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The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

prog21.dadgum.com

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Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#61

Post by nothrabannosir »

rsync wrote: post #37
dman wrote: post #19

Request to all designers - please stop building nested scroll and drag interactions. Common pet peeve for me recently is embedded map widgets in web pages. A user scrolling the page will find at some point that their mouse has come over a map which is now eating the scroll events and they are now scrolling the map instead. Only choice at that point is to move the mouse over and start scrolling over. Bonus annoyance -…

"A user scrolling the page will find at some point that their mouse has come over a map which is now eating the scroll events and they are now scrolling the map instead." This annoyance has been widely extant for ten years or more - I think I first experienced it with google maps as I believe they were the first to zoom with scroll ... Seems easy to fix - sub window elements in the browser cannot zoom until clicked o…

As long as you also track "going out of focus" , to disable the scroll capturing again.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#62

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #53
prawn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I avoid updating apps that are working satisfactorily because many later add ads or other annoying functions.

Mind you, there's a large difference between standalone apps (e.g. most casual games), and client-server apps. Standalone apps—sure, don't update, who cares. But I don't begrudge the developer of a client-server app, that wants to change their server's API and then push an update to the client that speaks to the new API. Or, more to the point, I don't begrudge them if six months later they shut the old API down and t…

[deleted]

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#63

Post by Klinky »

analog31 wrote: post #10
mmatants wrote: post #7

If you decide to study how to build bridges, you will start out with calculus, build a background in science of materials and then a guided tour of approaches to structure-building. In addition, you have to learn typical environmental factors. And, of course, there are workflow patterns and human factors involved in actually constructing a typical bridge. Oh, and sure, there will be a bit of CAD. Let's apply this met…

I work in product development for things that have mechanical and electronic bits, etc. There are disciplined processes for designing things, typically applied to life support systems such as bridges and jet planes. Or, hi-reliability components like hard drives. But outside of life support products, I would guess that the majority of product development is only as disciplined as it needs to be, for what's being made…

While on the topic of airplanes, we shouldn't think they have perfect user interfaces. There have certainly been some design choices that should be criticized, and likely contributed to people dying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_fa...

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#64

Post by PhantomGremlin »

euske wrote: post #11
collinglass wrote: post #3

was hoping you were going to give a standard resource where I can find alternatives for common bad designs

I tend to rely on the Apple's UI guidelines. They have many hints that are applicable even for non-Apple apps. I remember Apple had a similar thing already back in 80s, which I found amazing. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserEx...

I tend to rely on the Apple's UI guidelines.

Please explain the OS X iTunes UI to me. It's beyond awful, and it seems to get worse with every update.

If there were a death penalty for bad UI designers, and I were in charge of implementing it, I'd have the iTunes designers first against the wall.

My guess is that iTunes doesn't follow Apple's guidelines?

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#65

Post by fit2rule »

sdoering wrote: post #49
macintux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a lot of grief from fellow software developers at Progeny (RIP Ian) for having that book lying around.

May I ask why? Is there anything wrong with that book from a developer's point of view?

It makes them think.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#66

Post by draegtun »

teyc wrote: post #18

Does anyone have enough experience with Tk and REBOL why these should be exemplar as far as UI and layout is concerned?

I've only had limited experience of Rebol View (VID & R3-GUI) so I don't feel qualified enough to give you a clear answer.

However I can provide you with some HN comments that contain Rebol GUI code that I've posted here in the past:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7069311

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8624722

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9570049

NB. If you follow the thread up in the first link you'll find GUI comparisons with TCL & other languages.

You may find more insight into the authors mind from snippets found in previous posts:

http://prog21.dadgum.com/159.html - "The best attempt I've seen is the UI description sub-language of REBOL. Creating a basic window with labeled buttons is a one-liner. Clearly all wasn't perfect in REBOL-ville, as a burst of excitement in the late 1990s was tempered with a long period of inactivity, and some features of the language never quite lived up to their initial promises.

These days HTML is the most reasonable approach to anything involving fonts and images and interaction. It's not as beautifully direct as REBOL, and being trapped in a browser is somewhere between limiting and annoying, but the visual toolkit is there, and it's ubiquitous. (For the record, I would have solved the "list all the filenames..." problem by generating HTML, but firing up a browser to display the result is a heavy-handed solution.)"

http://prog21.dadgum.com/66.html - "A handful of language designers have tried to make GUI programming as easy as traditional programming. The Tk library for TCL, which is still the foundation for Python's out-of-the-box IDE, allows basic UI creation with simple, declarative statements. REBOL is a more recent incarnation of the same idea, that sample code involving windows and user input and graphics should be a handful of lines, not multiple pages of wxWindows fussing. I wish more people were working on such things."

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#67

Post by culturestate »

x1798DE wrote: post #28
icebraining wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century. A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."

I don't think that's a good example. Packaging is deliberately designed to be hard to open as a theft deterrent mechanism.

Some packaging may be designed in this manner, but that's bad (or simply lazy) design. Packaging can, and should, serve the interests of the manufacturer, retailer, and consumer equally well.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#68

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

culturestate wrote: post #67
x1798DE wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a good example. Packaging is deliberately designed to be hard to open as a theft deterrent mechanism.

Some packaging may be designed in this manner, but that's bad (or simply lazy) design. Packaging can, and should, serve the interests of the manufacturer, retailer, and consumer equally well.

Some packaging is theft-resistant, but can be 'unlocked' by the retailer at POS. I'm thinking, in particular, of razor blades in the UK. Is that the best compromise?

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#69

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

coldtea wrote: post #55
hibikir wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.0029% for injuries that require an emergency room visit, not injuries at all. Let's go for a conservative, 100:1 ratio of minor cuts vs injuries that make you want to spend a bunch of money on doctors, and we see that it's pretty darned dangerous. Dangerous enough that at work, we have mandatory training on how to open different kinds of packages safely! That said, the state of blisters has improved, precisely beca…

> 0.0029% for injuries that require an emergency room visit, not injuries at all. If you get an "emergency room visit" for trying to open a package, there's also some sort of idiocy involved. I wonder if the level of E.R visits would for perfectly designed packages wouldn't be close or similar, because of idiocy.

You've probably been downvoted (although, not be me) for using the term 'idiocy' which is a really unfair and derogatory accusation. I've cut myself on packaging before, definitely. I've probably done it in the past year. I am not 'an idiot'. ER visits could be for a number of indirect reasons; blood disorders that could prevent blood from clotting affect at least 6,500 people in the US. Just because the injury you're imagining wouldn't be serious to you, doesn't mean others are 'idiots'.

Re: The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over

#70

Post by culturestate »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #68
culturestate wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some packaging may be designed in this manner, but that's bad (or simply lazy) design. Packaging can, and should, serve the interests of the manufacturer, retailer, and consumer equally well.

Some packaging is theft-resistant, but can be 'unlocked' by the retailer at POS. I'm thinking, in particular, of razor blades in the UK. Is that the best compromise?

I assume you're talking about spider wraps [1] - a wire that goes around the box and connects back to a little lock.

As a consumer, I don't like these because the lock portion often obscures an important piece of information on the box. They also don't work for packaging that's designed to be manipulated on the shelf, e.g. boxes with a magnetically attached book-style cover that let you examine the product or read more information by opening it [1].

They're not ideal for retailers, either. They detract from the the aesthetic appeal of the packaging - reducing sales - and increase labor costs by adding extra steps (and, thus, time) for employees stocking shelves and working at the POS.

EAS systems (the little RF tags that are deactivated by placing them on a pad at the POS) are probably the best things going right now for passive deterrence, but they have their own set of problems (e.g. false positives).

1. https://www.americantheftprevention.com/uploads/2Alarm_Mini_... 2. http://www.pcgameware.co.uk/images/CM-Storm-Pitch-Pro-Gaming...

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