
Interface abusers - luu
http://scraps.benkuhn.net/2015/09/17/ui.html
======
roldie
The takeaway from this is that affordances are still important in UI design.
Many sites/apps nowadays try to get away without it. Even having a tutorial
during onboarding isn't really enough. Users often disregard them, so you need
to make sure things are intuitive.

As a UX guy, this is why you do user testing. Just yesterday I was conducting
a test, and one user was getting upset at our onboarding tutorial "Just get me
to the app, I don't care about this." Not a moment later, "Oh wait, how do I
do this? Haha guess I should have read the tutorial." It was a lighthearted
moment given the circumstance, but in the real world and in aggregate, it
shows how to lose users.

~~~
crystalmeph
It's not just mobile apps, it's everything. I write demo software and
libraries to control sensors that are used in everything from university lab
benchtop research to heavy automation. You can never trust that the user reads
a word of the manual (well the heavy automation guys probably do, because
there's real danger involved), so I do my best to make it so in the demo
software, there's one button you need to press to start communicating with the
sensor, and very clear options from there to change the sample rate, save data
to a file, etc.

In the APIs we provide for them to do their own programming, ideally they only
have to declare a new instance of a single object, with the necessary
configuration data passed in as explicit arguments to the constructors, and
all the communication methods are immediately accessible from that class' API.
There's not a lot of extra new classes to hold configuration data, etc.,
because then the user doesn't know which fields are necessary to set in those
objects. Sometimes that means you get more parameters than you might like in a
constructor, but it makes it a lot easier for the user because they know
exactly what you require from them.

~~~
omouse
It seems that any documentation for software is useful more as a reference or
as an FAQ or after you messed something up. This is why it's important to make
tasks reversible or to make dangerous tasks take longer. We need UX/UI cues
and your example of keeping the UI simple is great.

------
eponeponepon
Not ten minutes ago I had the same experience in a web browser on my desktop;
it turns out that on this site, which I've been visiting regularly for years,
there is a button (unlabelled) which brings up extra content related to that
day's content. I only discovered this from a passing comment on a forum.

My point is, it's not just touch interfaces that suffer from this assumption
that the user will "just get" the thing you thought up in the shower this
morning.

Even a console application needs that moment of sanity checking - more than
once I've sent out a script to users and found out weeks later that the one
cool timesaving feature I was proud of just hadn't been used, because I hadn't
_told_ them about it, assuming instead that they'd connect the dots for
themselves.

~~~
wlesieutre
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal?

I think everyone who reads it had that experience at some point. Going back
through the archive for the bonuses you missed is half the fun!

~~~
eponeponepon
Spot on, yep :)

------
carsongross
There is a special place in hell for the flat-design folks who decided to
remove drop-shadows/gradients from clickable elements on a screen.

~~~
cm3
First we couldn't have 3d widgets, then we got them and designers took it away
during the flat ui craze. These designers surely don't use what they design.
What's worse is that everybody (KDE and GNOME) went with it drinking the kool-
aid. Add on top of that that GNOME doesn't want you to use your own theme and
do everything to unsupport or stifle custom themes. GNOME is following Apple's
lead of "we know best". It's a sad day to be a GUI user. Look at the wasted
vertical space in GNOME3 and tell me how that makes sense with widescreen
displays that shrank in vertical size. Designers do not understand that 3d
widgets serve a purpose. I wait for the day that designers make everyday tools
all totally flat but at least there we have people without sight who will
object. I remember when people complained Linux desktops were didn't have UI
designers. If this is what it means to have designers, then I'd rather have my
OS/2 GUI theme please. Designers gave us square toilet seats and rectangle
table ware but our sitting organs and spoons do not match.

~~~
wlesieutre
Who needs 1200 vertical pixels? 1080 should be enough for everyone!

------
wcummings
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to see timestamps in
iMessage on my phone.

~~~
leesalminen
Many of iOS' "flat" design choices have taken me an embarrassingly long time
to figure out. Timestamps in iMessage are definitely one of them.

~~~
arrrg
I really don't think that has anything to do with flat design whatever that
means.

Apple is all about hiding non-essential information and functionality. Always
has been. This is a consistent pattern you will be able to find in all their
software if you pay a little attention. Basically, if Apple thinks something
is a power user feature most users will not need then they have no qualms
about not making it discoverable. They tend to even go a step further: they
may outright hide it, making it impossible for users to ever be confused by
it.

I don't think that's a bad design pattern (depending on context and
circumstances, obviously, as always), you just have to make the right
judgement calls about what's important and has to be discoverable and what's
not. This allows the software to be simple to most users while also having
some depth for more advanced users. Like always in design it's all about
making the right trade offs, though. The devil is in the details.

~~~
maxxxxx
How about putting the advanced options into a menu or make them somehow
discoverable? I hate it when after years I found out that something was
possible but I didn't know that I had to press option+shift+ctrl while
standing on one foot. It's OK to make advanced features less prominent but
don't hide them.

On mobile apps it's even worse. Swipe up, left or right? Nobody knows.

------
ZeroGravitas
Am I missing something, or does "turning off" a thermostat not really make
that much sense? And therefore, a UI that made that easy and obvious, wouldn't
really be that good a UI?

~~~
dack
When a thermostat is on, it controls the temperature. If you don't want to
control the temperature, would you not want to turn the thermostat off?

~~~
eterm
The post said he/she wanted to turn it off because they were too cold, which
seems a strange response. Surely what they wanted was to adjust the thermostat
temperature?

~~~
throwaway049
I think it was meant as 'turn off the AC' which would allow the room temp to
equalize with the outside world. I'm used to stand alone AC units so I think
in terms of 'turn it off to allow room temp to rise'.

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Cthulhu_
Read this the other day, relevant too; from an Apple UI/UX guy who just
doesn't get it anymore either [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-apples-
products-so-confus...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-apples-products-so-
confusing-ignore-design-don-norman)

~~~
rfrey
"An apple UI/UX guy"

Cthulhu_ was likely understating on purpose, but this "Apple UI/UX guy" is Don
Norman.

~~~
radiorental
With all due respect to Don (and I do have a lot of respect, he built the
foundation upon which my career rests). He misses the larger picture. I'll
simply point at Apple's market cap as to why Apple can afford to get away with
form over function.

~~~
rfrey
Absolutely, I didn't mean to issue an appeal to authority. I just thought
there might be people who'd be interested in Don Norman's take, who wouldn't
otherwise click through to Yet Another Apple Critique.

------
harperlee
This is something that happens with HN, by the way. Links are not underscored,
so it is not immediately obvious that you have to click on someone's name, the
domain, the timestamp, or the comment count. I personally had this problem
when the "link" link to a subthread disappeared.

~~~
wlesieutre
HN shows underscores on hover, which at least lets you _check_ if something is
a link by mousing over it. But it falls apart on touch devices where hover
doesn't exist.

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kalleboo
And this is going to get even more fun with "3D touch"

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IshKebab
I dunno, pushing the Nest was pretty obvious to me. Also I can't see why you'd
want to turn it off totally. If you want the heating on permanently or off
permanently just turn the temperature to an extreme value.

~~~
TetOn
This was my take...the interface for turning it off is difficult to find
because it was _designed_ to be thus. The _last_ thing most thermostat users
want to do is to turn it off _completely_. Instead, they want to "turn it off"
or "on" relative to local environmental conditions...and that's the dead-easy
interface mentioned in the link: turning the big dial ring and having it
respond both numerically and by color: I am going to get hotter or I am going
to get colder. The click side of the interface is deliberately more obscure
and meant for the administrator (for lack of a better term) and not the random
temperature adjuster.

TFA seems to be complaining that it's too difficult to find a feature that
most thermostats elide completely. Every other model I've owned in the past
could only be turned off by unplugging, which requires un-mounting the entire
thing or powering down the furnace (or similar).

~~~
titanomachy
Not being able to turn off the device is a problem if it controls both AC and
heating (not sure if the Nest does). What if you just want the room to be
whatever temperature it is outside?

~~~
IshKebab
Nest only controls heating. If you want it unheated you just turn the
temperature down.

------
userbinator
"the way you bring up the main menu is by _pushing on the screen_ "

I've never used one before, but does pushing the edge also work? Having used
other devices with turn/push/pull knobs (like washing machines), that's what
I'd probably try next.

~~~
grhmc
Yes, you can hold the outside as if you're about to turn it, and push it in.

------
ape4
Maybe be need a way of tells apps / devices / applications that I am trying do
something exceptional so please show me the advanced menu. Perhaps a special
"expert" icon is always visible or a convention like clicking in the bottom-
left corner.

------
DatBear
This is why I can't wait for Apple to introduce Force Touch. Do I press this
lightly to do something completely different - does this app have that? Do I
press it harder to do something else? Did I press it hard enough / lightly
enough?

~~~
wanderfowl
Yeah, even on the Apple watch it's pretty inconsistent. Things that should
have a force touch option don't, and things that do, don't tell you.

Apple's slipping _way_ behind on this.

------
emodendroket
Some of this is going to shake itself out with time.

------
afarrell
The company he refers to in the beginning is for cheaply sending remittances.
[http://www.sendwave.com/](http://www.sendwave.com/)

