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The Decline of Usability

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Re: The Decline of Usability

#621

Post by disqard »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #533
aspenmayer wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s hear them out in the spirit of debate. I’m curious how this hypothetical VCR is programmed, what the remote and interface might look like. I might even like it, or at least want parts of it as concepts to integrate with other things that already exist. Could shake loose some ideas. Honestly I don’t know why VCRs are so hard to program but all of the buttons can’t help. I might be getting old but the Roku remote…

I remember what setting the time on a VCR was like and it's interesting to think of all the assumed knowledge you actually need in order to have it seem intuitive. Two things off the top of my head that I can think of: 1) knowing that a blinking number is indicating some kind of selection and more generally 2) seeing the UI as a glimpse into a larger abstract space that can be navigated. Or in other words, having use…

This is a great observation! The blinking-indicates-editable-via-buttons-mode is a mental model you either have or you do not. It is certainly not axiomatic and needs some experimentation to learn. Digital writwatches with those standard three buttons also relied on this mental model.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#622

Post by rleigh »

buckminster wrote: post #580
ben-schaaf wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is even worse. It swipes up for you when you press a key, but it won't pass that key on to the password box. So you have to press a key and then type your password. At least with gnome you can just type your password and it works as expected...

It's not just the logon screen. In many apps if you type CTRL+O followed by a file name to bring up the File Open dialog and populate the name field then the application frequently loses the first few characters of the file name. Or type CTRL+T followed by text. This opens a new tab but the text appears in the old tab if you don't pause. These things used to work reliably. I think most of the problems are caused by i…

Application developers have ceased to care about input focus for keyboard entry.

Here's an example I encounter whenever I use Microsoft Teams at work. I go to "Add Contact", and the entire screen becomes a modal entry box into which I have to enter a name. There's a single entry field on the screen. It's not in focus, even though that's the sole action that I can perform at this time. I have to explicitly select the entry field with the mouse and then type. It's such a basic usability failure, I really do wonder what both the application developers and the testers are actually doing here. This used to be a staple of good interface design for efficient and intuitive use.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#623

Post by Ididntdothis »

userbinator wrote: post #414
Ididntdothis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. Most people get measured by how much churn they create. The more the better. Even if it’s 100% correct for the business you are digging your own grave if you leave things the way they are.

Most, not all; if you have the right skills, you can find a comfortable job maintaining legacy code and (actually) improving it. Then again, most developers seem more interested in chasing new and shiny rather than polishing a stable system.

" comfortable job maintaining legacy code "

That's a very dangerous career path though. If that legacy system gets replaced you are usually out of a job and job search is hard with outdated skills.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#624

Post by [deleted] »

ativzzz wrote: post #615
Moru wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now and then frameworks does backwards incompatible changes so you might as well rewrite the app. If you continue with the old version of the framework you are stuck with either security holes, bugs or that google and apple changes something that downprioritize your app into oblivion. And if the UI/UX does not significantly change every 6 months, your users will give you one star reviews and "Old looking and ugly" co…

Yea if a framework makes breaking changes to the point where you can't upgrade your app, that seems like it could be a recurring problem so after the first rewrite you might as well learn native code and write it there.

[deleted]

Re: The Decline of Usability

#625

Post by bambataa »

I’ve been helping family get set up with Zoom etc via remote desktop (recommend Chrome Remote Desktop, easy enough to set up). Watching them do things makes me realise how absolutely unintuitive computers have become.

Click to download something. Where is the thing gone to? They don’t know that the little icon in the top right with the down arrow means “downloads” and they don’t see that it’s just gone blue. One click or double click? I don’t even know any more.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#626

Post by disqard »

ativzzz wrote: post #615
Moru wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now and then frameworks does backwards incompatible changes so you might as well rewrite the app. If you continue with the old version of the framework you are stuck with either security holes, bugs or that google and apple changes something that downprioritize your app into oblivion. And if the UI/UX does not significantly change every 6 months, your users will give you one star reviews and "Old looking and ugly" co…

Yea if a framework makes breaking changes to the point where you can't upgrade your app, that seems like it could be a recurring problem so after the first rewrite you might as well learn native code and write it there.

This is a lesson that consistently gets lost in the salivation over the latest SPA framework sexiness.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#627

Post by michaelmrose »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #328
philsnow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have avoided gnome as much as I can since the gnome2 days. The entire project is rife with UX decisions that leave a bad taste in my mouth. [0] is the example that always comes to mind. I guess this made sense to somebody at the time, but it adds overhead to a process that was simple before, and isn't enabled just for "Enterprise" deployments, it's just dumped on the user to figure out how to configure screensaver…

Between this and https://stopthemingmy.app/ and the various other systemd/freedesktop “anti-hacker” initiatives, I’ve been finding Linux to be more and more becoming the opposite of the operating system I’ve used for the last 20 years.

Man there is not space on this comment box or time for all the criticism that link deserves.

>Icon Themes can change icon metaphors, leading to interfaces with icons that don’t express what the developer intended.

Icons were never sufficient metaphors to start with which is why we have text labels.

>Changing an app’s icon denies the developer the possibility to control their brand.

What does this even actually mean.

>User Help and Documentation are similarly useless if UI elements on your system are different from the ones described in the documentation.

This is only true if the user is completing an action that is solely based on clicking an icon with no text which we have already established is bad.

>The problem we’re facing is the expectation that apps can be arbitrarily restyled without manual work, which is and has always been an illusion.

Why has this worked generally fine in lots of ecosystems including gnome?

>If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us.

Earlier discussion seemed to suggest that lots of gnome developers were in fact not fine with this because it hurt gnomes "brand identity"

>Changing third-party apps without any QA is reckless, and would be unacceptable on any other platform.

Reckless?

> we urge you to find ways to do this without taking away our agency

Your agency?

> Just because our apps use GTK that does not mean we’re ok with them being changed from under us.

Nobody cares if you are OK with it.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#628

Post by mpweiher »

Silhouette wrote: post #514
bob1029 wrote: post #492

For me the worst isn't even that the UI composition/presentation is bad. It's that the performance of these interfaces is getting monotonically worse over time. No one wants to take the time to learn the hard native UI development processes, so we just wind up throwing some shitty angular SPA application into electronjs and calling it a day. Those of us with non-sloth-like reflexes now have to experience torture as e…

No one wants to take the time to learn the hard native UI development processes, so we just wind up throwing some shitty angular SPA application into electronjs and calling it a day. That's partly because the native development processes are so unnecessarily awkward, particularly on Apple platforms. It's also partly because most native development processes only give you software that runs on one platform at the end.…

> native development processes are so unnecessarily awkward, particularly on Apple platforms.

Can you elaborate? For me it's launch Xcode, new project, hit run and off we go to the races.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#629

Post by ShirtlessRod »

anoncake wrote: post #602
yaktubi wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much. They made this thing called a book once upon a time and those have worked for centuries. Same thing with UIs: the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it?

Before codexes – the kind of book we use today – scrolls had worked for centuries. > the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it? To get something that works better.

> To get something that works better.

Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Re: The Decline of Usability

#630

Post by hackmiester »

101404 wrote: post #118
freedomben wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just hit the Escape key. You can also just start typing your password. I often type my password and press enter before the monitor is even awake.

...just to then realize that the computer was still logged in and the focus was on a chat window, and it was only the screen that had been in power saving mode. :-}

Good thing no one on HN would ever reuse a password, right?
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