Recognising a Bad User Interface at First Glance

Post by viraptor » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 7:35 AM UTC

vitd wrote: post #31

userbinator wrote: post #9

I agree with some of the points (like ambiguous icons and vague error messages), but not all of them. ‘If you are an X, then you have to fill in Y and Z. If you are not an X, please only fill in Z, unless Z=1, then you should fill Y too.’ This could be simplified considerably: "Fill in Z. If you are X or Z=1, fill in Y." Although I'm not surprised that refactoring boolean expressions is something that a lot of people…

"Is ISO 8601 really beyond comprehension for most of the population?" Absolutely! I have had to program date-related code, and I am familiar with the differences between US and European date formats, and I have never heard of ISO 8601 before today. The average person from the US will assume that 2015-04-03 is March 4th, 2015, while a typical person from Europe will assume it's April 3rd, 2015. You're still thinking i…

Post by viraptor » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 7:42 AM UTC

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #27

woofyman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to localize icons which is a feature.

People think, naively, that you don't need to localize icons. And yet a lot of the time icons should be localized. Or rather: You can design an icon that doesn't need to be localized. But unless you design for it, it very well may need to be localized. Things like thumbs-up/down, any sort of animal icon... Even trash cans.

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 7:53 AM UTC

lelandbatey wrote: post #50

steveax wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate the "humanized" dates in the github website interface. "3 days ago" is not useful to me when I'm comparing dates.

I'd be a lot more OK if all "humanized" dates could be toggled to an ISO date with a button click. It's so true though, if trying to scrutinize the history of a repo I find I frequently need to clone it locally just to access the info I need in any kind of decent interface.

Post by Marazan » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:09 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #49

TimFogarty wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I'm shocked by how UIs dealing with very precise things sometimes use imprecise dating like "tomorrow". On the DHL website, if I am ordering a collection for a certain time, I have to choose if I want it for "tomorrow". If it's 23:00 BST from where I am accessing the website and I'm ordering the collection from a country in EEST, am I ordering the collection for one or two days from now? This kind of sloppy UI fr…

I have a constant low-level battle in my company (not DHL) to try to folks to understand that we are an international company... and therefore their fields like "completed on" need a time-component, because not everyone has the same workday. These are "product owners" who are themselves in satellite offices in other timezones...

Post by steveax » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 8:11 AM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #65

steveax wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate the "humanized" dates in the github website interface. "3 days ago" is not useful to me when I'm comparing dates.

I know it's not perfect, but in case you're not aware... Although Github shows you relative time, they use time [0] elements and set the title (which you can see if you hover over the time) to show more detail, e.g. "Jul 2, 2015, 9:13 PM PDT". In addition to that, they set datetime as ISO-8601, e.g. "2015-07-03T04:13:48Z". If you wanted, you could make a script to always display the expanded information. A lot of web…