5 ms·

A similar problem I’ve ran into both in tech support and user studies is momentary blindness for the scope of search. For example on your Mac, you have Spotligh

by tobr 5y ago

A similar problem I’ve ran into both in tech support and user studies is momentary blindness for the scope of search. For example on your Mac, you have Spotlight, Finder search, Google search, help menu search, and various application-specific or website-specific search fields. In my experience if two of those are on screen at the same time, it’s very easy to get confused about which one to use to get which type of result. You don’t need to be a naive user to make this mistake. The problem is that your brain is thinking “search”, your eyes are looking for something that looks like a search input, and when you find one you click it and start typing. I feel like that’s what’s going wrong in this example too; it’s not that people expect Amazon to bring them to any random webpage, it’s just that there are two similar looking text inputs very close together on the screen.

philote 5y ago
Also, there sometimes isn't a good separation between the browser and the page itself. For example, I use a dark theme on my browser and was on a site that had a dark nav bar above their logo. They also had another navigation area, so I didn't even notice the top nav bar. I couldn't figure out how to log out of the site due to that.
rudian 5y ago
Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate universe.
- oAlbe 5y ago
  > three-dimensionally I had actually never put it into words before now, but that makes a lot of sense, and it actually accurately describes how I see my screen. To me, the OS taskbar is "higher" (as in, closer to me) than the application window title bar, which in turn is higher than whatever controls are in the application itself (think Firefox back and forward buttons, URL bar, setting menu etc), which is itself higher than whatever website it is currently loaded. And even more than this, my brain perceives the website to be "deeper" inside the screen than anything else. Even right now typing this, the text area to me is "dug" inside the HN, making HN feel closer to my eyes than the texarea for the reply. I wonder if that's experienced by others as well.
  - azernik 5y ago
    Huh. I have that experience, but in reverse. More "specific" or application/context-specific UI elements feel "closer" to me, while browser chrome is farther in the background, and OS all the way in the back. I believe that's the visual paradigm most graphical OS's going back to the '90s used.
    - panda88888 5y ago
      Yup, the desktop metaphor. Basically the computer screen is like a desk, and each application is a paper/document on the desk that can lay on top of one another. Mouse cursor is more or less your finger/hand to interact with the “documents”.
  - MauranKilom 5y ago
    Well, user interfaces used to be styled to look 3D: https://pics.computerbase.de/5/7/4/1/0/1-1080.130195173.jpg https://pics.computerbase.de/5/7/4/1/0/1-1080.130195173.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.thespinningdonut.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/vista_start_menu_1024x768.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.thespinningdonut.com/wp-content/upload... Everything had bevels (XP) and/or shading (Vista) that evoked a 3D appearance. Buttons are extruded (and appear to physically move down when pushed), menus overlay each other, text boxes are "inset". Nowadays though... it is apparently a cardinal sin to even make clickable things appear clickable. Looking at you, Windows/Office!
    - andai 5y ago
      Today I used an exercise machine at the gym for the first time and noticed the buttons: their design was Web 2.0! Flat buttons but with stickers, and the stickers have these glossy cartoon buttons printed on them. The machines were fairly recent and I wondered if the design was intentional (more buttonlike than flat labels) or if they just hadn't bothered to update them in a while. As a side note I found it comical that they're using computer UI-styled buttons printed onto actual paper on a physical machine instead of "real" push buttons, but I guess it's a cost-saving thing.
- jerf 5y ago
  I think it's really easy for programmers to overestimate how much screen parsing everyone else is doing. I've often joked that one of the core skills of a programmer is to be able to look at a terminal scrolling a full screen of text every quarter of a second or so, and extract useful information from it. I've lost track of the times I've seen something "different" and had to scroll up dozens of screens to find what I happened to see. This is a job-specific skill like a mechanic diagnosing a complicated machine's problem from the particular way a single knocking sound sounded, or a doctor glancing at you and telling you you have some obscure disease that you've never heard of because you have some particular droop in your eyelids. This is not the way the non-programming public perceives a computer screen.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    Parsing GCC/Clang (or god forbid MSVC) compiler error messages listing a mixture of header paths, usage paths, and unrelated system headers, with no clear distinction between the start of one error and the start of another, is a skill in of itself.

by tobr 5y ago

philote 5y ago

Also, there sometimes isn't a good separation between the browser and the page itself. For example, I use a dark theme on my browser and was on a site that had a dark nav bar above their logo. They also had another navigation area, so I didn't even notice the top nav bar. I couldn't figure out how to log out of the site due to that.

rudian 5y ago

Other than "momentary" blindness, it feels like some people don't look at their monitors three-dimensionally: It's just buttons and fields everywhere, there's no physical separation between them, there's no hierarchy. They just learn to operate some UIs mechanically and don't put any thought into it. That's why they whine when something moves; As far as they're concerned, that something disappeared into an alternate universe.

oAlbe 5y ago
> three-dimensionally I had actually never put it into words before now, but that makes a lot of sense, and it actually accurately describes how I see my screen. To me, the OS taskbar is "higher" (as in, closer to me) than the application window title bar, which in turn is higher than whatever controls are in the application itself (think Firefox back and forward buttons, URL bar, setting menu etc), which is itself higher than whatever website it is currently loaded. And even more than this, my brain perceives the website to be "deeper" inside the screen than anything else. Even right now typing this, the text area to me is "dug" inside the HN, making HN feel closer to my eyes than the texarea for the reply. I wonder if that's experienced by others as well.
- azernik 5y ago
  Huh. I have that experience, but in reverse. More "specific" or application/context-specific UI elements feel "closer" to me, while browser chrome is farther in the background, and OS all the way in the back. I believe that's the visual paradigm most graphical OS's going back to the '90s used.
  - panda88888 5y ago
    Yup, the desktop metaphor. Basically the computer screen is like a desk, and each application is a paper/document on the desk that can lay on top of one another. Mouse cursor is more or less your finger/hand to interact with the “documents”.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  Well, user interfaces used to be styled to look 3D: https://pics.computerbase.de/5/7/4/1/0/1-1080.130195173.jpg https://pics.computerbase.de/5/7/4/1/0/1-1080.130195173.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.thespinningdonut.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/vista_start_menu_1024x768.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.thespinningdonut.com/wp-content/upload... Everything had bevels (XP) and/or shading (Vista) that evoked a 3D appearance. Buttons are extruded (and appear to physically move down when pushed), menus overlay each other, text boxes are "inset". Nowadays though... it is apparently a cardinal sin to even make clickable things appear clickable. Looking at you, Windows/Office!
  - andai 5y ago
    Today I used an exercise machine at the gym for the first time and noticed the buttons: their design was Web 2.0! Flat buttons but with stickers, and the stickers have these glossy cartoon buttons printed on them. The machines were fairly recent and I wondered if the design was intentional (more buttonlike than flat labels) or if they just hadn't bothered to update them in a while. As a side note I found it comical that they're using computer UI-styled buttons printed onto actual paper on a physical machine instead of "real" push buttons, but I guess it's a cost-saving thing.
jerf 5y ago
I think it's really easy for programmers to overestimate how much screen parsing everyone else is doing. I've often joked that one of the core skills of a programmer is to be able to look at a terminal scrolling a full screen of text every quarter of a second or so, and extract useful information from it. I've lost track of the times I've seen something "different" and had to scroll up dozens of screens to find what I happened to see. This is a job-specific skill like a mechanic diagnosing a complicated machine's problem from the particular way a single knocking sound sounded, or a doctor glancing at you and telling you you have some obscure disease that you've never heard of because you have some particular droop in your eyelids. This is not the way the non-programming public perceives a computer screen.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  Parsing GCC/Clang (or god forbid MSVC) compiler error messages listing a mixture of header paths, usage paths, and unrelated system headers, with no clear distinction between the start of one error and the start of another, is a skill in of itself.