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I was planning to reply to your parent comment that discoverability has always been an issue for me when I work with Apple devices. Whenever I use my wife's iPh

I was planning to reply to your parent comment that discoverability has always been an issue for me when I work with Apple devices. Whenever I use my wife's iPhone or Mac for a couple of minutes, I get frustrated because everything is all over the place, none of the apps work well together, and everything is hidden. Back on Android, (or Windows, or Linux), it makes sense, whereas she loses her way. Just to point out, a part of discoverability I guess is familiarity with the underlying principles the UI follows as well. To add two more points to this. I think there's one thing platforms in general got very right: simple touch controls. My one year old is discovering that sliding fingers across a screen, touching and pinching (the three basics) does stuff. Hidden menus, press-and-hold, and so on is secondary. Second, icons are something which is wrong. You need to guess their initial meaning, and translate badly in conversations, like recently with my mom: "press the rectangle with four arrows pointing out of it" (fullscreen or whatever it was).

contextfree 6y ago
I appreciated the Windows Phone 7/8 and early Win10 approach to compact icons which was/is: Just have a button next to the icons that expands them to show labels when you press it. Unfortunately later redesigns to Win10 apps seemed to drift away from these patterns towards just having unlabeled icons everywhere.
- phil294 6y ago
  Sounds interesting, do you happen to have an image of this available? I was not able to find any more information about it
  - contextfree 6y ago
    Here's a tour of the application bar control (which follows this pattern) from the Windows Phone 8 days: https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/1e050f/application-bar-in-windows-phone-8-application/ https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/1e050f/application-... Windows 10 introduced the navigation bar, which is essentially a vertical version of the Windows Phone application bar, just using a "three lines" icon as the "show labels" button instead of an ellipsis. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls-and-patterns/navigationview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls... The start menu and inbox mail app use this control, for example.
breatheoften 6y ago
I hate icons without text! "Here's an image, guess what is supposed to happen when you click it, also i will give you no info on hover over -- you must push me and then try to guess what i did!" (btw if there's a bug or a configuration state in the app that you or i am unaware of -- you might've pushed me at the wrong time and i might've let you do that)
- andi999 6y ago
  Exactly. Why should e.g. a floppy disk symbol signify anything to anybody born after 2000.
  - DJBunnies 6y ago
    What would you replace it with?
    - andi999 6y ago
      Awesome question. Replacing it would be worse of course (because then not even the old timers understand it). One thing i liked about google docs?? Was automatic save, maybe this is the trend. If you take a 5mb picture on your smartphone there is no question do you want to save it. Space is cheap. But if i really have to come up with something, I'd say green arrow pointing up. Meaning 'upload to your (own private) cloud'
    - breatheoften 6y ago
      I don't care what the icon is -- just ensure it has a label that says "Save" or something similar ...
  - nl 6y ago
    This is a bad example. The floppy disk icon means "save" and has now for very nearly as long as floppy disk were in common use. It's the same as a "tape" icon means something to do with video even though video cassettes were only a common thing for 10 years. The Apple II was the first computer that was widespread enough for people to have seen that had a floppy disk. It came out in 1977. Apple dropped the floppy disk in 1998 (21 years later), so it's been 22 years since it was standard in Macs. Even allowing for some switching time, it has meant "save" for longer than it was a common physical object.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
> Just to point out, a part of discoverability I guess is familiarity with the underlying principles the UI follows as well. This is one reason why UI patents are not a good idea. When different platforms are forced to adopt differing UI patterns because they can't do what their competitors are doing, you get the current mess.

contextfree 6y ago

I appreciated the Windows Phone 7/8 and early Win10 approach to compact icons which was/is: Just have a button next to the icons that expands them to show labels when you press it. Unfortunately later redesigns to Win10 apps seemed to drift away from these patterns towards just having unlabeled icons everywhere.

phil294 6y ago
Sounds interesting, do you happen to have an image of this available? I was not able to find any more information about it
- contextfree 6y ago
  Here's a tour of the application bar control (which follows this pattern) from the Windows Phone 8 days: https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/1e050f/application-bar-in-windows-phone-8-application/ https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/1e050f/application-... Windows 10 introduced the navigation bar, which is essentially a vertical version of the Windows Phone application bar, just using a "three lines" icon as the "show labels" button instead of an ellipsis. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls-and-patterns/navigationview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls... The start menu and inbox mail app use this control, for example.

breatheoften 6y ago

I hate icons without text! "Here's an image, guess what is supposed to happen when you click it, also i will give you no info on hover over -- you must push me and then try to guess what i did!" (btw if there's a bug or a configuration state in the app that you or i am unaware of -- you might've pushed me at the wrong time and i might've let you do that)

andi999 6y ago
Exactly. Why should e.g. a floppy disk symbol signify anything to anybody born after 2000.
- DJBunnies 6y ago
  What would you replace it with?
  - andi999 6y ago
    Awesome question. Replacing it would be worse of course (because then not even the old timers understand it). One thing i liked about google docs?? Was automatic save, maybe this is the trend. If you take a 5mb picture on your smartphone there is no question do you want to save it. Space is cheap. But if i really have to come up with something, I'd say green arrow pointing up. Meaning 'upload to your (own private) cloud'
  - breatheoften 6y ago
    I don't care what the icon is -- just ensure it has a label that says "Save" or something similar ...
- nl 6y ago
  This is a bad example. The floppy disk icon means "save" and has now for very nearly as long as floppy disk were in common use. It's the same as a "tape" icon means something to do with video even though video cassettes were only a common thing for 10 years. The Apple II was the first computer that was widespread enough for people to have seen that had a floppy disk. It came out in 1977. Apple dropped the floppy disk in 1998 (21 years later), so it's been 22 years since it was standard in Macs. Even allowing for some switching time, it has meant "save" for longer than it was a common physical object.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

> Just to point out, a part of discoverability I guess is familiarity with the underlying principles the UI follows as well. This is one reason why UI patents are not a good idea. When different platforms are forced to adopt differing UI patterns because they can't do what their competitors are doing, you get the current mess.