5 ms·

The author did say: "UX is turning those four bins into two (or one!) and signing up with a single stream recycling vendor."

by dguo 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
catnaroek 9y ago
And he's wrong. It is far easier to get everyone to classify their trash. Separating trash that has been put in a single trash bin is far more complicated later on. “It allows people to think less” isn't an excuse for making shit worse in every other possible imaginable respect.
- 0xF2 9y ago
  Author here. The point here is not the trash, I go by those bins twice a day and can affor to think a few more seconds if I am carrying something unusual. Plus it makes you feel like you are part of a bigger cause to put near-zero effort to help save the planet. The point is software. There I should not spend a fraction of a second thinking, because that does not happen twice a day. It happens every 15 minutes if we are talking about me looking at my phone. UX thinking there makes a real, tangible difference.
  - catnaroek 9y ago
    Then allow people to automate it themselves according to what they think is best. Who put “UX designers” in the business of deciding what my habits should be? From one of the pictures on your post: > We guide every interaction. This is as fascist as it gets.
    - sslayer 9y ago
      Exactly - Removing options and "thinking" for the user removes freedom. I agree that is okay to "hide" options and "think" for the user, as long as those options utimately can be "unhidden". I want my UX to be intuitive and easy to use, but what If I want to customize my UI for my own experience?
      - jaxn 9y ago
        Who gets to define the options that are available? Shouldn't the developer of the software get to decide what their software does and doesn't do? You want me to spend money developing and supporting options that I would rather not build & support?
        0xF2 9y ago
        The designer in the software team gets to decide what is available. Software that has no design has in itself been designed, but the choices were made by a developer instead. There is nothing inappropriate about one vendor making choices. to continue the Apple example, they make 8 of the reasonably complete smartphones you could choose to buy. If you were forced to buy Apple's phone, that would be another matter, but you get to choose.
        Qwertious 9y ago
        > Shouldn't the developer of the software get to decide what their software does and doesn't do? You want me to spend money developing and supporting options that I would rather not build & support? In the long term, yes - the customer decides, because it's the customer providing the money. Now, there's the whole "the customer is NOT always right, because the customer is often a clueless moron" problem, but ultimately, it's the customer's money to spend (or not spend).
  - tyingq 9y ago
    The analogy might work better if you went into why the idea of reducing to one or two bins was the best solution. Is that better than, for example 3 bins "aluminum cans", "plastic bottles" and "everything else"? By what measure? Without the background, it just sort of sounds like "consult your UX people for the answer, always...we're never wrong".
  - carwheel10 9y ago
    What do you think of my solution posted above?
    - 0xF2 9y ago
      I like it better than reading different signs in every office I visit. In the US the problem however is that recycling collection is not standardized. Each city does it differently, which gets in the way of the standardization you propose. We would need a Federal standard (or at least an agreement by the relevant industry association) to help there.
      - carwheel10 9y ago
        Not necessarily although a federal standard would help. A single big state like California could implement it and the standard would propagate itself from there.
- archagon 9y ago
  Well, except for the fact that half the people won't bother and the job will have to be done at some point anyway.
  - uoaei 9y ago
    That is a strong assertion. It takes a bit of culture remapping, but certainly doable. Want good examples? Spend some time in Germany or Sweden.
    - lobster_johnson 9y ago
      Making humans change their habits is extremely difficult, though. Scandinavia and Germany are outliers — and I say that as a Scandinavian (who has spent a lot of time in Germany). Here in New York, I recently lived in a building where people would, on a weekly basis, discard pizzas, soiled napkins and rotisserie chicken carcasses in the recycling bin. This was a modern building with just two different recycling bins (one for plastic/metal, the other for paper/cardboard). It's amazing how little people care. In my current NYC neighbourhood, there are no recycling bins at all, and people have to sort and bag their recycling and put it on the street one night of the week. Not surprisingly, almost nobody bothers. Other than myself, I've only observed bags from my neighbour next door. The US can be pretty infuriating/depressing sometimes.
- carwheel10 9y ago
  It's even better if we move the problem of classifying from the person throwing trash to the time of manufacturing of the article. You could mark each article with #1, #2 or #3 and standardize each bin to be called bin #1, #2 or #3. The person then simply matches number on article to the number on bin and throws, dead simple. See my comment above for detailed description of this.
  - glandium 9y ago
    Those labels exist, at least in Japan. They're not numbers, though. http://www.barcode-net.com/products/recycle/img/ex-img_recycle-01.gif http://www.barcode-net.com/products/recycle/img/ex-img_recyc... The problem is when items have multiple labels, because they're not made of one thing. The simplest example is Saran wrap, where the box is "paper", and the part to cut plastic is either "aluminium" or "plastic" (there are brands that make it in paper so that it's easier, though). And both parts go in different bins. Bottles can have 3 parts: plastic cap, PET bottle, paper label. All in different bins. Then you add rules where things need to be clean, which mean in theory, your toothpaste tube needs to be cut open, and cleaned, before putting it in the bin. And different cities have different rules.
    - carwheel10 9y ago
      9 labels is too many. Also, those pictures are kind of hard to match. It needs to be dead simple: number of labels = number of bins available. Maybe number of labels can be more than number of bins by 1 or 2 at most. Secondly, use numbering instead of icons. Numbering is dead simple to match, icons require effort to match on the box against the picture on bin. In the case of saran wrap: the box should clearly say #2 for box and #3 for contents (saran wrap). That would resolve the case you mentioned.
      - glandium 9y ago
        The fun part is: in many cities, you actually have to separate almost all 9 categories. As for the salan wrap, the point is that it's not a box vs contents problem. The box itself needs to be broken up (removing the cutter part) before being thrown away.
lucideer 9y ago
Regardless of what's easier or what will have to be done anyway, this isn't a UX solution. It's kicking the can down the road. Good UX solves problems at the point of user interaction. Avoiding the problem only to dump it on a backend engineer or data scientist who's then got to make do with bad source data (my best guess at the equivalent to recycling contractors in this analogy) is not good UX, it's just laziness. If it is easier for the data scientist to sift through and correct bad data than it is for a UX professional, it absolutely makes sense to have the data scientist do the work. But the UX doesn't get to take credit for that decision. His follow through after the initial bad analogy is then frustratingly vague; he just hand waves at Apple and gives no concrete examples of solving UX problems.

The author did say: "UX is turning those four bins into two (or one!) and signing up with a single stream recycling vendor."

by dguo 9y ago

The author did say: "UX is turning those four bins into two (or one!) and signing up with a single stream recycling vendor."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

catnaroek 9y ago

And he's wrong. It is far easier to get everyone to classify their trash. Separating trash that has been put in a single trash bin is far more complicated later on. “It allows people to think less” isn't an excuse for making shit worse in every other possible imaginable respect.

0xF2 9y ago
Author here. The point here is not the trash, I go by those bins twice a day and can affor to think a few more seconds if I am carrying something unusual. Plus it makes you feel like you are part of a bigger cause to put near-zero effort to help save the planet. The point is software. There I should not spend a fraction of a second thinking, because that does not happen twice a day. It happens every 15 minutes if we are talking about me looking at my phone. UX thinking there makes a real, tangible difference.
- catnaroek 9y ago
  Then allow people to automate it themselves according to what they think is best. Who put “UX designers” in the business of deciding what my habits should be? From one of the pictures on your post: > We guide every interaction. This is as fascist as it gets.
  - sslayer 9y ago
    Exactly - Removing options and "thinking" for the user removes freedom. I agree that is okay to "hide" options and "think" for the user, as long as those options utimately can be "unhidden". I want my UX to be intuitive and easy to use, but what If I want to customize my UI for my own experience?
    - jaxn 9y ago
      Who gets to define the options that are available? Shouldn't the developer of the software get to decide what their software does and doesn't do? You want me to spend money developing and supporting options that I would rather not build & support?
      - 0xF2 9y ago
        The designer in the software team gets to decide what is available. Software that has no design has in itself been designed, but the choices were made by a developer instead. There is nothing inappropriate about one vendor making choices. to continue the Apple example, they make 8 of the reasonably complete smartphones you could choose to buy. If you were forced to buy Apple's phone, that would be another matter, but you get to choose.
      - Qwertious 9y ago
        > Shouldn't the developer of the software get to decide what their software does and doesn't do? You want me to spend money developing and supporting options that I would rather not build & support? In the long term, yes - the customer decides, because it's the customer providing the money. Now, there's the whole "the customer is NOT always right, because the customer is often a clueless moron" problem, but ultimately, it's the customer's money to spend (or not spend).
- tyingq 9y ago
  The analogy might work better if you went into why the idea of reducing to one or two bins was the best solution. Is that better than, for example 3 bins "aluminum cans", "plastic bottles" and "everything else"? By what measure? Without the background, it just sort of sounds like "consult your UX people for the answer, always...we're never wrong".
- carwheel10 9y ago
  What do you think of my solution posted above?
  - 0xF2 9y ago
    I like it better than reading different signs in every office I visit. In the US the problem however is that recycling collection is not standardized. Each city does it differently, which gets in the way of the standardization you propose. We would need a Federal standard (or at least an agreement by the relevant industry association) to help there.
    - carwheel10 9y ago
      Not necessarily although a federal standard would help. A single big state like California could implement it and the standard would propagate itself from there.
archagon 9y ago
Well, except for the fact that half the people won't bother and the job will have to be done at some point anyway.
- uoaei 9y ago
  That is a strong assertion. It takes a bit of culture remapping, but certainly doable. Want good examples? Spend some time in Germany or Sweden.
  - lobster_johnson 9y ago
    Making humans change their habits is extremely difficult, though. Scandinavia and Germany are outliers — and I say that as a Scandinavian (who has spent a lot of time in Germany). Here in New York, I recently lived in a building where people would, on a weekly basis, discard pizzas, soiled napkins and rotisserie chicken carcasses in the recycling bin. This was a modern building with just two different recycling bins (one for plastic/metal, the other for paper/cardboard). It's amazing how little people care. In my current NYC neighbourhood, there are no recycling bins at all, and people have to sort and bag their recycling and put it on the street one night of the week. Not surprisingly, almost nobody bothers. Other than myself, I've only observed bags from my neighbour next door. The US can be pretty infuriating/depressing sometimes.
carwheel10 9y ago
It's even better if we move the problem of classifying from the person throwing trash to the time of manufacturing of the article. You could mark each article with #1, #2 or #3 and standardize each bin to be called bin #1, #2 or #3. The person then simply matches number on article to the number on bin and throws, dead simple. See my comment above for detailed description of this.
- glandium 9y ago
  Those labels exist, at least in Japan. They're not numbers, though. http://www.barcode-net.com/products/recycle/img/ex-img_recycle-01.gif http://www.barcode-net.com/products/recycle/img/ex-img_recyc... The problem is when items have multiple labels, because they're not made of one thing. The simplest example is Saran wrap, where the box is "paper", and the part to cut plastic is either "aluminium" or "plastic" (there are brands that make it in paper so that it's easier, though). And both parts go in different bins. Bottles can have 3 parts: plastic cap, PET bottle, paper label. All in different bins. Then you add rules where things need to be clean, which mean in theory, your toothpaste tube needs to be cut open, and cleaned, before putting it in the bin. And different cities have different rules.
  - carwheel10 9y ago
    9 labels is too many. Also, those pictures are kind of hard to match. It needs to be dead simple: number of labels = number of bins available. Maybe number of labels can be more than number of bins by 1 or 2 at most. Secondly, use numbering instead of icons. Numbering is dead simple to match, icons require effort to match on the box against the picture on bin. In the case of saran wrap: the box should clearly say #2 for box and #3 for contents (saran wrap). That would resolve the case you mentioned.
    - glandium 9y ago
      The fun part is: in many cities, you actually have to separate almost all 9 categories. As for the salan wrap, the point is that it's not a box vs contents problem. The box itself needs to be broken up (removing the cutter part) before being thrown away.

lucideer 9y ago

Regardless of what's easier or what will have to be done anyway, this isn't a UX solution. It's kicking the can down the road. Good UX solves problems at the point of user interaction. Avoiding the problem only to dump it on a backend engineer or data scientist who's then got to make do with bad source data (my best guess at the equivalent to recycling contractors in this analogy) is not good UX, it's just laziness. If it is easier for the data scientist to sift through and correct bad data than it is for a UX professional, it absolutely makes sense to have the data scientist do the work. But the UX doesn't get to take credit for that decision. His follow through after the initial bad analogy is then frustratingly vague; he just hand waves at Apple and gives no concrete examples of solving UX problems.