
Humane by Design - AngeloAnolin
https://humanebydesign.com/
======
chewxy
Would a flat page listing the key tenets with correct headers be so painful to
create?

Why do I have to click into each of these headers? Something something the
presumption to reducing friction something something thoughtful interaction.

~~~
hirundo
> Finite: Bottomless feeds and auto-play keep users from leaving but lock them
> into an infinite loop of consumption. We can maximize the overall quality of
> time spent by bounding the experience and prioritizing meaningful and
> relevant content.

Agree. They're bounding the experience over aggressively.

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jvagner
There’s no longer anything that qualifies as intuitive design, and training
isn’t really enough.

I say this as someone who’s been designing and using computers since the
Osborne 1, who can’t use his own iPhone 7 when my girlfriend gives it back to
me, and who can’t verbally explain to said girlfriend how to gesture
effectively on my iPhone XR.

It doesn’t work when I re-install Linux after not using it for merely 3 years,
even though my WordStar sense memory is stronger than vi, emacs and Word on
both Mac and Windows. What the hell did they do to Gnome!?

I do UI and UX testing when rolling out enterprise and web apps, but
design..!? It’s temporal and artificial. It’s not actually foundational, like
thumbs and squatting.

~~~
sizzle
How might we solve this problem? It seems that gesture input is impossible to
standardize simply for the fact that the signifiers are invisible and the use
cases/edge cases are complex from a human factors perspective.

~~~
jvagner
All of these metaphors are pretty temporal. It changes so often I’m not sure
we “solve” it.

I taught community college for a spell, computers 101. When you go back to the
very beginning and have to explain desktops and folders and files and file
types to the same people who have little to no familiarity with moving a
mouse... it’s profound how un-intuitive all of computing is... from the very
beginning.

I think of this when I switch between Windows machines and Macs and their
scrolling directions are opposite of each other.

That said, I’ve never taught my son how to type and I’ve never explained
computers to him. He’s the kind of kid who figured out iPads and iPhones on
his own, at a young age. And he is definitely a fast touch typist, all on his
own.

Maybe “intuitive UI” metaphors aren’t helpful here. Computers are lived
experiences, like homes and hotel rooms and cars. Think of the car you drive
now, and how familiar it is, and think of the car you had 10 or 20 years ago.
Get in that older car and it won’t be familiar right out the gate.

We have hundreds of interfaces that we live with... kitchens, rooms,
appliances, spaces we navigate in the dark, cars, office layouts, TV
interfaces, etc.

Most are shockingly poor interface experiences, and the brands/models that
have them usually don’t maintain them. And we switch those pretty regularly
with little thought to the next relative to the last. Because it would be
maddening to be held to those things as we try and move along in our lives.

Example: I used to have a Volkswagen CC. Two things I loved about it: the
auto-hold button (keeps brakes engaged and you can lift your foot off during
stop-and-go traffic). and a “Jump” button on radio that could be programmed to
go to any preset in memory. So, if you program your satellite radio stations
in order of preference, you could hit Jump and go back to the first preset.
Lovely feature.

That no subsequent VW or Audi I test drove afterwards kept those features has
puzzled me ever since.

Live and long... for old interfaces, better interfaces, etc.

~~~
sizzle
Thanks for sharing your unique perspective. With the recent advent of VUI
(voice user interface e.g. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant) and the fact it will
eventually pass the uncanny valley given sufficient iterations/user
feedback/time, do you see this as the start of a paradigm shift from an era of
error prone, unusable gesture-based computing devices to seamlessly intuitive
natural voice-driven experiences?

~~~
jvagner
I may lack the imagination to see how VUI will be the predominant interface
paradigm for computing.

People often need to stop speaking, and often ask for silence, when they need
to think. Thinking and Talking is definitely a useful modality (think,
relationship discussions, brainstorming), but Thinking and Non-verbalism is
also a necessary way to function. Think of when your partner goes silent in a
conversation and you look over and they're starting at their phone, or doing
something on their phone. People can't talk and do something else at the same
time.

I work from home. I often wake up, go for a run, eat breakfast, sit at my
computer, begin my workday, and when my first conference call of the day
begins... find myself a little rusty at speaking. It seems like "talking" has
a spin-up cycle for some people.

I don't want to talk to my computers... so I haven't yet developed any
positive notions of living with a VUI.

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amiga-workbench
I'm sure this looks great on the designers 27" iMac but its another site that
says absolutely nothing until I start scrolling.

[https://i.imgur.com/ArcOx57.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ArcOx57.jpg)

If I adjust my viewport to an even lower resolution (to match an iPad) it does
manage to fit in the section headings.

------
gdsdfe
>Humane by Design is a resource that provides guidance for designing ethically
humane digital products through patterns focused on user well-being.

Ironically the website itself is not easy to navigate on mobile.

~~~
danielnixon
Nor with a keyboard. [https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-
WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/F78](https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-
WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/F78)

------
danielnixon
They talk about inclusive design and then make it impossible to tell which
element has keyboard focus.

[http://www.outlinenone.com/](http://www.outlinenone.com/)

~~~
plibither8
> [http://www.outlinenone.com/](http://www.outlinenone.com/)

Not to be pedantic or nitpicky, but was there really a need to create a
complete website with a dedicated domain name for advertising such a simple
idea? Surely it could have been done via a blog post or, if a separate page is
needed, hosting on a (free) static site hosting service like Surge, Netlify or
Now.

~~~
yuchi
That website comes from a different age. One where Now and similar products
didn’t exists. (It was up in 2012 I think)

~~~
forgotpwd16
It is up since 2010 and thus it predates Surge and Netlify by four years.

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somada141
Love the theme and principles listed but navigation is a bit cumbersome and
visual-heavy. Nonetheless, the effort is appreciated!

~~~
ximm
I love that it works great without javascript. So many pages today need
javascript to display anything. This one just adds some additional animations,
but some animations even work without.

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Ayesh
This site is one of the best dark theme site designs I have seen. Good job.

~~~
the_pwner224
This is ridiculous. Why should every site have to design their own light
and/or dark themes? When you visited the site you thought it had a great
theme; I on the other hand ended up leaving after 5 seconds because light text
on black or near-black backgrounds makes my eyes hurt. This uses gray text
which makes it a bit easier than some other dark sites, but gray on black
causes issues for a number of other people. A bunch of people think it looks
great, a bunch of other people find it unremarkable, and a bunch of other
people are actively harmed by the theme.

Why can't the User Agent allow the user to set themes, with some sensible
defaults provided? There should be a background color, foreground (text)
color, a few accent colors, etc. Custom themes should only be used by
applications which have really different requirements;
background/foreground/accents/good-bad-error colors should be enough for 95%
of them and the other 4% can interpolate to get more colors. This also helps
people with special needs such as colorblindness (almost 10% of men) and poor
eyesight.

For example, on KDE I can set a system-wide color scheme applied to Qt (and
also attempted to apply to GTK) applications. It comes with a pretty good
default light and dark theme, but the user can get any custom theme they want
or make their own. It seems to work just fine here, with a wide variety of
applications looking great even with nonstandard themes.

Of course HTML/CSS has been evolving for many decades, but there needs to be a
reset at some point where we switch from legacy technology designed to make
reading documents to a new system that is useful for making web applications
and interactive documents.

One thing I've done on my browser is to disable custom fonts. Font CSS is
ignored; all webpages render with GNU FreeFont (sans + serif; sans is very
similar to San Francisco / Helvetica) and Fira Code. It looks great; once in a
blue moon I find a page where typography is the focus of the page and in those
instances I copy the URL into another browser. When I occasionally use that
other browser for normal browsing, the presence of custom fonts makes me feel
the same way as when you turn off an ad blocker and surf the web - it's
absolutely disgusting. There's no reason to allow companies to push their
ridiculous branding styles down our throats.

An idea I just had is to make a browser addon which automatically tries to do
this - every element's color value is categorized as light, dark, accent, etc.
and then gets replaced by the user-configured theme.

~~~
fouc
It would be nice if browsers had a built in standardized design mode to let
people view the content the way they want. Like reader mode but more powerful,
and standardized.

~~~
Funes-
This is actually something I've been thinking about for a long, long time. A
platform only allowing for Markdown and some HTML could do the trick, since
the CSS configuration would be user-defined. And it would work on low-end
devices, as well, even e-ink tablets. I even came up with a mock-up a month
ago for a blogging platform following that premise:
[https://imgur.com/a/57pArEk](https://imgur.com/a/57pArEk).

------
Funes-
To each their own, but I think the huge space left on the header could be used
to establish what the project is actually about[0]. Not that its name doesn't
give you a clear hint, and I love the seamless transition between pages, but I
had to click on "info" to get a confirmation, instead of having it at first
glance.

Anyhow, kudos to the author for putting up a website to tackle such a hugely
relevant issue these days.

[0] Like this:
[https://i.imgur.com/GgudrKa.png](https://i.imgur.com/GgudrKa.png).

------
ximm
What is definitely missing is a github link. I would love to help fix some
issues (as I think the ressource itself is pretty good) but there is no option
to do that.

------
danielnixon
This site recommends Tristan Harris's work pretty prominently.

For a sober take on Harris and "tech humanists" more generally, check out "Why
Silicon Valley can’t fix itself" by Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel.

[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/03/why-silicon-
val...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/03/why-silicon-valley-cant-
fix-itself-tech-humanism)

------
Waterluvian
This page's design is so awful on a phone. I had no idea what was what and
what to do.

------
zyngaro
One of the reasons I switched back to iOS is to leave to notification hell of
android.

~~~
oppressedgf
Ah yes, because as we all know, Android phones have absolutely no control over
notifications at all.. yep..

Have you done _any_ research? You can disable notifications for any app you
like in pretty much any semi-recent version of Android.

~~~
ColinWright
You don't have any contact details in your profile so I can't make this
comment to you in private. So instead I've rot13'd it so it won't be read by
random passers-by ...

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fanexl naq aba-pbafgehpgvir. Fvzvyneyl, gur frpbaq cnentencu pbzrf npebff nf n
crefbany nggnpx, engure guna cebivqvat hfrshy vasbezngvba. Va gur thvqryvarf
vg fnlf:

 _Or xvaq. Qba 'g or fanexl. Pbzzragf fubhyq trg zber gubhtugshy naq
fhofgnagvir, abg yrff, nf n gbcvp trgf zber qvivfvir._

Vg nyfb fnlf:

 _Cyrnfr qba 'g pbzzrag ba jurgure fbzrbar ernq na negvpyr._

Nygubhtu abg qverpgyl nccyvpnoyr, vg srryf yvxr vg'f va gur fnzr nern nf lbhe
pbzzrag nobhg qbvat erfrnepu.

Fb fbzrguvat zber hfrshy jbhyq or:

 _" Gung qbrfa'g zngpu zl rkcrevrapr, jurer nal frzv-erprag irefvba bs Naqebvq
nyybjf lbh gb qvfnoyr abgvsvpngvbaf sbe cerggl zhpu nal ncc. Pna lbh tvir zr
rknzcyrf jurer gung'f abg gur pnfr?"_

V whfg gubhtug vg jbhyq or jbegu tvivat fbzr srrqonpx sebz na vzcnegvny
olfgnaqre.

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skookumchuck
How about just black text on a white background, with headings, paragraphs,
etc. Like an ordinary book? It works.

The site is more obsessed with clever design and useless gadgets than simply
presenting text.

