7 ms·

The biggest issue to me is the dumbing down of an experience and design, treating your users as incompetent vs. treating them as intelligent and being able to f

by loceng 6y ago

The biggest issue to me is the dumbing down of an experience and design, treating your users as incompetent vs. treating them as intelligent and being able to figure out things; there's still bad design that can occur when complex, but good UX of presenting information appropriately and contextually can create a rich but easy, intuitive flow. The slowness of certain platforms is also an equally big issue, Reddit for example who seems to purposefully ignore and allow their website via browser experience to suffer - in an attempt to drive people to their app for ad tracking purposes - which I think is shooting themselves in the foot with the trend towards eliminating shallow-manipulative advertising from existence.

myth2018 6y ago
Indeed. I'd also mention a small experiment I often do. If you have the opportunity of visiting a company still using COBOL, Clipper or some other text mode software, ask their users for an opinion on those old systems compared to the current ones. Most of them prefer the acient ones. When asked why, they simply say "I don't know. It works, it feels right". Even the younger users (who already had experience with web applications, big tech's stuff etc when they joined the company) prefer the text based ones. I'm not at all implying that every software should be text based. But I think there are some very important lessons to be learned here. Things we developers used to know, intuitively. I think UX designers should listen more to those users and less to theories and to Google and its MDC trying to make the internet look like their own products
- loceng 6y ago
  For a network of sites I am developing I am planning a command prompt where users can type /command for basically every function: /msg username, /logout, /search phrase, etc.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    Interesting! I had a similar idea but as a library to drop into existing sites, perhaps even be a browser extension. Vimium does a great job of enabling keyboard control over a website but I think a generic web CLI could take the experience even further.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    I did something similar for a web app at work and the people on the floor really liked it. It was mich faster than trying to mouse to things, especially when half of their task is scanning barcodes anyway.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Can confirm. Started out writing code in IDEs, now I'm using Vim and CLI utilities. It's a polished, stable ecosystem that doesn't hide anything from the user and isn't incentivised to do anything other than its purpose, and that becomes very noticeable once you're familiar with it. It doesn't come with file sync, plugin management or flashy animations. But I also don't get loading screens, don't need to look at SaaS pricing tiers and don't get overwhelmed by UI dark patterns. That's a trade-off I'll take any day.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    One of the great things about command-line interfaces of old are that you could often enter your keyboard input faster than the system could respond to it, and it was OK because the system buffered them up for you and executed them as it caught up. So if you know on this screen you need to hit F1, and that on the next screen you will have to hit X, then on the following screen, you need to type in the SKU number, you could simply issue as fast as you wanted: F1-X-4112295[ENTER], and take your mind off it while the system would just go through the whole experience successfully at its own pace. With "better" GUI/mouse based systems, you have to click here, wait... wait... wait..., now click there, wait... wait... wait..., then click there and type in your SKU. Your attention needs to be on the screen at all times in order to wait for the UI and aim the mouse. Next time you go to your bank web site to pay a bill, think to yourself: Wouldn't it be nice if, rather than navigating their cumbersome UX, you could just hit a known string of keystrokes that you memorized, hit enter, then walk away to get coffee while all the Javascript and page reloading chugged along and paid your bill?
    - pmontra 6y ago
      That would be nice but it is impossible because to actually commit some money I have to go through 2FA involving the bank app on my phone and enter one or two other secrets on the bank website. This is Italy and probably most of EU since the last year. I understand this is for the safety of my money, probably also for the safety of the bank itself (if something goes wrong it's more and more my fault) but sending money to someone is becoming a PITA.
- barbarbar 6y ago
  Having used 3270 terminal for time registration many years ago. And it was 1000 times better and faster than all the web apps that followed. So I can confirm this.
  - spyke112 6y ago
    I'm working freelance and built my own cli for this exact purpose. I've been wanting to redo it as a web app, but i honestly like my cli tool better. It lives in git, and Gitlab CI handles generation of pdf/excel reports and uploading to Dropbox. Inputting new data is just so damn fast compared to opening any web app!
    - jdhendrickson 6y ago
      I would love to see that app.
      - spyke112 6y ago
        Hi, it's not really documented all that well, but if you don't mind diving into code, then give it a go: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lvqconsult/spatium-cli https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lvqconsult/spatium-cli
- danybittel 6y ago
  I don't think the issue is text based or non text based. In my opinion, the problem is TOOL versus ASSISTANT. A tool is easy to understand and does one thing, an Assistant is more hand waving, tries to guess what you "really" want, steers you away from error and lures you into something.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  When I started at my current employer we were running our retail management software on DOS terminals connected to a SCO Unix box. My experience with the system was that it wasn't intuitive or easy to learn, but was pretty bulletproof for the veteran users who had been working with it for ~30 years. I learned as much of it as I needed to know, and got to the point where I could do some tasks without even thinking about which keys I was pressing. I helped set up the replacement system and received a lot of complaints from those same users - some resistance to change, but also some legitimate failings of the new software. Tradeoffs in the network structure made it run more slowly at satellite locations, Windows 10 on all of the terminals caused network issues until we got updates and bandwidth moderation dialed in, and some employees needed additional practice using a mouse. I see trade-offs between the old and the new here. The new software is easier to train new users (less arcane) and able to securely handle things like chip credit cards (which had previously needed a separate card terminal system) and charge accounts. At the same time, the old system was faster (for the limited features it provided) and was able to run more smoothly on older equipment (very little OS overhead, text only network transmissions).
  - stainforth 6y ago
    >text only network transmissions As opposed to what, base64 images or something?
    - drewzero1 6y ago
      Text-only as opposed to encrypted text and images. As far as I've been able to make out, document images are generated on the server and sent to the terminals as PostScript files. I've noticed at satellite locations the receipt printers hesitate for a few seconds before printing the barcode at the bottom, which tells me that either 1) it's taking some time to transmit the barcode image over the internet or 2) the server is taking its sweet time cataloguing the transaction in the document archive. Either way, I've gotten complaints about it from the users.
alpaca128 6y ago
Some of the worst offenders in this area were the preinstalled apps on Windows 8. Their official OneDrive app had I think 1-2 options to toggle and didn't even show how much of the cloud storage was used/free. It was basically a picture viewer but without properly working right click. And in terms of performance I fear slow, ad-filled websites slowly trained users to accept bad performance in applications outside the browser as well. At least I don't know how to otherwise explain the widespread indifference toward those things, often even among developers.
- loceng 6y ago
  Makes me think of a system/application getting attention, reach, that it doesn't deserve - hasn't earned - a negative of the advertising industry as well, one reason I love Tesla is that they don't advertise, any attention they get has been earned.
- myth2018 6y ago
  > And in terms of performance I fear slow, ad-filled websites slowly trained users to accept bad performance in applications outside the browser as well. At least I don't know how to otherwise explain the widespread indifference toward those things, often even among developers. Yeah, I don't know either, and I think yours is a very good hypothesis. I'm currently working on a windows project after spending four years exclusively on Linux, using mostly vim and Eclipse. Visual Studio feels now way worse than it used to. You get more conscious about the time you're wasting. And, most interestingly, the same happens to users. It's not a matter of being text based, it's a matter of getting useful stuff done, and fast. Users can and actually enjoy using the keyboard. Users don't want to be delighted with our stuff (speaking of the enterprise here), they just want a system that helps them to get their job done and, after that, get out of their way. Designers and more and more developers seem to forget that animations, complex colorful screens, all this stuff has to be built, tested, processed by user's hardware which is already having a bad time supporting windows. So, instead of shipping something fast, something we are able to build and fix and test quickly, we deliver something detrimental, in many ways, to user experience.
  - 6y ago
teraku 6y ago
In order to get my reddit addiction in check I uninstalled the app and started using it in the browser. After 1 week I quit reddit forever. Never looking back.
- laurent92 6y ago
  Reddit is an example of a good dark pattern for me: The popup reminds me that I need to leave the side. Unfortunately, like the Nigerian Prince Paradox, an upfront obnoxiousness is often designed to filter people out early, if they risk not being gullible enough during the rest of the path.
jariel 6y ago
"treating your users as incompetent" Actually, this is good practice. We are all busy and distracted. Dumbing down an experience to it's essential aspects is a great way to make something easier to use. If a 'fool could use it while trying to juggle' then that's good. Making it dumb means speaking to intuition, not thought. I should add, there are some good comments here about 'command line' etc. - I suggest that that makes sense but in an entirely different realm of usability. Designing for something that's going to be used by competent people all day for their jobs, is different than designing for the proles standing in line at the bank, looking for 3 minutes of respite from whatever, or even trying to squeeze in that little update.
- majewsky 6y ago
  I somewhat agree. A UI that works well for inexperienced users is better than one that isn't. But the real measure of a good UI is if it works well for inexperienced users and actively allows for them to gain experience while using the software. A good example is how, in classic application menus, each entry would have its keyboard shortcut printed next to it. A fresh user can navigate the menu to find an action, and the same option is open to anyone how forgot about how to invoke the action, but whenever they land on the action, they can see the keyboard shortcut and eventually they'll remember it and learn to invoke the action faster without having to make an active effort. This is good UX. Then designers or product owners or someone decided that the shortcuts made their menus look cluttered (or maybe they really took that "treating your users as incompetent" mantra to heart and thought the shortcuts looked too technical or intimidating), thus condeming inexperienced users to stay inexperienced forever. This is bad UX.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Those are good points - often we're in different headspaces as well on the matter. Physical product design, mobile app, command line, common entry (like the software the waiter uses), pro software (i.e. Photoshop) are all very different aspects of usability representing colliding viewpoints.
kitsune_ 6y ago
This offers an interesting tangent to me: is the dumbing down of the user experience what ultimately opens the door for dark patterns?
jonathanstrange 6y ago
May I ask what you think is wrong with Reddit's UI? In my opinion, it's one of the best out there and I've never had problems with it. HN is better, but mainly because it offers far less functionality. Facebook is for me the prototypical example of a bad UI with lots of dark patterns, confusing navigation, different settings scattered all over the place, and frequent technical glitches.
- retox 6y ago
  Here are my annoyances as someone without an account that dips in from time to time via links or news stories. The large "this experience is better in the app" on mobile visits Only having one or two levels of responses visible without completely reloading the page, seemingly all the way down the reply chain Sides of the page taking you back to the index on clicking (why?) Having to expand a discussion thread that you clicked into (just to tell me how many replies there are, why?) Not scrolling correctly when clicking threads, meaning I end up somewhere in the infinite 'other threads' list at the bottom of the page The updating and flashing number of upvotes constantly drawing my attention while trying to read As an outsider reddit is a disgusting mess, and every minute I spend reading it is mental harassment.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  Have you used Reddit on a phone without using the app? It constantly berates you to use the app, even when you've clearly stated your preference for using the site before. There's also the problem that the new UI is clearly more buggy than the old one, and requires manually refreshing to fix glitches far too often, but that's more of a technical problem and not a UX issue.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  When I click on a post it only shows 4 comments by default, and I have to click again to see more. To be honest, they actually seem to have improved new reddit a lot since I last looked (a few months ago). Now once you do that second click it shows a decent number of comments, whereas previously even then it would still not show many.
- handoflixue 6y ago
afarrell 6y ago
Part of the issue is inter-team communication and part of the problem comes from that very phrase "dumbing down". I often hear people argue for "dumbing things down" when there is an overwhelming amount of information, but that phrase: 1. Treats people's intelligence as 1-dimensional, which it is not. 2. Gives no clear direction to an engineer who is passionate about UX, recognises that humans are multidimensional, and is trying to ask about what their users really need. You might say I'm arguing semantics, but communication matters! Without it, you can write code at high speed, but you won't learn what direction to go in order to present information appropriately and contextually to create a rich but easy, intuitive flow.

by loceng 6y ago

myth2018 6y ago

Indeed. I'd also mention a small experiment I often do. If you have the opportunity of visiting a company still using COBOL, Clipper or some other text mode software, ask their users for an opinion on those old systems compared to the current ones. Most of them prefer the acient ones. When asked why, they simply say "I don't know. It works, it feels right". Even the younger users (who already had experience with web applications, big tech's stuff etc when they joined the company) prefer the text based ones. I'm not at all implying that every software should be text based. But I think there are some very important lessons to be learned here. Things we developers used to know, intuitively. I think UX designers should listen more to those users and less to theories and to Google and its MDC trying to make the internet look like their own products

loceng 6y ago
For a network of sites I am developing I am planning a command prompt where users can type /command for basically every function: /msg username, /logout, /search phrase, etc.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Interesting! I had a similar idea but as a library to drop into existing sites, perhaps even be a browser extension. Vimium does a great job of enabling keyboard control over a website but I think a generic web CLI could take the experience even further.
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  I did something similar for a web app at work and the people on the floor really liked it. It was mich faster than trying to mouse to things, especially when half of their task is scanning barcodes anyway.
alpaca128 6y ago
Can confirm. Started out writing code in IDEs, now I'm using Vim and CLI utilities. It's a polished, stable ecosystem that doesn't hide anything from the user and isn't incentivised to do anything other than its purpose, and that becomes very noticeable once you're familiar with it. It doesn't come with file sync, plugin management or flashy animations. But I also don't get loading screens, don't need to look at SaaS pricing tiers and don't get overwhelmed by UI dark patterns. That's a trade-off I'll take any day.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  One of the great things about command-line interfaces of old are that you could often enter your keyboard input faster than the system could respond to it, and it was OK because the system buffered them up for you and executed them as it caught up. So if you know on this screen you need to hit F1, and that on the next screen you will have to hit X, then on the following screen, you need to type in the SKU number, you could simply issue as fast as you wanted: F1-X-4112295[ENTER], and take your mind off it while the system would just go through the whole experience successfully at its own pace. With "better" GUI/mouse based systems, you have to click here, wait... wait... wait..., now click there, wait... wait... wait..., then click there and type in your SKU. Your attention needs to be on the screen at all times in order to wait for the UI and aim the mouse. Next time you go to your bank web site to pay a bill, think to yourself: Wouldn't it be nice if, rather than navigating their cumbersome UX, you could just hit a known string of keystrokes that you memorized, hit enter, then walk away to get coffee while all the Javascript and page reloading chugged along and paid your bill?
  - pmontra 6y ago
    That would be nice but it is impossible because to actually commit some money I have to go through 2FA involving the bank app on my phone and enter one or two other secrets on the bank website. This is Italy and probably most of EU since the last year. I understand this is for the safety of my money, probably also for the safety of the bank itself (if something goes wrong it's more and more my fault) but sending money to someone is becoming a PITA.
barbarbar 6y ago
Having used 3270 terminal for time registration many years ago. And it was 1000 times better and faster than all the web apps that followed. So I can confirm this.
- spyke112 6y ago
  I'm working freelance and built my own cli for this exact purpose. I've been wanting to redo it as a web app, but i honestly like my cli tool better. It lives in git, and Gitlab CI handles generation of pdf/excel reports and uploading to Dropbox. Inputting new data is just so damn fast compared to opening any web app!
  - jdhendrickson 6y ago
    I would love to see that app.
    - spyke112 6y ago
      Hi, it's not really documented all that well, but if you don't mind diving into code, then give it a go: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lvqconsult/spatium-cli https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lvqconsult/spatium-cli
danybittel 6y ago
I don't think the issue is text based or non text based. In my opinion, the problem is TOOL versus ASSISTANT. A tool is easy to understand and does one thing, an Assistant is more hand waving, tries to guess what you "really" want, steers you away from error and lures you into something.
drewzero1 6y ago
When I started at my current employer we were running our retail management software on DOS terminals connected to a SCO Unix box. My experience with the system was that it wasn't intuitive or easy to learn, but was pretty bulletproof for the veteran users who had been working with it for ~30 years. I learned as much of it as I needed to know, and got to the point where I could do some tasks without even thinking about which keys I was pressing. I helped set up the replacement system and received a lot of complaints from those same users - some resistance to change, but also some legitimate failings of the new software. Tradeoffs in the network structure made it run more slowly at satellite locations, Windows 10 on all of the terminals caused network issues until we got updates and bandwidth moderation dialed in, and some employees needed additional practice using a mouse. I see trade-offs between the old and the new here. The new software is easier to train new users (less arcane) and able to securely handle things like chip credit cards (which had previously needed a separate card terminal system) and charge accounts. At the same time, the old system was faster (for the limited features it provided) and was able to run more smoothly on older equipment (very little OS overhead, text only network transmissions).
- stainforth 6y ago
  >text only network transmissions As opposed to what, base64 images or something?
  - drewzero1 6y ago
    Text-only as opposed to encrypted text and images. As far as I've been able to make out, document images are generated on the server and sent to the terminals as PostScript files. I've noticed at satellite locations the receipt printers hesitate for a few seconds before printing the barcode at the bottom, which tells me that either 1) it's taking some time to transmit the barcode image over the internet or 2) the server is taking its sweet time cataloguing the transaction in the document archive. Either way, I've gotten complaints about it from the users.

alpaca128 6y ago

Some of the worst offenders in this area were the preinstalled apps on Windows 8. Their official OneDrive app had I think 1-2 options to toggle and didn't even show how much of the cloud storage was used/free. It was basically a picture viewer but without properly working right click. And in terms of performance I fear slow, ad-filled websites slowly trained users to accept bad performance in applications outside the browser as well. At least I don't know how to otherwise explain the widespread indifference toward those things, often even among developers.

loceng 6y ago
Makes me think of a system/application getting attention, reach, that it doesn't deserve - hasn't earned - a negative of the advertising industry as well, one reason I love Tesla is that they don't advertise, any attention they get has been earned.
myth2018 6y ago
> And in terms of performance I fear slow, ad-filled websites slowly trained users to accept bad performance in applications outside the browser as well. At least I don't know how to otherwise explain the widespread indifference toward those things, often even among developers. Yeah, I don't know either, and I think yours is a very good hypothesis. I'm currently working on a windows project after spending four years exclusively on Linux, using mostly vim and Eclipse. Visual Studio feels now way worse than it used to. You get more conscious about the time you're wasting. And, most interestingly, the same happens to users. It's not a matter of being text based, it's a matter of getting useful stuff done, and fast. Users can and actually enjoy using the keyboard. Users don't want to be delighted with our stuff (speaking of the enterprise here), they just want a system that helps them to get their job done and, after that, get out of their way. Designers and more and more developers seem to forget that animations, complex colorful screens, all this stuff has to be built, tested, processed by user's hardware which is already having a bad time supporting windows. So, instead of shipping something fast, something we are able to build and fix and test quickly, we deliver something detrimental, in many ways, to user experience.
- 6y ago

teraku 6y ago

In order to get my reddit addiction in check I uninstalled the app and started using it in the browser. After 1 week I quit reddit forever. Never looking back.

laurent92 6y ago
Reddit is an example of a good dark pattern for me: The popup reminds me that I need to leave the side. Unfortunately, like the Nigerian Prince Paradox, an upfront obnoxiousness is often designed to filter people out early, if they risk not being gullible enough during the rest of the path.

jariel 6y ago

"treating your users as incompetent" Actually, this is good practice. We are all busy and distracted. Dumbing down an experience to it's essential aspects is a great way to make something easier to use. If a 'fool could use it while trying to juggle' then that's good. Making it dumb means speaking to intuition, not thought. I should add, there are some good comments here about 'command line' etc. - I suggest that that makes sense but in an entirely different realm of usability. Designing for something that's going to be used by competent people all day for their jobs, is different than designing for the proles standing in line at the bank, looking for 3 minutes of respite from whatever, or even trying to squeeze in that little update.

majewsky 6y ago
I somewhat agree. A UI that works well for inexperienced users is better than one that isn't. But the real measure of a good UI is if it works well for inexperienced users and actively allows for them to gain experience while using the software. A good example is how, in classic application menus, each entry would have its keyboard shortcut printed next to it. A fresh user can navigate the menu to find an action, and the same option is open to anyone how forgot about how to invoke the action, but whenever they land on the action, they can see the keyboard shortcut and eventually they'll remember it and learn to invoke the action faster without having to make an active effort. This is good UX. Then designers or product owners or someone decided that the shortcuts made their menus look cluttered (or maybe they really took that "treating your users as incompetent" mantra to heart and thought the shortcuts looked too technical or intimidating), thus condeming inexperienced users to stay inexperienced forever. This is bad UX.
- jariel 6y ago
  Those are good points - often we're in different headspaces as well on the matter. Physical product design, mobile app, command line, common entry (like the software the waiter uses), pro software (i.e. Photoshop) are all very different aspects of usability representing colliding viewpoints.

kitsune_ 6y ago

This offers an interesting tangent to me: is the dumbing down of the user experience what ultimately opens the door for dark patterns?

jonathanstrange 6y ago

May I ask what you think is wrong with Reddit's UI? In my opinion, it's one of the best out there and I've never had problems with it. HN is better, but mainly because it offers far less functionality. Facebook is for me the prototypical example of a bad UI with lots of dark patterns, confusing navigation, different settings scattered all over the place, and frequent technical glitches.

retox 6y ago
Here are my annoyances as someone without an account that dips in from time to time via links or news stories. The large "this experience is better in the app" on mobile visits Only having one or two levels of responses visible without completely reloading the page, seemingly all the way down the reply chain Sides of the page taking you back to the index on clicking (why?) Having to expand a discussion thread that you clicked into (just to tell me how many replies there are, why?) Not scrolling correctly when clicking threads, meaning I end up somewhere in the infinite 'other threads' list at the bottom of the page The updating and flashing number of upvotes constantly drawing my attention while trying to read As an outsider reddit is a disgusting mess, and every minute I spend reading it is mental harassment.
ryanbrunner 6y ago
Have you used Reddit on a phone without using the app? It constantly berates you to use the app, even when you've clearly stated your preference for using the site before. There's also the problem that the new UI is clearly more buggy than the old one, and requires manually refreshing to fix glitches far too often, but that's more of a technical problem and not a UX issue.
Thorrez 6y ago
When I click on a post it only shows 4 comments by default, and I have to click again to see more. To be honest, they actually seem to have improved new reddit a lot since I last looked (a few months ago). Now once you do that second click it shows a decent number of comments, whereas previously even then it would still not show many.
handoflixue 6y ago

afarrell 6y ago

Part of the issue is inter-team communication and part of the problem comes from that very phrase "dumbing down". I often hear people argue for "dumbing things down" when there is an overwhelming amount of information, but that phrase: 1. Treats people's intelligence as 1-dimensional, which it is not. 2. Gives no clear direction to an engineer who is passionate about UX, recognises that humans are multidimensional, and is trying to ask about what their users really need. You might say I'm arguing semantics, but communication matters! Without it, you can write code at high speed, but you won't learn what direction to go in order to present information appropriately and contextually to create a rich but easy, intuitive flow.