7 ms·

This reminds me of a striking example during our UI design class, which eventually led me to conclude that there is no intuitive design of anything, unless you

by tetha 9y ago

This reminds me of a striking example during our UI design class, which eventually led me to conclude that there is no intuitive design of anything, unless you can make specific assumptions about the users. You have a steering wheel, and turn it to the right. What direction do you turn? It's such a simple question. And if you're used to a car, or a bike, it's so easy to answer. Turn right, go right. Well except every captain with his boat will tell you they will go left. And there are so many examples of this if you look at them. Our monitoring has a lot of graphs, but why would a rising or a falling graph be good? If it's latency, you want it low but not 0, because 0 would be weird. If it's available capacity, you want it high, but too high is right out as well, since it's a waste. In some cases, we need ports open because we kinda need to answer productive HTTP requests, in other cases, it would be rather silly to expose elasticsearch to the internet. Intuition and intuitive meaning is such a hard thing.

paulryanrogers 9y ago
"Turn right, go right. Well except every captain with his boat will tell you they will go left." Is this really true of ships with steering wheels? I know those with a fixed rudder control do work opposite the desired direction.
- tetha 9y ago
  And that, and your peer comment, are the beautiful part of this example. If you start looking into it, it's even more bloody complicated. Cars and ships both have changed the way their steering wheels work. Some ships don't have steering wheels and instead have straight rudders or computer controls. And motor boats can rotate the ship through motor and rotor control without using the rudder.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  I have sailed a small sailboat and a piloted a bunch of ski/bass/pontoon boats. All had the steering set up such that it matched a car. Only on boats with a simple rudder/tiller does it reverse.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Not to mention the question of turning the wheel "right". When you turn the top of the wheel right, the bottom of the wheel moves to the left.
  - cesarb 9y ago
    Given that the top of the wheel is nearer our eyes, it's natural to think of the top of the wheel when saying "right" or "left". Of course, that only works for vertical wheels.
gmueckl 9y ago
Fun fact: early automobiles had their steering designed to be the reverse of what it is now. Then the steering wheel came and they switched it around to what we use now.
- schoen 9y ago
  Someone has tried making a bicycle that steers the other way as a psychology experiment: https://ed.ted.com/featured/bf2mRAfC https://ed.ted.com/featured/bf2mRAfC
- tetha 9y ago
  I didn't even know this. And it just adds to the example, especially because the boat part is flat out incomplete, with steering wheels behaving either way, and straight rudders, and motor / rotor control so you don't need to use the wheel to park a motor boat. The more you look into this example, the more complicated and confusing it becomes.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Turn wheel left, motor/rudder moves left, vessel moves left. Ship's wheels are older than steering wheels in cars. If ships weren't "turn the direction you want to go" cars probably wouldn't be either. It's only opposite on small craft without a wheel and is just a fact of where the pivot point is compared to the user's hand and the motor/rudder.
jamesjyu 9y ago
I think about this every time I use my wife's macbook. She doesn't have natural scrolling turned on for her trackpad, whereas I do. I have to temporarily rewire my brain to make it work. Should a trackpad scroll the scroll bar, or should it scroll the surface itself? Apple wants everyone to use natural scroll because that lines up with the touch UX convention—there are no scrollbars, you scroll the surfaces directly.
- taco_emoji 9y ago
  I'm one of those weirdos that needs inverse Y-axis for the mouse in first-person shooters. I'm pretty sure it's because of playing flight simulators as a kid. And furthermore even though "left hand moves, right hand looks" is intuitive for me on the PC, I cannot get used to it on consoles because I'm so used to the default configuration in Goldeneye where left hand was "move forward/back & rotate left/right" and right hand was "look up/down & strafe left/right".
  - dharmab 9y ago
    It is possible to retrain yourself- I played inverted as a kid but switched to standard as a teenager for compatibility with more games. What really confuses me are JRPGs which invert the camera horizontally.
- cesarb 9y ago
  It depends on whether you think of it as moving the content, or moving a window over the content. When reading a piece of paper, do you move the paper upwards, or do you move your eyes downward? What does pressing the "down arrow" key do, and should moving down on a trackpad move in the same direction as the "down arrow" key? Personally, I have a physical consideration: scrolling down in a document is more common than scrolling up, and to me moving the fingers down over the trackpad feel more comfortable than moving the fingers up, so I use normal scrolling instead of inverted scrolling.
zachrose 9y ago
And even on a bicycle or motorcycle it's not that simple. At low speeds you can turn right to go right, but any faster and it's you do the opposite to initiate a lean and the lean does the turning. This goes unnoticed on bicycles, but on a heavy motorcycle the it becomes important.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rconti 9y ago
  I don't get why people insist on the "low speed" exception. That only works BECAUSE at low speeds you're able to initiate the lean by, well, LEANING, and turning into the lean. At higher speeds this doesn't work simply because you're not able to lean far enough to counteract the vehicle's tendancy to fall the opposite way when you turn the bars. It is more correct to just say at ANY speed you have to countersteer (or in some way get the center of mass on the 'inside' of the turn relative to the wheels) and not confuse people with the low speed vs high speed bit, even though that's the way it FEELS as a rider.
- u801e 9y ago
  > but any faster and it's you do the opposite to initiate a lean and the lean does the turning. > This goes unnoticed on bicycles, but on a heavy motorcycle the it becomes important. I don't have motorcycle riding experience, but I have noticed the same thing on a bicycle at higher speeds (25 to 35 mph going downhill). On a bicycle, you have to shift yourself a little bit to initiate a turn at those speeds. I guess you have to put more effort into the weight shift on a heavier two wheeled vehicle?
  - T-N-T 9y ago
    > I guess you have to put more effort into the weight shift on a heavier two wheeled vehicle? No, this is not how you're supposed to turn whether you use a motorcycle or are riding at moderately higher speeds on a bicycle and this wrong habit is how people become unable to avoid obstacles in a timely manner on the road. Turn-by-leaning doesn't exist, it's an illusion. It works because when you lean, you are pushing a bit on the handle bar. Pushing the handle bar in the direction of your turn makes it go to the opposite direction, which makes the 2 wheeled vehicle lean, and once you stop pushing on the handle bar the momentum will keep you from falling further. You don't need to lean to turn. You only need to push the handle bar. You can in fact put your weight to the side opposite of the lean of the bike ( just be careful and keep the momentum going by pedaling at a fixed rhythm ) so long as you pushed the handlebar the bike will lean toward the direction you pushed, it doesn't matter where you shift your weight. I am utterly amazed at the general confusion in this thread coming from both motorcycle and bicycle riders. Countersteering is how you turn no matter which speed you're at on a two wheeled vehicle. The thing about low speed is that once you initiated the turn and made the vehicle lean a little the wheel will automatically self-adjust and turn into the direction you're leaning on, while at higher speeds the wheel will stay straight after you started leaning. Try it. Go somewhere without obstacles, ride at like 5km/h on a straight line, use only one hand, do not lean your body in any way, and with your one hand, give a gentle push on the right side, and then consciously stop putting any force whatsoever on the handlebar. After your push, the bike will lean to the right because the wheel turned to the left, and once the lean has been initiated, since it's low speed, the wheel will automatically turn to the right side without your help.
tjohns 9y ago
And then there's motorcycles, where the direction you'll turn will change depending on how fast you're going. :) At very low speeds, a motorcycle behaves like a bicycle. Turn the handlebar right, go right.* However, once you get up to normal vehicle speeds, it reverses and countersteering takes over. Turn the handlebar right, go left.* It's one of the things they spend a lot of time drilling into your head if you take a motorcycle safety class, because a lot of folks get it wrong or incorrectly think that you turn by leaning. It's a UI problem that can very easily get you hurt -- but I'm not sure how you'd make it any more intuitive. (*: Technically, countersteering is still in play at low speeds, even on a bicycle... but it's very subtle and most folks don't notice it, because you quickly correct the other way to re-balance the bike.)
- travisjungroth 9y ago
  > It's one of the things they spend a lot of time drilling into your head Which is why most training for practical things is pretty bad. You can't shove physical skills into student's heads. Tell them once or twice, then create a drill where they get to learn it themselves. In this case, I would have the student do low speed turns from straight. Ideally on a bicycle.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Also I find a lot of instructors are bad at physics, especially in skiing. 'Copy me' tends to work better than trying to follow a somewhat off explanation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 9y ago
  being nitpicky, turning the handlebars makes the front wheel go the direction you turn it. So to turn right at speed, turn the bars left a bit so the wheels move out a foot or so to the left and you're lent over, then turn it right so the bike turns right hard enough to stop you falling over further.
- 9y ago
rhn_mk1 9y ago
Taps always irk me, if they have a single handle controlling the two valves. On the left side the handle is marked red, on the right it's blue. If I want the water to be warm, do I pull the red towards me and the center, or do I turn the handle in the direction of the red indicator, hiding it? People made fun of me because it confuses me every time.
- kd5bjo 9y ago
  I think they’re ambiguous on purpose, so that there’s no way for the plumber to hook it up backwards. It’s just a mnemonic device that helps you remember which way yours is set up.
  - blt 9y ago
    Ha, I never thought of this but you're probably right. My kitchen has a single-handle faucet that is hooked up backwards - plumbers make mistakes :) I don't blame them, sometimes equipment is weird. For example, the contacts on an SPDT switch don't always match intuition.
- TheNewAndy 9y ago
  Don't forget that blue is a hotter colour than red (I have the same issue as you, and I figure if I guess wrong I can just blame the colours)
stordoff 9y ago
You see a similar debate in video games -- if you move a control stick up, which way should your view move?
xamuel 9y ago
We even take this for granted in the way text flows. Bash: new text goes on bottom. Twitter: new text goes on top.
tzahola 9y ago
>You have a steering wheel, and turn it to the right. There’s no such thing as a wheel turning to the right. It’s clockwise or counterclockwise.

by tetha 9y ago

paulryanrogers 9y ago

"Turn right, go right. Well except every captain with his boat will tell you they will go left." Is this really true of ships with steering wheels? I know those with a fixed rudder control do work opposite the desired direction.

tetha 9y ago
And that, and your peer comment, are the beautiful part of this example. If you start looking into it, it's even more bloody complicated. Cars and ships both have changed the way their steering wheels work. Some ships don't have steering wheels and instead have straight rudders or computer controls. And motor boats can rotate the ship through motor and rotor control without using the rudder.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
I have sailed a small sailboat and a piloted a bunch of ski/bass/pontoon boats. All had the steering set up such that it matched a car. Only on boats with a simple rudder/tiller does it reverse.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Not to mention the question of turning the wheel "right". When you turn the top of the wheel right, the bottom of the wheel moves to the left.
- cesarb 9y ago
  Given that the top of the wheel is nearer our eyes, it's natural to think of the top of the wheel when saying "right" or "left". Of course, that only works for vertical wheels.

gmueckl 9y ago

Fun fact: early automobiles had their steering designed to be the reverse of what it is now. Then the steering wheel came and they switched it around to what we use now.

schoen 9y ago
Someone has tried making a bicycle that steers the other way as a psychology experiment: https://ed.ted.com/featured/bf2mRAfC https://ed.ted.com/featured/bf2mRAfC
tetha 9y ago
I didn't even know this. And it just adds to the example, especially because the boat part is flat out incomplete, with steering wheels behaving either way, and straight rudders, and motor / rotor control so you don't need to use the wheel to park a motor boat. The more you look into this example, the more complicated and confusing it becomes.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Turn wheel left, motor/rudder moves left, vessel moves left. Ship's wheels are older than steering wheels in cars. If ships weren't "turn the direction you want to go" cars probably wouldn't be either. It's only opposite on small craft without a wheel and is just a fact of where the pivot point is compared to the user's hand and the motor/rudder.

jamesjyu 9y ago

I think about this every time I use my wife's macbook. She doesn't have natural scrolling turned on for her trackpad, whereas I do. I have to temporarily rewire my brain to make it work. Should a trackpad scroll the scroll bar, or should it scroll the surface itself? Apple wants everyone to use natural scroll because that lines up with the touch UX convention—there are no scrollbars, you scroll the surfaces directly.

taco_emoji 9y ago
I'm one of those weirdos that needs inverse Y-axis for the mouse in first-person shooters. I'm pretty sure it's because of playing flight simulators as a kid. And furthermore even though "left hand moves, right hand looks" is intuitive for me on the PC, I cannot get used to it on consoles because I'm so used to the default configuration in Goldeneye where left hand was "move forward/back & rotate left/right" and right hand was "look up/down & strafe left/right".
- dharmab 9y ago
  It is possible to retrain yourself- I played inverted as a kid but switched to standard as a teenager for compatibility with more games. What really confuses me are JRPGs which invert the camera horizontally.
cesarb 9y ago
It depends on whether you think of it as moving the content, or moving a window over the content. When reading a piece of paper, do you move the paper upwards, or do you move your eyes downward? What does pressing the "down arrow" key do, and should moving down on a trackpad move in the same direction as the "down arrow" key? Personally, I have a physical consideration: scrolling down in a document is more common than scrolling up, and to me moving the fingers down over the trackpad feel more comfortable than moving the fingers up, so I use normal scrolling instead of inverted scrolling.

zachrose 9y ago

And even on a bicycle or motorcycle it's not that simple. At low speeds you can turn right to go right, but any faster and it's you do the opposite to initiate a lean and the lean does the turning. This goes unnoticed on bicycles, but on a heavy motorcycle the it becomes important.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rconti 9y ago
I don't get why people insist on the "low speed" exception. That only works BECAUSE at low speeds you're able to initiate the lean by, well, LEANING, and turning into the lean. At higher speeds this doesn't work simply because you're not able to lean far enough to counteract the vehicle's tendancy to fall the opposite way when you turn the bars. It is more correct to just say at ANY speed you have to countersteer (or in some way get the center of mass on the 'inside' of the turn relative to the wheels) and not confuse people with the low speed vs high speed bit, even though that's the way it FEELS as a rider.
u801e 9y ago
> but any faster and it's you do the opposite to initiate a lean and the lean does the turning. > This goes unnoticed on bicycles, but on a heavy motorcycle the it becomes important. I don't have motorcycle riding experience, but I have noticed the same thing on a bicycle at higher speeds (25 to 35 mph going downhill). On a bicycle, you have to shift yourself a little bit to initiate a turn at those speeds. I guess you have to put more effort into the weight shift on a heavier two wheeled vehicle?
- T-N-T 9y ago
  > I guess you have to put more effort into the weight shift on a heavier two wheeled vehicle? No, this is not how you're supposed to turn whether you use a motorcycle or are riding at moderately higher speeds on a bicycle and this wrong habit is how people become unable to avoid obstacles in a timely manner on the road. Turn-by-leaning doesn't exist, it's an illusion. It works because when you lean, you are pushing a bit on the handle bar. Pushing the handle bar in the direction of your turn makes it go to the opposite direction, which makes the 2 wheeled vehicle lean, and once you stop pushing on the handle bar the momentum will keep you from falling further. You don't need to lean to turn. You only need to push the handle bar. You can in fact put your weight to the side opposite of the lean of the bike ( just be careful and keep the momentum going by pedaling at a fixed rhythm ) so long as you pushed the handlebar the bike will lean toward the direction you pushed, it doesn't matter where you shift your weight. I am utterly amazed at the general confusion in this thread coming from both motorcycle and bicycle riders. Countersteering is how you turn no matter which speed you're at on a two wheeled vehicle. The thing about low speed is that once you initiated the turn and made the vehicle lean a little the wheel will automatically self-adjust and turn into the direction you're leaning on, while at higher speeds the wheel will stay straight after you started leaning. Try it. Go somewhere without obstacles, ride at like 5km/h on a straight line, use only one hand, do not lean your body in any way, and with your one hand, give a gentle push on the right side, and then consciously stop putting any force whatsoever on the handlebar. After your push, the bike will lean to the right because the wheel turned to the left, and once the lean has been initiated, since it's low speed, the wheel will automatically turn to the right side without your help.

tjohns 9y ago

And then there's motorcycles, where the direction you'll turn will change depending on how fast you're going. :) At very low speeds, a motorcycle behaves like a bicycle. Turn the handlebar right, go right.* However, once you get up to normal vehicle speeds, it reverses and countersteering takes over. Turn the handlebar right, go left.* It's one of the things they spend a lot of time drilling into your head if you take a motorcycle safety class, because a lot of folks get it wrong or incorrectly think that you turn by leaning. It's a UI problem that can very easily get you hurt -- but I'm not sure how you'd make it any more intuitive. (*: Technically, countersteering is still in play at low speeds, even on a bicycle... but it's very subtle and most folks don't notice it, because you quickly correct the other way to re-balance the bike.)

travisjungroth 9y ago
> It's one of the things they spend a lot of time drilling into your head Which is why most training for practical things is pretty bad. You can't shove physical skills into student's heads. Tell them once or twice, then create a drill where they get to learn it themselves. In this case, I would have the student do low speed turns from straight. Ideally on a bicycle.
- tim333 9y ago
  Also I find a lot of instructors are bad at physics, especially in skiing. 'Copy me' tends to work better than trying to follow a somewhat off explanation.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tim333 9y ago
being nitpicky, turning the handlebars makes the front wheel go the direction you turn it. So to turn right at speed, turn the bars left a bit so the wheels move out a foot or so to the left and you're lent over, then turn it right so the bike turns right hard enough to stop you falling over further.
9y ago

rhn_mk1 9y ago

Taps always irk me, if they have a single handle controlling the two valves. On the left side the handle is marked red, on the right it's blue. If I want the water to be warm, do I pull the red towards me and the center, or do I turn the handle in the direction of the red indicator, hiding it? People made fun of me because it confuses me every time.

kd5bjo 9y ago
I think they’re ambiguous on purpose, so that there’s no way for the plumber to hook it up backwards. It’s just a mnemonic device that helps you remember which way yours is set up.
- blt 9y ago
  Ha, I never thought of this but you're probably right. My kitchen has a single-handle faucet that is hooked up backwards - plumbers make mistakes :) I don't blame them, sometimes equipment is weird. For example, the contacts on an SPDT switch don't always match intuition.
TheNewAndy 9y ago
Don't forget that blue is a hotter colour than red (I have the same issue as you, and I figure if I guess wrong I can just blame the colours)

stordoff 9y ago

You see a similar debate in video games -- if you move a control stick up, which way should your view move?

xamuel 9y ago

We even take this for granted in the way text flows. Bash: new text goes on bottom. Twitter: new text goes on top.

tzahola 9y ago

>You have a steering wheel, and turn it to the right. There’s no such thing as a wheel turning to the right. It’s clockwise or counterclockwise.