
Facebook Paper's gesture problems - dlg
http://scotthurff.com/posts/facebook-paper-gestures
======
freshyill
Paper is a nice app but the biggest problem is that it's still full of
garbage. Even though I've unsubscribed from the worst offenders of my FB
friends, 90% of what's in my news feed is still crap.

Paper kills the ability to quickly scan the feed for the 10 percent of stuff
that might interest me even momentarily. I can either see one thing at a time
with the stories full screen, or three things at a time with them in an
awkward location at the bottom of the screen and one of them (for which there
is a 90 percent chance that I don't want to see it) taking up the top two-
thirds of the screen.

It's certainly pretty and with some content _other than_ my Facebook feed, it
might be a good interface. It would be perfect if I _wanted_ to read 90
percent of this stuff.

But that's the whole idea. It's to keep you more engaged. But that's not how I
use Facebook. I don't want to "engage" with it. I've got a million things
competing for my attention and most of them are better than my Facebook feed.
I want to get in, find the interesting stuff and then get the hell out. I
suspect I'm not the only one.

~~~
tomkin
No, you are not, sir. In fact, I have to assume that the people who are hyping
the UI don't actually use Facebook a whole lot. This is the 10 year
anniversary video on steroids. When you scroll through the 90% shit on
traditional Facebook, I can quickly pass through hundreds of posts in seconds.
Going through them 3-4 at a time is the _future_? Eck.

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kaiuhl
Simple solution: swipe _up_ on the carousel to make the cards full-screen,
then browse. The whole UI works on this paradigm, so it may not be obvious at
first, but it will be if this style of app continues.

~~~
muzzamike
I'm sure he's aware of that. This is a major element of the UI which shouldn't
require you to move to another screen to enjoy.

Swiping near the bottom with my thumb hasn't bothered me so far, but the text
is quite hard to read at that small of a size. I would also like to those
cards a bit larger in the future.

~~~
criswell
Agreed about the text size. Things look great, feel good and it's easy to
follow what's going on after a short amount of time but it can be hard to
read.

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Encosia
Am I the only one who is right-handed, but doesn't hold their iPhone like
that? I rest the bottom of the phone on the top side of my pinky finger, which
puts it higher in my hand and doesn't require the "hook" to swipe right-to-
left in the bottom half of the screen.

~~~
samstave
I too hold my phone as you do, as I read on bart whilst also holding a bike
and a cup of coffee each morning... however - the issue with the way we hod
our phone is that my grip tends to need to be really light on the phone and I
am prone to drop it easily - because to battle the "OW" areas of the phone, I
need to rotate between portrait and landscape often...

~~~
zmk_
You only have a worse grip of the device when you actually use the thumb
probably. When I hold a phone this way and do not actively interact with it,
my thumb usually presses on the edge of the device, making the grip firm.

~~~
samstave
Agreed. But when you're on BART and attempting to do anything other than lok
at it, it can feel very precarious.

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jackhammons
Facebook Paper is a great example of ignoring ergonomic design to achieve a
more aesthetically pleasing view, a trend all too common in app design these
days.

~~~
MartinCron
It's a shame when what is pleasing to the eye and what is pleasing to the
touch are such different things.

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stevenp
Now I'm paranoid that I might be a weirdo for holding my phone primarily in my
left hand even though I'm right-handed. Am I alone in that? I think the reason
I do it is because text and navigation are generally left-to-right, so having
my thumb on the left side of the screen feels more natural. The animation in
this post seems to confirm that.

~~~
freiheit
I'm right-handed and mostly use my phone in my left hand.

I keep it in my left pocket. It leaves my right (primary) hand free for doing
other things. When I need the extra dexterity of using an index finger instead
of thumb, I'm already holding the phone in the correct hand for my right index
finger to poke at the screen.

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tomkin
I'm always the guy who stands up for Facebook UI updates, so why do I hate
Paper so much?

I think it's the fact that I am forced to touch, and swipe through stories I
don't give a shit about. At all. Does anyone who is fellating the Paper UI
actually use Facebook? You sure you _really_ want to pan through hundreds of
uninteresting posts...because it _looks cool_? I don't. I love the transitions
and how responsive the UI is, but would I use this to take an overview of my
friend's activity? Unlikely.

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uptown
On a separate matter, how does Facebook Paper get its permissions? I have the
Facebook app installed on my iPhone, but I don't have Facebook linked to the
operating system. When I installed Paper, I was never prompted to login. Are
they able to read a piece of information shared by the normal Facebook app in
order to authenticate Paper users without requiring an additional login?
Doesn't that violate the sandboxing of application data, or are they able to
circumvent those policies since it's all associated with the same app
publisher?

~~~
conradev
Yep! The Facebook app and Facebook Paper have access to the same keychain
because they both are from the same publisher and register the same `keychain-
access-groups` entitlement.

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nchlswu
I've been fascinated with phone placement in hands for product shots.

It always seemed like a little bit of a cheat - especially when the elongated
5 came out - just to show one handed use of a device is possible.

For me at least, the way the phone is positioned is hardly comfortable. The
bottom right corner at the base of the thumb exacerbates the problem the
author's talking about. When I hold the phone higher in my hand with the
bottom closer to the base of the index, all thumb-hook problems tend to go
away.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'd love to see some studies about how people
hold their phones. In some respects, I've always felt one-handed device usage
was neglected by manufacturers, but I probably didn't fully understand how
many users simply use two hands. I imagine data around grips (similar to
[this]([http://www.razerzone.com/mouseguide/ergonomic)](http://www.razerzone.com/mouseguide/ergonomic\)))
and hands used for phones will be somewhat surprising.

~~~
scottieh
This is the study I used as the basis of the Thumb Zone, etc.:
[http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-
re...](http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-really-hold-
mobile-devices.php)?

~~~
nchlswu
And that's my fault for not following the linked sources in the article.

While I agree wih all your points in your assessment, I'm curious about the
point the research mentioned about users changing grips depending on task.
Will this be a significant problem? Or would it be an unconscious adaptation.

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tomasien
Love Paper, 100% agree with you - I hate the Facebook iOS app and never want
to open it again, but I'm missing the classic Apple vertical scroll view
because it's just soooo good.

I'm probably not adding too much to this discussion since I'm just agreeing,
but there it is.

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swamp40
From the article: _All it requires is shrinking the space allocated to the
Topic section above, and increasing the space allocated to the story
navigation by 50 pixels. I think this actually supports the mission of the app
even more — to push you to read stories you find interesting_

I agree with this 100%. The lower navigation elements are WAY TOO small.

Another option (if any Paper developers are listening) would be to allow
dynamic re-sizing of the lower navigational elements.

This is already allowed (it grows as you swipe up) - it just isn't "sticky".

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joelmbell
I really love paper, but totally agree here. I've also noticed that while I
scroll through on the bottom usually my thumb is covering up the content I
want to see.

Maybe I just have big thumbs.

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timmins
I've followed LukeW's version of reachable areas of the screen in my UI
design. I think you've improved upon his.

I also find it fascinating how Facebook's main iOS app and Paper (per your
article) conflict with your reachable zone. In the major app, they relegate
the Search action in the farthest corner from right hand users. In addition,
their overflow button on the bottom tab bar sits in the other 'Ow' zone.

Great write up.

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ksk
I just hold the phone a little higher up in my hand and I don't seem to run
into this issue. meh..

That said, I prefer having an option of manually refreshing the UI. When I'm
connected to a spotty 3G tower - I don't get any indication if its fetching
data or not. I suppose I can drag down the main UI and expose the iOS status
bar and see the little circular progress bar, but not an ideal situation.

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badusername
Biggest problem I had with my perusal of the app was the text on the lower
cards is just way too small to be legible from a reading distance. Making the
cards full-screen just slows down my interaction with it, requiring a swipe
for every card.

Overall, it's a good interface for reading news articles and blog posts. It
seemed like a terrible interface for going through status updates and wall
posts.

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uptown
I get what he's saying - but the swipe-zone of Facebook Paper is actually
quite a large area - well into the "natural" zone. While the user may feel
inclined to swipe near the bottom-right corner of the screen, they can
actually swipe near the center of the phone's display towards the left-edge,
and achieve the same effect.

~~~
scottieh
Author here: I disagree that one can achieve the same effect by swiping near
the center. A middle-to-left swipe on the phone doesn't make use of Paper's
exciting physics-driven carousel. I can barely get any inertia swiping from
the middle. Even worse, my thumb covers up most of the content and I have to
make a "dabbing" motion to see a steady stream of stories.

~~~
uptown
I agree about the thumb covering the content, but in the short period of time
I've spent with the app, I've found myself swiping from the middle - mostly
along the bottom-edge of the screen. And I guess the physics-driven carousel
hasn't been a huge problem yet since I've mostly been swiping to pan through
the content for skimming. Guess that's the challenge of any interface - that
different users may approach it in entirely different ways.

Anyway, nice study on the interaction, and thanks for your reply.

~~~
scottieh
Thanks for reading / commenting!

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ltray
I don't really have the issue with comfort as described here, but it does suck
that the main source of mass content consumption (the bottom carousel) is
mostly blocked by the natural place your thumb would be. Viewing content in
full-screen is too slow for something like facebook, of which many of the
posts you don't care much about.

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cwe
This solution in this particular case also reduces the wasted space of the
hero image across the top. Given FB's poor content, it is usually a stupid
meme or some blurry cell-phone pic that was posted 2 days ago. Or maybe that's
just my experience so far. But the news across the bottom seems way more
useful then the hero image.

~~~
eigenvector
I understand why marketing shots of products like Facebook Paper or Facebook
Home use beautiful, crisp photos to promote the product.

But I don't understand why these apps seem to be designed on the assumption
that real-world Facebook users' feeds are actually filled with such photos.
The same applies to the giant contact photos in Android 4.1+. This is great if
all of your contacts have beautiful high-res headshots. In real life, most
don't and it's an ugly pixelated mess.

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furyofantares
I am right handed but I seem to split it for phone usage, and I also use both
hands a lot of the time. I don't wish to diminish the point that this may be
and for people who use the app as pictured it may be painful, but insinuating
that 90% of people will do so just because nearly 90% are right handed is not
correct.

~~~
hrktb
I don't use facebook but I'm interested in how it goes for this app.

It seems you're still reaching for a corner and curve your finger inward,
isn't it as stressful for the left hand ?

~~~
furyofantares
I'm not sure, pulling might be easier than pushing? I guess the difference is
you are stretching in the air and coming back to your resting state while
pushed against the glass rather than the opposite. Also you might be working
around the fact that your thumb covers the content more when using the right
hand.

What I've found myself doing is using two hands.

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sirkneeland
I wish more apps would consider the "meatspace" physical layer of their
software stack like this...

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cwyers
I don't have an iPhone and have used one maybe twice, but the region the
article is talking about is where the software keyboard is, isn't it? I find
it difficult to imagine that the most common way of holding an iPhone is one
that keeps the user from typing.

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pratkar
This! Right after I had written other apps would feel ancient when compared to
Paper

([http://appiterate.com/does-your-mobile-app-feel-
ancient/](http://appiterate.com/does-your-mobile-app-feel-ancient/))

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scottieh
Inspired by a conversation over at Product Hunt:
[http://www.producthunt.co/posts/1105](http://www.producthunt.co/posts/1105)

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foobarqux
Is there any way to try iOS apps if I don't have iOS or a mac? An emulator
that runs on Linux? XCode in a OSX VM?

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bnt
Off-topic: Is Paper (the FB one) US-only? It's not available here in Croatia.

~~~
nchlswu
For now. Switching the app store locale to the US will let you download it
though.

~~~
iaskwhy
Doesn't that require a US credit card?

