4 ms·

I’ll try to condense it more. If you play a video game and a modal pops up, it takes you out of the experience. It’s the same as (hypothetically) me having to g

I’ll try to condense it more. If you play a video game and a modal pops up, it takes you out of the experience. It’s the same as (hypothetically) me having to go into my HN profile to find a list of comments I upvoted to then go ahead and downvote (versus just having the downvote button next to the post). Can’t teach this stuff, you basically need to be confronted by tons of bad UI in software, games, physical printed forms, processes, until you get a good sense of taste. I can’t teach HN devs that my thumb covers both the upvote and downvote button on mobile. Can’t teach it.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
"Modal" isn't precise enough, then. Imagine you're playing a game and you click "Options" and a modal window pops up with the options you can tweak. Or an endless image gallery where clicking an image enlarges it inside a modal that you can dismiss to resume scrolling without losing your place. It didn't wrongfully force you out of experience, it's what you wanted. Seems like we're talking about getting in the way of users where crappy modals are just one way of doing that. Navigating to a new page seems even more jarring in TFA examples.
ozaark 6y ago
> Can’t teach this stuff There is literally a field of science called Human-Computer Interaction that teaches this stuff.
- gindely 6y ago
  Yes but have you seen software - almost anything that's been developed since the growth of mobile platforms has basically done the exact opposite of what that field of science teaches. This seems to confirm the op's point.
  - ozaark 6y ago
    That fault lies solely with the designers and developers of those software. "Yeah but they didn't know what they were doing and didn't want to learn" is a more appropriate take. You can think of it this way: your neighbor nextdoor made a soapbox car. Does that qualify them to be your mechanic? Probably not.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

"Modal" isn't precise enough, then. Imagine you're playing a game and you click "Options" and a modal window pops up with the options you can tweak. Or an endless image gallery where clicking an image enlarges it inside a modal that you can dismiss to resume scrolling without losing your place. It didn't wrongfully force you out of experience, it's what you wanted. Seems like we're talking about getting in the way of users where crappy modals are just one way of doing that. Navigating to a new page seems even more jarring in TFA examples.

ozaark 6y ago

> Can’t teach this stuff There is literally a field of science called Human-Computer Interaction that teaches this stuff.

gindely 6y ago
Yes but have you seen software - almost anything that's been developed since the growth of mobile platforms has basically done the exact opposite of what that field of science teaches. This seems to confirm the op's point.
- ozaark 6y ago
  That fault lies solely with the designers and developers of those software. "Yeah but they didn't know what they were doing and didn't want to learn" is a more appropriate take. You can think of it this way: your neighbor nextdoor made a soapbox car. Does that qualify them to be your mechanic? Probably not.