4 ms·

I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing about how developers design their products is the existence of "features" that override the user without the us

by c3534l 7y ago

I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing about how developers design their products is the existence of "features" that override the user without the user ever telling it to. It assumes you wanted to do something other than was was inputted without getting further input from the user indicating they wanted to carry out that action. Pretty much every massive technology fuck-up in my life has been the result of the computer doing something other than what I told it to do and me not realizing or not being able to fix it after it did so. Things like "open restored document" helpfully deleting the older, unrestored document for me, attaching signatures to emails when I didn't configure a signature, etc. I want to start a movement that forces us to ask every new feature "did the user tell the computer to do X and if so, where is it indicated that X will happen?" There are a million examples when you look out for it and they're all infuriating.

_0ffh 7y ago
Oh thank god I'm not alone in thinking that this is a horrible way to design a "feature"! I've had very similar experiences as you. Every automatic "correction" of user input needs to at least be clearly indicated and easily reversible. In my opinion it shouldn't even happen until the user actively signed off on the proposed modification.
coldpie 7y ago
Ehhhh I agree with your general point, but I'd argue Markdown's list behavior shouldn't be tarred with this brush. It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world. Nothing is perfect, after all.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- JadeNB 7y ago
  > It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world. I think the same argument can be made for almost every "the machine knows better than the user" decision, so it seems to me that this is pointing out that the Markdown list behaviour should be tarred with exactly the same brush.
- c3534l 7y ago
  > It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, This is true of all these features in general. They're all well-intentioned. No one wants to design a system that annoys users. But my criteria is meant to illustrate why it might not have been a smart idea to begin with: the user didn't indicate they wanted the system to renumber their bullet points. In fact, very often the user indicates that they want a specific numbering by placing specific numbers. The feature would work if there was some way to indicate this is just a bulleted list with numbers. Instead, the system assumes 100% of the time that the user made an error, then fixes that error in a way that is difficult to detect without ever providing feedback about the changes. That's a bad system that happens to usually be trivial or at most embarrassing. But the design itself is flawed from first principles. A better way to implement auto-numbered lists would be indicate you want to use auto-numbered lists, just like you indicate you want to use headings, links, or any other element. First, don't rewrite all numbers, making the fact that a correction is taking place under the hood invisible to even experienced users. Auto-numbered lists should be indicated by having multiple lines starting with, say, "<space>0.", or even better "<space>#." to be more congruent with the use of "#" for headings and subheadings in other markdown systems (languages?). Second, when a user submits a post, the system should indicate what has been changed, perhaps with a non-intrusive highlight. The problem would never have arisen had the developers asked my two questions "did the user indicate X?" and "where/how did the user indicate X?" I suppose you should add onto that "is the change transparent to the user?" which is also known to cause some potentially life-threatening errors: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_... - you probably think "it's markdown, what's the big deal?", but who knows. Maybe someone gets some medical or chemistry advice and, sure, they shouldn't trust reddit, but then maybe someone dies anyway. So I think it's always best practice to indicate that a change has been made.
CarlRJ 7y ago
Hitting far above its weight in this category is autocorrect (my wife took to calling it autocarrot in a small act of rebellion), which "helpfully" corrects millions of painstakingly correctly-spelled obscure words into completely wrong but more common words, every day, making human communication less understandable.

by c3534l 7y ago

_0ffh 7y ago

Oh thank god I'm not alone in thinking that this is a horrible way to design a "feature"! I've had very similar experiences as you. Every automatic "correction" of user input needs to at least be clearly indicated and easily reversible. In my opinion it shouldn't even happen until the user actively signed off on the proposed modification.

coldpie 7y ago

Ehhhh I agree with your general point, but I'd argue Markdown's list behavior shouldn't be tarred with this brush. It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world. Nothing is perfect, after all.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JadeNB 7y ago
> It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world. I think the same argument can be made for almost every "the machine knows better than the user" decision, so it seems to me that this is pointing out that the Markdown list behaviour should be tarred with exactly the same brush.
c3534l 7y ago
> It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, This is true of all these features in general. They're all well-intentioned. No one wants to design a system that annoys users. But my criteria is meant to illustrate why it might not have been a smart idea to begin with: the user didn't indicate they wanted the system to renumber their bullet points. In fact, very often the user indicates that they want a specific numbering by placing specific numbers. The feature would work if there was some way to indicate this is just a bulleted list with numbers. Instead, the system assumes 100% of the time that the user made an error, then fixes that error in a way that is difficult to detect without ever providing feedback about the changes. That's a bad system that happens to usually be trivial or at most embarrassing. But the design itself is flawed from first principles. A better way to implement auto-numbered lists would be indicate you want to use auto-numbered lists, just like you indicate you want to use headings, links, or any other element. First, don't rewrite all numbers, making the fact that a correction is taking place under the hood invisible to even experienced users. Auto-numbered lists should be indicated by having multiple lines starting with, say, "<space>0.", or even better "<space>#." to be more congruent with the use of "#" for headings and subheadings in other markdown systems (languages?). Second, when a user submits a post, the system should indicate what has been changed, perhaps with a non-intrusive highlight. The problem would never have arisen had the developers asked my two questions "did the user indicate X?" and "where/how did the user indicate X?" I suppose you should add onto that "is the change transparent to the user?" which is also known to cause some potentially life-threatening errors: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_... - you probably think "it's markdown, what's the big deal?", but who knows. Maybe someone gets some medical or chemistry advice and, sure, they shouldn't trust reddit, but then maybe someone dies anyway. So I think it's always best practice to indicate that a change has been made.

CarlRJ 7y ago

Hitting far above its weight in this category is autocorrect (my wife took to calling it autocarrot in a small act of rebellion), which "helpfully" corrects millions of painstakingly correctly-spelled obscure words into completely wrong but more common words, every day, making human communication less understandable.