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This is one of the reasons why I turn off all auto-* features in software that I use. From a UX perspective I want the program to do exactly as I command instea

by pg_bot 9y ago

This is one of the reasons why I turn off all auto-* features in software that I use. From a UX perspective I want the program to do exactly as I command instead of trying to "help" me out. I've had problems like chrome autofilling to an old address so a package gets delivered to the wrong location, or having to constantly edit text messages back to what I originally wrote because the program decided I was wrong. When designing anything, if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop.

inetknght 9y ago
> chrome autofilling to an old address I completely disable autofill in the first place. As an added bonus, sites can't have hidden fields that get autofilled with my information either. Second, I'd strongly argue it's your fault for not looking at what Chrome filled into the fields. > if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. To be fair, they probably are doing some people a favor. I just think that things should be opt-in instead of opt-out though. If things don't get opted into, then perhaps you should look to see why. Maybe people just don't know about it. Time to create some quick tutorials then.
- pg_bot 9y ago
  It is often the case that I type faster than the UI can respond. So if I am tabbing through form fields and the last one changes everything above the viewport without me noticing it's an easy mistake to make. I usually won't double check shipping addresses because I typed the correct thing in the first time. At the end of the day it is on me to catch these kinds of things but I am sure you can understand my frustration.
  - inetknght 9y ago
    The only UI that is too slow to respond on modern hardware is a UI which is so laden with shitware. There's absolutely no other reason for a UI to be too slow to respond to typing; whether it's a terminal application, a native application, or a browser GUI. A GUI that changes what you've typed into some field (especially when you're not looking) is a prime example of UI dark patterns and shitware.
SquareWheel 9y ago
Chrome has a settings menu to edit existing addresses, if you need to remove an old address. chrome://settings/autofill
thsowers 9y ago
> When designing anything, if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. Can see validity in your other points, but I don't think this is always true. For example, I find it useful when looking up classical musicians on youtube to see what works they are most famous for playing
- pg_bot 9y ago
  I should clarify predicting what I am about to do is fine, but correcting what I've done is wrong. As long as I maintain control it's ok.
- pdkl95 9y ago
  Offering to do something is usually fine, as long as you do it carefully and stop of the user closes your offer in frustration ("stop bugging me, I have work to do"). On the other hand, assuming know what the user "really" wants to do and doing that work ahead of time without asking first is arrogant and frustrating. If this also breaks existing behavior, it's also teaching people to treat your software as unreliable, possibly hostile, unpredictable toy they they should avoid when possible. Tools need to be reliable, and that includes reliably following the user's orders.
ej_campbell 9y ago
Seriously? Typing on glass without auto-correct is painful. Do you really think it was a bad idea for designers to design that feature?
- pg_bot 9y ago
  Yes. The computer should never do something that I haven't explicitly told it to do. You can design the same exact feature but I need to trigger it, the machine should not be making decisions for me.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    I use SwiftKey (without cloud predictions) and if you press spacebar that's the equivalent of "explicitly telling it". The thing is that usually, the auto correct is correct so when you see it is not you click on the word you (according to the computer) "made up", et voila.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ej_campbell 9y ago
    > When designing anything, if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. And you think that is the right call for the majority of people?
    - pg_bot 9y ago
      Why would you ever want to trade accuracy for speed?
      - ec109685 9y ago
        Because the OS can guess correctly more often than a typical user can type correctly. You can always proof read its work at the end. Also, in addition to auto correcting words, your phone also auto corrects individual key presses based on the word you are typing. The same physical impact on your screen will register a different letter based on the letters that come before it. So part of your “typing on glass accuracy” is dependent on a designer designing that feature that “does work ahead of time”.
bambax 9y ago
Why people use autocorrect is beyond me. Chats with my friends are littered with addenda where they correct what autocorrect corrected, it's insane. Just type what you mean to type -- a spelling mistake isn't the end of the world. But changing a word for another makes a sentence unintelligible and blocks or at least seriously slows down communication.
- comex 9y ago
  I use autocorrect because it lets me type sloppily enough that I would make a lot of spelling mistakes without it, frequently making words unintelligible. Of course, I could type reasonably accurately if I slowed down, but in theory, with autocorrect I can type faster and still end up with the right text most of the time. Yes, miscorrections happen, more often than I'd like, but not enough that avoiding them would be worth even a small speed penalty; virtual keyboards are slow enough as they are. …On the other hand, my teenage younger sister has always used her phone with autocorrect disabled (just because she doesn't like the capitalization), and she types pretty quickly. Maybe it's just a matter of training yourself with autocorrect off, and eventually you can type accurately while keeping the same speed. But I'm not sure. There's no doubt that training would help, but can it make up the full difference, compared to a user well-trained with autocorrect on? (…And for that matter, if I care about speed so much, shouldn't I switch to a swipe-style keyboard? But that's a separate discussion.) Anyway, the fundamental problem is that without the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard, it's much easier for your fingers to get misaligned, so the relative positions of the taps might be reasonably correct but the absolute positions are totally messed up. Even though you can see when you make a typo, humans have pretty high latency in responding to visual feedback, and you only get the feedback after the fact (whereas on a physical keyboard you can feel if you're in the wrong place before you've actually pressed down on the key). It seems more efficient to just type the whole word at once, and even if you were misaligned, most of the time autocorrect will figure out what you meant. (Especially if you keep going with the sentence, which can change previous words after they were seemingly finalized. I used to go one word at a time, stopping to correct any word that turned out wrong, but after I learned to trust autocorrect a bit more I realized that some of those corrections were unnecessary. This applies especially to the word "its", which autocorrect likes to change to "it's" but will often change back when appropriate.) Actually, I make typos on physical keyboards too - which I'd like to think is just a side effect of being a fast typist, though I'm probably less accurate than most - but my impression is that those are more often timing rather than positioning related, and I can often tell they've happened by feel alone, letting me hit option-delete to redo the word immediately without waiting for visual feedback to go through my head...

by pg_bot 9y ago

inetknght 9y ago

> chrome autofilling to an old address I completely disable autofill in the first place. As an added bonus, sites can't have hidden fields that get autofilled with my information either. Second, I'd strongly argue it's your fault for not looking at what Chrome filled into the fields. > if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. To be fair, they probably are doing some people a favor. I just think that things should be opt-in instead of opt-out though. If things don't get opted into, then perhaps you should look to see why. Maybe people just don't know about it. Time to create some quick tutorials then.

pg_bot 9y ago
It is often the case that I type faster than the UI can respond. So if I am tabbing through form fields and the last one changes everything above the viewport without me noticing it's an easy mistake to make. I usually won't double check shipping addresses because I typed the correct thing in the first time. At the end of the day it is on me to catch these kinds of things but I am sure you can understand my frustration.
- inetknght 9y ago
  The only UI that is too slow to respond on modern hardware is a UI which is so laden with shitware. There's absolutely no other reason for a UI to be too slow to respond to typing; whether it's a terminal application, a native application, or a browser GUI. A GUI that changes what you've typed into some field (especially when you're not looking) is a prime example of UI dark patterns and shitware.

SquareWheel 9y ago

Chrome has a settings menu to edit existing addresses, if you need to remove an old address. chrome://settings/autofill

thsowers 9y ago

> When designing anything, if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. Can see validity in your other points, but I don't think this is always true. For example, I find it useful when looking up classical musicians on youtube to see what works they are most famous for playing

pg_bot 9y ago
I should clarify predicting what I am about to do is fine, but correcting what I've done is wrong. As long as I maintain control it's ok.
pdkl95 9y ago
Offering to do something is usually fine, as long as you do it carefully and stop of the user closes your offer in frustration ("stop bugging me, I have work to do"). On the other hand, assuming know what the user "really" wants to do and doing that work ahead of time without asking first is arrogant and frustrating. If this also breaks existing behavior, it's also teaching people to treat your software as unreliable, possibly hostile, unpredictable toy they they should avoid when possible. Tools need to be reliable, and that includes reliably following the user's orders.

ej_campbell 9y ago

Seriously? Typing on glass without auto-correct is painful. Do you really think it was a bad idea for designers to design that feature?

pg_bot 9y ago
Yes. The computer should never do something that I haven't explicitly told it to do. You can design the same exact feature but I need to trigger it, the machine should not be making decisions for me.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  I use SwiftKey (without cloud predictions) and if you press spacebar that's the equivalent of "explicitly telling it". The thing is that usually, the auto correct is correct so when you see it is not you click on the word you (according to the computer) "made up", et voila.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ej_campbell 9y ago
  > When designing anything, if you think that you are doing someone a favor by doing work ahead of time please stop. And you think that is the right call for the majority of people?
  - pg_bot 9y ago
    Why would you ever want to trade accuracy for speed?
    - ec109685 9y ago
      Because the OS can guess correctly more often than a typical user can type correctly. You can always proof read its work at the end. Also, in addition to auto correcting words, your phone also auto corrects individual key presses based on the word you are typing. The same physical impact on your screen will register a different letter based on the letters that come before it. So part of your “typing on glass accuracy” is dependent on a designer designing that feature that “does work ahead of time”.

bambax 9y ago

Why people use autocorrect is beyond me. Chats with my friends are littered with addenda where they correct what autocorrect corrected, it's insane. Just type what you mean to type -- a spelling mistake isn't the end of the world. But changing a word for another makes a sentence unintelligible and blocks or at least seriously slows down communication.

comex 9y ago
I use autocorrect because it lets me type sloppily enough that I would make a lot of spelling mistakes without it, frequently making words unintelligible. Of course, I could type reasonably accurately if I slowed down, but in theory, with autocorrect I can type faster and still end up with the right text most of the time. Yes, miscorrections happen, more often than I'd like, but not enough that avoiding them would be worth even a small speed penalty; virtual keyboards are slow enough as they are. …On the other hand, my teenage younger sister has always used her phone with autocorrect disabled (just because she doesn't like the capitalization), and she types pretty quickly. Maybe it's just a matter of training yourself with autocorrect off, and eventually you can type accurately while keeping the same speed. But I'm not sure. There's no doubt that training would help, but can it make up the full difference, compared to a user well-trained with autocorrect on? (…And for that matter, if I care about speed so much, shouldn't I switch to a swipe-style keyboard? But that's a separate discussion.) Anyway, the fundamental problem is that without the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard, it's much easier for your fingers to get misaligned, so the relative positions of the taps might be reasonably correct but the absolute positions are totally messed up. Even though you can see when you make a typo, humans have pretty high latency in responding to visual feedback, and you only get the feedback after the fact (whereas on a physical keyboard you can feel if you're in the wrong place before you've actually pressed down on the key). It seems more efficient to just type the whole word at once, and even if you were misaligned, most of the time autocorrect will figure out what you meant. (Especially if you keep going with the sentence, which can change previous words after they were seemingly finalized. I used to go one word at a time, stopping to correct any word that turned out wrong, but after I learned to trust autocorrect a bit more I realized that some of those corrections were unnecessary. This applies especially to the word "its", which autocorrect likes to change to "it's" but will often change back when appropriate.) Actually, I make typos on physical keyboards too - which I'd like to think is just a side effect of being a fast typist, though I'm probably less accurate than most - but my impression is that those are more often timing rather than positioning related, and I can often tell they've happened by feel alone, letting me hit option-delete to redo the word immediately without waiting for visual feedback to go through my head...