"There are no affordances to the taps. No edges to the active areas. Nothing to hint at what might happen. This creates what I call a “brittle” interface — wher

"There are no affordances to the taps. No edges to the active areas. Nothing to hint at what might happen. This creates what I call a “brittle” interface — where one wrong tap sends you careening in an unknown direction, without knowing why or how you got there." Is it just me, or have smartphone interfaces gotten both more and less brittle over the years? I've noticed that very mature apps tend to be very non-brittle, and new apps (or revamps of mature apps) made by newer developers tend to be very brittle. For some reason, I've noticed this conditional brittleness particularly with maps apps. Fancy "3D" features in maps apps exhibit this, as well as badly timed alternative route features, which present a button, then yank it away bullfighter style.