was ac…

I disagree on that—in the YouTube example specifically this isn't necessarily a problem, but the toast serves a valuable purpose in the archive in that it tells you again which button it was that you pressed. There have been countless times in cases like that where the toast has saved me and allowed me to undo a misclick.

I can see the argument that there are certain places where people use toasts that are unnecessary and provide information that the user doesn't need. But that's not the same thing as toasts being bad UX in the general case.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#60

Post by briandear »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #42

How about just getting rid of all food related jargon; salad bars, burgers, toasts, heroes etc.? As a backend developer this stuff is mind-boggling, just call it "notification widget", or a "confirmation widget" etc. Try explaining what toast is to an Indian subcontractor who has never eaten toasted bread in their life and then apply that to the UX usecase. Removing these terms will also improve accessibility and und…

I’ve been a developer (primarily back end) and I never heard the term toast until now. Perhaps I’m just simple, or maybe I stopped paying attention after “hamburger menu.” I’m probably too old to hang out with the cool kids anymore.
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