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Here's a short case study. I am the maintainer of Red Moon, a FLOSS screen filter app for Android. Over a period of several years, the location of the toggle h

Here's a short case study. I am the maintainer of Red Moon, a FLOSS screen filter app for Android. Over a period of several years, the location of the toggle has moved from a switch at the top, to a switch and a floating action button (FAB), back to just a switch, and will soon move to just a FAB. I can provide more detail later if someone would like, but the short of it is: 1) As other features changed (permission prompts and moving the growing number of settings to their own screen), one location or the other made more sense. 2) I thought I would like the single top switch better than a single FAB, but after using it for a while, I think the switch feels more confusing than fresh (the action bar is a nonstandard location for a switch). Overall, I would say it's because design is really hard. But not like that! It's hard because when you spend so much time close to a system, you start to overthink things, and then second-guess yourself. So you can't trust your intuition, you need to listen to users with fresh eyes. But they're also telling you 5 different, conflicting things, and if you listen to everyone you'll have a settings section 9 miles long. You can try to rely on data, but that's mostly good for reaching a local maximum, not staying cohesive. The best designers are able to keep their "fresh eyes" even after working with the system for a long time.

godelski 5y ago
> I thought I would like the single top switch better than a single FAB, but after using it for a while, I think the switch feels more confusing than fresh (the action bar is a nonstandard location for a switch). This seems to be addressed by one of my complaints. Was this feature not tested before pushed out to users? I get that design is difficult. Anyone saying otherwise is biased. But it seems like a big problem is just trying something out first. Design can take months of use to realize something is bad. It seems like what should be done is: create new UI; use internally and push to everyone's version, use for a few weeks to a month; push to beta and get user feedback and pay attention to web traffic like HN and Reddit complaints about the new design; then decide if it should be pushed or not. I've seen apps that seem to follow this but just push despite bad user feedback and bad internal feedback. Going through the motions isn't enough, it has to be used as iterations. > So you can't trust your intuition, you need to listen to users with fresh eyes. But they're also telling you 5 different, conflicting things, and if you listen to everyone you'll have a settings section 9 miles long. A good piece of advice I heard was "listen to users for problems. Don't listen to users for solutions." Because people are actually really good at identifying problems. But most people are really terrible at solving problems (I mean if they were good at it we wouldn't have 90% of the problems we do). The addendum is to only take solution advice from experts that understand more of the nuance of what you're doing, but then to still be careful.
- bosie 5y ago
  The problem with your approach though is that there is no such thing as 'a user'. There are so many different cohorts of users. In your testing workflow it seems you are only using hardcore users for it. People obsessed with your software (internal or beta users) before pushing it out to the masses. How do you avoid leaving the other cohorts behind?
  - godelski 5y ago
    > How do you avoid leaving the other cohorts behind? Time, larger testing sizes, A/B testing in the main product, and not rushing things out.
sflicht 5y ago
What is wrong with having a lot of settings? I absolutely hate that Twitter does not let me turn off their "features", but rather only lets me say "see less often" (which of course does nothing because I told Twitter not to track my preferences etc, but probably doesn't do anything for anyone anyway, except maybe provide a datapoint for some poorly thought out ML algorithm they put in place).
- godelski 5y ago
  I like a lot of settings but I'm also okay with them being buried a bit. Advanced users tend to not care about going 5 layers deep to get what they want.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Exactly. They can be buried, and in many cases should be, but they still need to be there somewhere. Spotify seems to lose one or two useful features per calendar quarter. They're not hidden, but lost altogether. If you really want your blood pressure pumped up, try the Spotify mobile app under CarPlay sometime. At this point, it lets you do basically nothing. A 1980s-era cassette deck gave you more control over the listening experience, just because its fast-forward and rewind buttons worked.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      For CarPly they are very limited in what they can allow you to do relatively safely. So it's basically radio+cassette player
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        I'm pretty sure they could implement the same transport controls that my cassette deck had in 1989. They could also enable additional features when the vehicle isn't moving, if they cared enough to do so. What's not safe is providing an app that's so frustrating to use that it encourages the driver to touch and grope and scroll and drag all kinds of different things, looking for a commonplace UI affordance that, surely, has got to be there someplace, yet somehow isn't. Or (worse) providing an app that frequently (but not always) fails to return to the same screen and playback state that was active when the engine was last shut off. That's the #1 unforgivable sin in any autosound system, and... yup... they somehow managed to pull it off. It's as if the Spotify dev team is managed by B. F. Skinner himself, and they think we're all a bunch of lab rats.
mark-r 5y ago
I've found that the best programs are the ones under the control of a single benevolent dictator. They can maintain their focus and consistency much better than any other structure.
- scns 5y ago
  I Concur. Even though i am still not a fan, since his psrsonality was really offputting to me, Steve Jobs way able to do that. And he even was able to put it into words: "Stay hungry". Complacency begets Mediocrity at best (or worse).

godelski 5y ago

> I thought I would like the single top switch better than a single FAB, but after using it for a while, I think the switch feels more confusing than fresh (the action bar is a nonstandard location for a switch). This seems to be addressed by one of my complaints. Was this feature not tested before pushed out to users? I get that design is difficult. Anyone saying otherwise is biased. But it seems like a big problem is just trying something out first. Design can take months of use to realize something is bad. It seems like what should be done is: create new UI; use internally and push to everyone's version, use for a few weeks to a month; push to beta and get user feedback and pay attention to web traffic like HN and Reddit complaints about the new design; then decide if it should be pushed or not. I've seen apps that seem to follow this but just push despite bad user feedback and bad internal feedback. Going through the motions isn't enough, it has to be used as iterations. > So you can't trust your intuition, you need to listen to users with fresh eyes. But they're also telling you 5 different, conflicting things, and if you listen to everyone you'll have a settings section 9 miles long. A good piece of advice I heard was "listen to users for problems. Don't listen to users for solutions." Because people are actually really good at identifying problems. But most people are really terrible at solving problems (I mean if they were good at it we wouldn't have 90% of the problems we do). The addendum is to only take solution advice from experts that understand more of the nuance of what you're doing, but then to still be careful.

bosie 5y ago
The problem with your approach though is that there is no such thing as 'a user'. There are so many different cohorts of users. In your testing workflow it seems you are only using hardcore users for it. People obsessed with your software (internal or beta users) before pushing it out to the masses. How do you avoid leaving the other cohorts behind?
- godelski 5y ago
  > How do you avoid leaving the other cohorts behind? Time, larger testing sizes, A/B testing in the main product, and not rushing things out.

sflicht 5y ago

What is wrong with having a lot of settings? I absolutely hate that Twitter does not let me turn off their "features", but rather only lets me say "see less often" (which of course does nothing because I told Twitter not to track my preferences etc, but probably doesn't do anything for anyone anyway, except maybe provide a datapoint for some poorly thought out ML algorithm they put in place).

godelski 5y ago
I like a lot of settings but I'm also okay with them being buried a bit. Advanced users tend to not care about going 5 layers deep to get what they want.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Exactly. They can be buried, and in many cases should be, but they still need to be there somewhere. Spotify seems to lose one or two useful features per calendar quarter. They're not hidden, but lost altogether. If you really want your blood pressure pumped up, try the Spotify mobile app under CarPlay sometime. At this point, it lets you do basically nothing. A 1980s-era cassette deck gave you more control over the listening experience, just because its fast-forward and rewind buttons worked.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    For CarPly they are very limited in what they can allow you to do relatively safely. So it's basically radio+cassette player
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure they could implement the same transport controls that my cassette deck had in 1989. They could also enable additional features when the vehicle isn't moving, if they cared enough to do so. What's not safe is providing an app that's so frustrating to use that it encourages the driver to touch and grope and scroll and drag all kinds of different things, looking for a commonplace UI affordance that, surely, has got to be there someplace, yet somehow isn't. Or (worse) providing an app that frequently (but not always) fails to return to the same screen and playback state that was active when the engine was last shut off. That's the #1 unforgivable sin in any autosound system, and... yup... they somehow managed to pull it off. It's as if the Spotify dev team is managed by B. F. Skinner himself, and they think we're all a bunch of lab rats.

mark-r 5y ago

I've found that the best programs are the ones under the control of a single benevolent dictator. They can maintain their focus and consistency much better than any other structure.

scns 5y ago
I Concur. Even though i am still not a fan, since his psrsonality was really offputting to me, Steve Jobs way able to do that. And he even was able to put it into words: "Stay hungry". Complacency begets Mediocrity at best (or worse).