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The Decline of Usability (2020)

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Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#61

Post by grishka »

li2uR3ce wrote: post #32

Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fucking scrollbar back now? I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious befor…

Microsoft in particular seems hellbent on putting touchscreens in everything. They REALLY want to make it happen but seemingly no one is having it. There's ONE person I know who owns a touchscreen laptop and genuinely touches its screen on purpose.

On your scrolling complaint — well, there's this desktop-specific thing that OP doesn't mention but that becomes very apparent once you start looking for it in old-school desktop UIs. Controls never, ever scroll. Only content does. If controls don't fit into a window, you don't make it scrollable — you split it into tabs or you put the extra controls into a separate window that opens via a button. This appears to be universal at least for Windows and macOS.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#62

Post by hliyan »

the_af wrote: post #54

I cannot prove it, but I think some of these UI and UX horrors are caused by the ever present need for software to change in order to demonstrate it is alive. Imagine you reach peak usability in $YourApp, in the year of our lord 2023. It's maybe not perfect , but there's no conceivable way your app's usability can improved past this point. Users are reasonable proficient, everything mostly clicks into place past the…

More than that, you will have to find a new product to demonstrate the value of your continued employment at the company. The team is incentivised to keep tinkering.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#63

Post by silvestrov »

the_af wrote: post #54

I cannot prove it, but I think some of these UI and UX horrors are caused by the ever present need for software to change in order to demonstrate it is alive. Imagine you reach peak usability in $YourApp, in the year of our lord 2023. It's maybe not perfect , but there's no conceivable way your app's usability can improved past this point. Users are reasonable proficient, everything mostly clicks into place past the…

I think architecture has the same problem. The best way to stand out in the 50s/60s was to break with every good rule of traditional architecture and create the Brutalist style.

They completely ignored the human emotional aspect of buildings and living spaces.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#64

Post by codeptualize »

There is a misconception that consistency == usability. It's an important part of usability but there is a lot more to it. Tunnel vision on consistency (or anything really) doesn't lead to good outcomes. The big picture is what matters: can someone do what they need to do?

Articles like these also have lots of opinions, no research and stats, nor have decent explanations of how much impact these "problems" actually have. Granted I have not seen much research on desktop apps, but in other fields things have measurable improved a lot.

Even going by opinion, my memory from that time was that everything was pretty bad. How often do you lose work because of crashes or not enough undo steps? And could you do the same things you can do now? Also don't forget about all the horrible Java software that didn't use the OS UI.

People romanticize (software of) the past. The stuff I use today is magic compared to the old crap.

Obviously not everything is perfect and I do recognize/understand some of the criticism in the article, but focussing on the little things really misses the big picture that is usability: completing the task that you need to complete, and that is easier than ever.

> You're old and angry! You bet! Now get off my lawn, punk.

Fair enough, I'll see myself out.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#65

Post by silvestrov »

dgb23 wrote: post #58
Y-bar wrote: post #2

The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…

Somewhat related: As someone who likes working on a single screen I typically like to open things in full-screen mode by default. MacOS plays a sluggish animation when switching between screens. You can't turn it off, you can just switch between two similarly slow ones. I can't imagine a good reason for this. What is their model of a user and how did they derive "slow animation when switching windows is good" from th…

Same with animation when switching to/from full screen. I mostly just want it to happend in an instant.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#66

Post by Y-bar »

dgb23 wrote: post #58
Y-bar wrote: post #2

The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…

Somewhat related: As someone who likes working on a single screen I typically like to open things in full-screen mode by default. MacOS plays a sluggish animation when switching between screens. You can't turn it off, you can just switch between two similarly slow ones. I can't imagine a good reason for this. What is their model of a user and how did they derive "slow animation when switching windows is good" from th…

It's been a staple Human Interface Guideline that applications should re-open in the layout and position they were when they quit. Personally I barely use full screen at all in Mac OS, but I can see why you want it. It is default in some apps, it should be default in all apps, it isn't.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#67

Post by m3047 »

li2uR3ce wrote: post #32

Despite the gutting of desktop usability for the sake of being mobile compatible, many environments still have zero presence on mobile. Can I PLEASE have my fucking scrollbar back now? I once spent a lot of my time and the time and the time of a developer trying to find a setting because there was no indication that a window had more content (a checkbox) to scroll down to. Something that would have been obvious befor…

I feel you. There is nothing today quite like _Inside Macintosh Volume I_ laying out out in drawings and prose (!) what the elements of a UI are, what they do, and how they work... almost like people had never seen a UI before. People must have had to think about it, they wrote a book for F sake. /s

They devote ink and paper to declaring that modes are to be avoided, and why. The do's and don'ts of UI on page 70 are worth repeating:

Do:

* Let the user have as much control as possible over the appearance of objects.

* Use verbs for menu commands that perform actions.

* Make alerts self explanatory.

* Use controls and other graphics instead of just menu commands.

Don't:

* Overuse modes (again!).

* Require keyboard / mouse when the operation would be easier with the other.

* Change the way the screen looks unexpectedly, especially scrolling.

* Redraw objects unnecessarily.

* Make up your own menus and give them the same name as standard ones (they define the standard ones in this book, you know: About, File, Edit as well as what goes in them. yes, yes, this is where it all started).

We've meandered into a bullshit local minimum where there is the One True UI and it's different for every app, but the same for every user. Meanwhile in industrial control where a $50,000 piece of equipment has its own app, used by maybe one person or three if it's operated 24 hours a day, the responsive mobile interface is as easy to lay out as slides in a slide deck and takes about as long to do. Hell, a customizable dashboard is a widget.

If the cloud made shoes there would be different shoes for grass and concrete, but they'd all be the same size and you'd have to cut off toes if your feet were too big or stuff them with prostheses if they were too small.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#68

Post by bitwize »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

I for one miss the 3-D buttons of the Windows 95 era. It was obvious what could be clicked and what could not.

Oh man, I can remember when the Windows 9x/Motif/Nextstep look was so modern, we thought the future of UI was going to be more of the same: huge bevels on the buttons with maybe a texture map. Think the buttons from the menus in Super Mario 64, and then go watch some old 90s scifi or other technology-themed movies and see how much their "futuristic" UIs looked like that. The Lawnmower Man and some scenes from Hackers come to mind.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#69

Post by hkpack »

notbeuller wrote: post #34

macOS is absolutely and infuriatingly the same as the examples here. I’ve yet to find anyone that actively defends this style - just like I have yet to find people to actively defend open office workspaces. (In apples case, both were designed by the same people.)

I actually don't agree much with the article. I think that all modern OSes (macOS, Windows and even Linuxes) are much much better from the usability perspective than years ago.

Some UI elements and patterns are indeed problematic, but it doesn't really that of a big deal, and some of them are the results of compromises.

Most of these complains are because people don't like change and it is ok.

I recently started using Windows 11 after a decade on macOS (have to port some apps there), and was very surprised by the UI improvements in the core components. I asked couple of colleagues about those, and most of them hated the change and were not using new features.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#70

Post by hkpack »

"Inmates are running asylum" [1] - is one of my favourite books, was written in 2004, which describes how bad most of the interfaces are and the reasons behind it.

Design solves problems which are not always obvious to the actual users. Using computers was always frustrating experience, but it improved dramatically over the last two decades for sure.

I don't know how anyone couldn't see that.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/d...

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