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I openly admit it these days. If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it, even though as a kid I loved that st

I openly admit it these days. If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it, even though as a kid I loved that stuff. And I'm only in my 30's. It's not really about whether I'm able to figure it out (if 8 year old me could figure it out, 30+ year old should be able to as well), it's about whether I have the patience for a badly designed UI. One of the common responses I see when I complain about a bad UI is someone saying "no it's easy you just do ____". It's frustrating because that's not the point - the point is that I had to do research to find the answer! There are cases, especially with specialized tools for complex tasks, where you are expected to spend time learning how to use the tool effectively. Photoshop is a great example. Vim is a great example. Figuring out stupid stuff like whether that grayish light blue vs dark gray fill on the checkbox means "enabled" or "disabled" is not an example.

Viliam1234 6y ago
I am sometimes amazed how complicated UI can someone create with e.g. four arrows and two extra buttons. Like, I would naively assume that the arrows would move your selection up, down, left, right, and one of the extra buttons would be "select/confirm" and the other would be "escape". But no, that would be too easy. Depending on exact position in the menu, sometimes the right arrow, sometimes the first extra button, and sometimes the second extra button selects the highlighted thing. Sometimes up and down arrows increase the selected thing (e.g. volume, brightness) and you need to press one of the extra buttons to stop doing it. Sometimes one of those extra buttons acts as a hotkey that will switch you to a completely different menu, so it will take five minutes to navigate back. Then sometimes a confirmation windows opens, with two buttons "yes" and "no", one of them is pink and another is light blue, if you press any of the four arrows, the colors switch, and you are free to make your guess whether pressing the extra button will confirm the pink option, confirm the light blue option, take you to a completely different place, or turn off the menu.
- projektfu 6y ago
  Monitor buttons are particularly awesome. Often you can't even see what you're pressing because it's behind the bezel or just an unmarked capsense location, and then whether it's up, down, increase, decrease, forward, back, reset, etc. is all different for each page of settings. Bonus points: turn the monitor to portrait mode and do it sideways.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Both monitors on my desk have a single button on the back side of the bottom right corner. The button can be pressed or pushed in each of the four cardinal directions (left, up, right, bottom). It's actually really nice. Since it's only one physical button, there's never any guessing which button you're on. And once you know the menu structure, common tasks can be done completely blind. (For example, I know that switching between input sources is press-left-press. I can do that without even looking at the screen.)
    - projektfu 6y ago
      What model?
      - majewsky 6y ago
        Samsung U28E590D and Philips BDM4065UC.
bmitc 6y ago
> If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it That's a little hard to believe. Nothing is hidden on a VCR. There's input connections, a tape, and a big record button. At most there is an additional source button to choose the input source. It's all there, in the open, and not hidden. Today's interface design is really all over the place. There's just too much stuff hidden and inconsistent. The source of this is our ever increasing reliance on software. If one thinks of writing software as both storing knowledge and communicating with people, it makes sense why software experiences are so bad. Communication and knowledge transfer are in general difficult processes, and now we've automated them at scale but hurried and botched them. Something even more is lost in translation. When we use a software-based product, we're experiencing all the stored miscommunication embedded in the device.
- esrauch 6y ago
  I recall VCRs having a lot of nonobvious digital controls that involved primitive onscreen HUD that involved arbitrary buttons to navigate. Everyone understood play/stop/record, what was confusing was setting the on-screen time using those same buttons.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Nothing is hidden on a VCR. There's input connections, a tape, and a big record button. At most there is an additional source button to choose the input source. It's all there, in the open, and not hidden. Some VCR’s had a timed recording setting. More commonly, and you see this on cars before they got touchscreens, there were settings and options that you had to navigate to by hitting a specific sequence of buttons to get to the appropriate menu. The core loop was generally fine. It was when you needed anything else that suddenly you needed the manual.
  - underwater 6y ago
    My new air conditioner control panel suffers from this. It has up/down/left/right buttons where it switches between horizontal navigation plus select/deselect or vertical navigation plus select/deselect randomly. Programming a day takes around 30 key presses. And there is no bulk update functionality.
CarbyAu 6y ago
Maybe it is that same "Older so I lack patience for poor design" but nowadays when I play a game I often - not always - have a web page on my other monitor so I can look up how to do XYZ unnecessarily complicated stupid shit. Crafting recipes are the biggest failures. Warframe is the THE game I can think of doing this most. Even when I learned how it all worked, I needed a bunch of reference tables/posts so I could grind with maximal efficiency! Nowadays, if a game has "crafting" I am 90% inclined to skip it.

Viliam1234 6y ago

I am sometimes amazed how complicated UI can someone create with e.g. four arrows and two extra buttons. Like, I would naively assume that the arrows would move your selection up, down, left, right, and one of the extra buttons would be "select/confirm" and the other would be "escape". But no, that would be too easy. Depending on exact position in the menu, sometimes the right arrow, sometimes the first extra button, and sometimes the second extra button selects the highlighted thing. Sometimes up and down arrows increase the selected thing (e.g. volume, brightness) and you need to press one of the extra buttons to stop doing it. Sometimes one of those extra buttons acts as a hotkey that will switch you to a completely different menu, so it will take five minutes to navigate back. Then sometimes a confirmation windows opens, with two buttons "yes" and "no", one of them is pink and another is light blue, if you press any of the four arrows, the colors switch, and you are free to make your guess whether pressing the extra button will confirm the pink option, confirm the light blue option, take you to a completely different place, or turn off the menu.

projektfu 6y ago
Monitor buttons are particularly awesome. Often you can't even see what you're pressing because it's behind the bezel or just an unmarked capsense location, and then whether it's up, down, increase, decrease, forward, back, reset, etc. is all different for each page of settings. Bonus points: turn the monitor to portrait mode and do it sideways.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Both monitors on my desk have a single button on the back side of the bottom right corner. The button can be pressed or pushed in each of the four cardinal directions (left, up, right, bottom). It's actually really nice. Since it's only one physical button, there's never any guessing which button you're on. And once you know the menu structure, common tasks can be done completely blind. (For example, I know that switching between input sources is press-left-press. I can do that without even looking at the screen.)
  - projektfu 6y ago
    What model?
    - majewsky 6y ago
      Samsung U28E590D and Philips BDM4065UC.

bmitc 6y ago

> If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it That's a little hard to believe. Nothing is hidden on a VCR. There's input connections, a tape, and a big record button. At most there is an additional source button to choose the input source. It's all there, in the open, and not hidden. Today's interface design is really all over the place. There's just too much stuff hidden and inconsistent. The source of this is our ever increasing reliance on software. If one thinks of writing software as both storing knowledge and communicating with people, it makes sense why software experiences are so bad. Communication and knowledge transfer are in general difficult processes, and now we've automated them at scale but hurried and botched them. Something even more is lost in translation. When we use a software-based product, we're experiencing all the stored miscommunication embedded in the device.

esrauch 6y ago
I recall VCRs having a lot of nonobvious digital controls that involved primitive onscreen HUD that involved arbitrary buttons to navigate. Everyone understood play/stop/record, what was confusing was setting the on-screen time using those same buttons.
munchbunny 6y ago
Nothing is hidden on a VCR. There's input connections, a tape, and a big record button. At most there is an additional source button to choose the input source. It's all there, in the open, and not hidden. Some VCR’s had a timed recording setting. More commonly, and you see this on cars before they got touchscreens, there were settings and options that you had to navigate to by hitting a specific sequence of buttons to get to the appropriate menu. The core loop was generally fine. It was when you needed anything else that suddenly you needed the manual.
- underwater 6y ago
  My new air conditioner control panel suffers from this. It has up/down/left/right buttons where it switches between horizontal navigation plus select/deselect or vertical navigation plus select/deselect randomly. Programming a day takes around 30 key presses. And there is no bulk update functionality.

CarbyAu 6y ago

Maybe it is that same "Older so I lack patience for poor design" but nowadays when I play a game I often - not always - have a web page on my other monitor so I can look up how to do XYZ unnecessarily complicated stupid shit. Crafting recipes are the biggest failures. Warframe is the THE game I can think of doing this most. Even when I learned how it all worked, I needed a bunch of reference tables/posts so I could grind with maximal efficiency! Nowadays, if a game has "crafting" I am 90% inclined to skip it.