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Laws of UX

lawsofux.com

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Re: Laws of UX

#71

Post by badsectoracula »

lexicality wrote: post #4
nelsonenzo wrote: post #2

These seem like theories, not laws. And imho, some of it is very wrong, such as: > Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.

That one is actually genuinely true and why so many price comparison and search websites artificially load slowly with fancy loading screens.

Reminds me when i was a kid back in the DOS days and made my own GUI system in Turbo Pascal on a 386DX machine i had. It had its own GUI library and simple applications and i had made it look kinda like Windows 95 (because i only had Win3.1 and i wanted 95 - though my take was based on screenshots i saw in magazines so it wasn't very faithful, just what i imagined to be).

The problem was, it was too fast. The shell was up and running pretty much once i pressed the enter key after typing the command in DOS. Real Windows didn't do that, so mine felt bad and fake (to me).

So i added some code in initialization to create and delete 1000 random files with some random delays between them (to cause the HDD to make "doing stuff" noises and its LED light to blink) and show a progress bar for it. After that it felt properly professional :-D.

Re: Laws of UX

#72

Post by carlosjobim »

kepler wrote: post #62
carlosjobim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's more of pseudo-science. I've never heard anybody express any distrust for a service just because it's fast. Let's say you go to a store and ask if they have a certain product. The clerk says "Sure, here it is". Is that worse than saying "Hmmm, I have to check in the warehouse first"?

A more suitable comparison might be this: envision yourself at a Michelin-starred restaurant, placing an order, only to have your meal instantly served. This leads to a crucial question: would you prefer to represent the immediacy of a fast-food establishment or the meticulousness of a Michelin-starred restaurant? Ultimately, HCI aims to create solutions that mirror the conceptual models of the real world.

Funny example! I used to work in a place like that, and we could make many plates extremely fast, and sometimes getting a head start from overhearing the clients order while they were still talking to the waiter. And yes, sometimes we would wait a little bit to get the food out, just because it would be weird for the client to get his food instantly.

But apart from that, clients usually appreciated getting their food about twice as fast as they would normally expect. As long as the quality is there, nothing is wrong with speed. And a restaurant is kind of a poor comparison, since cooking is always time dependent, while other goods can be ready for purchase at once.

Re: Laws of UX

#73

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

jonny_eh wrote: post #66
montroser wrote: post #60

For a site espousing UX platitudes, I don't feel it's too nit picky to call out their completely terrible back-button behavior. You click on one of these items, read down the item detail page, then click back to go to back to the index page, and this happens: - it scrolls you back to the top of the item detail page - it fades out the detail page - it fades in the index page It's janky, and wastes my brain cycles tryi…

The "montroser principal": "Enough with the animations already".

No, it's important that every single element vertically slide and fade in as I scroll the page.

How am I supposed to know this is "design".

Re: Laws of UX

#74

Post by graypegg »

godshatter wrote: post #65
user3939382 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you rely on something ... aesthetic importance drops really fast IMHO it bothers me more because I'm forced to experience it more. It's like the annoyance accumulates. I may care more about UI than the average user though, or maybe I'm just more able to articulate my thoughts about it because of my profession? Not sure.

In some ways I prefer the older interfaces to more modern ones because, even though they were ugly, it was often more obvious what was clickable, what workflow was expected, and if you needed something it would probably be in the horrendous menu tree somewhere. Nowadays it's often impossible to determine what is clickable and what is not, but things look much prettier. I don't really need pretty, it's just a nice-to-…

I think the clearest delimitation between old and new is a lot of old interfaces really tried to make every GUI element appear distinct. I think as we presume that users are familiar with basic GUI elements we’ve started replying on them having intuition from context clues instead. “The button doesn’t look pushable, but we know that you expect a button here anyway.”

I signed up for a Lemmy instance a while ago, and just stopped using it because the default lemmy web UI adopted 2010s worst trend of making buttons, text areas, and combo boxes all the exact same featureless rounded pill. It’s legitimately difficult to use on a phone. One big pile of pills that do random things.

Re: Laws of UX

#75

Post by jonny_eh »

nelsonenzo wrote: post #2

These seem like theories, not laws. And imho, some of it is very wrong, such as: > Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.

I recall that at some point Paypal added an artifical delay for logging in with a spinner that said "securely signing you in" and it increased trust in their product, which increased usage.

Just because you find something surprising, it doesn't mean it's "very wrong".

Re: Laws of UX

#76

Post by kaba0 »

JohnFen wrote: post #48
uxcolumbo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's unfortunate that accessibility is usually treated as an add-on in a lot of 'UX' project. Focus is heavily on visual design. Accessibility needs to be considered from the start when designing new apps. Making things accessible means making it easier for all users. Which apps / sites have you stopped using because of poor UX choices. And what are those things that made you stop using those sites?

> Which apps have you stopped using because the UX choices. The biggest example for me is Firefox. FF's UX has always been horrible, but until the revamp, it was always possible to configure it to be OK without a great deal of effort. After the revamp, the UX is still horrible (although in different ways), but the ability to configure the bad parts away has been seriously reduced. > And what are those things that mad…

> After the revamp, the UX is still horrible (although in different ways), but the ability to configure the bad parts away has been seriously reduced.

It has become HTML-rendered, if anything, shouldn’t it be more configurable?

Re: Laws of UX

#77

Post by ourmandave »

galangalalgol wrote: post #69
mattkevan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We found adding a slight delay in between the user clicking the payment button and showing the success message in the checkout improved trust. It felt like the system was doing something important, whereas if happened instantly people worried that something had gone wrong because it was ‘too quick’. The user is part of the system too, and sometimes giving them a bit of time to process what’s happening can be benefici…

It is akin to people adding weights to items to make them seem higher quality. Not in hiking gear certainly, but disassembly of held kitchen appliances or tools often turns up steel chunks used for that purpose.

Couldn't they just use lead solder on the IoT circuit board?

Re: Laws of UX

#79

Post by marcosdumay »

JohnFen wrote: post #49
graypegg wrote: post #37

Under Aesthetic-Usability Effect > 2: People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing. I think this is true for someone’s first interaction with a thing. But if you rely on something, minor usability issues skyrocket in importance, and aesthetic importance drops really fast.

I think this might also be why I've come to associate slick, pretty interfaces with substandard software/websites.

Interestingly, I do share this association, I have seen more people react this way, and I have seen more people consciously describe that association.

But I've never seen anybody having this as a first reaction to some software. It needs some time to kick in.

Re: Laws of UX

#80

Post by ourmandave »

lexicality wrote: post #4
nelsonenzo wrote: post #2

These seem like theories, not laws. And imho, some of it is very wrong, such as: > Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.

That one is actually genuinely true and why so many price comparison and search websites artificially load slowly with fancy loading screens.

Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com) pretends to take forever gathering the car price info so they can just run ads.

Strangely there's a "click here if fails to load in 10 seconds" link that lets you bypass it all immediately.

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