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Yeah I agree it's definitely a pain in the ass if you're switching networks and you have a bunch of devices already connected. Side anecdote: It took two of my

Yeah I agree it's definitely a pain in the ass if you're switching networks and you have a bunch of devices already connected. Side anecdote: It took two of my friends, a CS guy and a PhD student in MechE -- both at MIT -- thirty minutes to figure out how to set up the connection on the PhD guy's Canon so that they could send photos to a phone. I feel like they could hire two people with UI experience and drastically improve the whole system for less than a half million dollars.

brokenmachine 10y ago
100% this! I work with some super-intelligent people (Professors, Doctors, etc), and it's amazing the things you find that they are unable to do, mostly because of crappy UI in software. There should be a lot more thought put into UI design. If the enduser can't work out how to use your software, your software is essentially useless (or possibly even dangerous). With apps/webpages all having so many options for flexible UIs now, there's too many options for programmers to create their own cryptic UI that nobody understands but them. I feel like in the old days things were much more predictable. Not that I'd like to go back to those days, but we've certainly taken two steps forward, one step back. One thing that especially irritates me is the trend for everything to be an icon, especially on phones. I do understand why this happens, but it has the effect that if you can't remember or don't know what a particular icon signifies, there's (usually) no way to hover to get a tooltip to tell you before you press it. I say "usually" because my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has what could have been a great feature that it senses when you finger comes near to the screen without pressing it, but unfortunately it only works in the stock browser and SMS app (both of which I don't use!). I guess Samsung has not released the API for it to work in other apps? It really could have changed how phone UIs work for the better. Edit: the hovering feature is called Air view. It's slightly creepy how it can sense your finger even when you're not physically touching the screen. I've read some webpages that said it should work in Chrome, but for me it only ever worked in the stock browser, but I just tested that and now that doesn't even work, although it still works in the stock SMS app. I think it may have broken since the Android 5.0 update. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Android 5.0.

brokenmachine 10y ago

100% this! I work with some super-intelligent people (Professors, Doctors, etc), and it's amazing the things you find that they are unable to do, mostly because of crappy UI in software. There should be a lot more thought put into UI design. If the enduser can't work out how to use your software, your software is essentially useless (or possibly even dangerous). With apps/webpages all having so many options for flexible UIs now, there's too many options for programmers to create their own cryptic UI that nobody understands but them. I feel like in the old days things were much more predictable. Not that I'd like to go back to those days, but we've certainly taken two steps forward, one step back. One thing that especially irritates me is the trend for everything to be an icon, especially on phones. I do understand why this happens, but it has the effect that if you can't remember or don't know what a particular icon signifies, there's (usually) no way to hover to get a tooltip to tell you before you press it. I say "usually" because my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has what could have been a great feature that it senses when you finger comes near to the screen without pressing it, but unfortunately it only works in the stock browser and SMS app (both of which I don't use!). I guess Samsung has not released the API for it to work in other apps? It really could have changed how phone UIs work for the better. Edit: the hovering feature is called Air view. It's slightly creepy how it can sense your finger even when you're not physically touching the screen. I've read some webpages that said it should work in Chrome, but for me it only ever worked in the stock browser, but I just tested that and now that doesn't even work, although it still works in the stock SMS app. I think it may have broken since the Android 5.0 update. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Android 5.0.