7 ms·

You're thinking like a HN reader, rather than the intended audience for the chrome omnibar (i.e., non-specialists) They don't want the abstraction punctured to

by unsui 5y ago

You're thinking like a HN reader, rather than the intended audience for the chrome omnibar (i.e., non-specialists) They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction, where they want to pull the door, when the door only works by pushing (yet the door handle basically beckons to be pulled)... Whether it's a good thing or not is besides the point. It's how people work, if you want to reach them at scale.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... > Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction (...) Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. This is not true, because computing is new, and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists. Part of the job of UI is to enable the users to build correct mental models in the first place - and to the extent they introduce bad abstractions, they fail at this job, leaving users with bad mental models that don't correspond to reality, and don't let them make sensible predictions. Note: I don't disagree with Norman. I disagree with how his work is used to justify current UX design trends.
- jychang 5y ago
  > and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists Strong disagree. Looking at the URL bar in Firefox vs Chrome is a great example of how Chrome nailed an "obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists". We can look at things like the design of door handles, and clearly see how the shape of the human hand influences the design. If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. The same thing applies to human minds (as opposed to hypothetical alien minds, or AIs). Humans all have a hippocampus, a prefrontal cortex, and other universal biological factors in cognition which influences HOW thoughts are formed.
  - robocat 5y ago
    > If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. I would love to see a virtual reality app that plays with different organism layouts, and solving the usability issues. There is a lot of great sci-fi that tries to consider how a world would be designed for non-humanoids, or mixed aliens, or the reverse archaeological problem of calculating how aliens look from what they have left behind. I am struggling to think of any sci-fi that makes you deeply think about usability.
    - nanomonkey 5y ago
      "The Galaxy, and the Ground Within" by Becky Chambers (Book 4 in the Wayfarers Series) not only deals with a mixed alien usability environment, it also passes an alien Bechdel test of sorts. The whole Wayfarers series is amazing in my opinion.
      - BEEdwards 5y ago
        "A Closed and Common Orbit", the second in the series) is my favorite book ever.
  - saurik 5y ago
    You didn't really make an argument for why "brains seem to have parts" leads to "Chrome's omnibar makes sense". The reason Chrome's design is "good"--which I put in quotes, as I absolutely agree that it is "destructive"--is because people are lazy: it is the same reason why co-mingled recycling is "good" and why a world in which trash and recycling were the same bin would be even better, and why a world in which trash, recycling, your toilet, and YOUR OUTGOING MAILBOX were magically all a single slot would somehow be the best thing ever and UX designers would shit themselves with glee over how clever they are for training users that there is a single hole that everything should go into and it is the job of an army of people on the other side of the hole to make that work most of the time... except for the occasional letter that gets recycled and the occasional empty box of cereal that gets mailed back to the cereal company :/.
    - 5y ago
- Izkata 5y ago
  > Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. There was a subtle joke about this in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Wesley Crusher, on a visit to a starbase to take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam, stood in front of a door confused until Picard used the handle to open it for him. Wesley had grown up on starships where the doors opened automatically as you approach, and had never seen a door handle before. According to Wesley's actor, this wasn't in the script and they came up with it right before doing the scene (and it made it into the episode).

by unsui 5y ago

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... > Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction (...) Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. This is not true, because computing is new, and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists. Part of the job of UI is to enable the users to build correct mental models in the first place - and to the extent they introduce bad abstractions, they fail at this job, leaving users with bad mental models that don't correspond to reality, and don't let them make sensible predictions. Note: I don't disagree with Norman. I disagree with how his work is used to justify current UX design trends.

jychang 5y ago
> and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists Strong disagree. Looking at the URL bar in Firefox vs Chrome is a great example of how Chrome nailed an "obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists". We can look at things like the design of door handles, and clearly see how the shape of the human hand influences the design. If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. The same thing applies to human minds (as opposed to hypothetical alien minds, or AIs). Humans all have a hippocampus, a prefrontal cortex, and other universal biological factors in cognition which influences HOW thoughts are formed.
- robocat 5y ago
  > If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. I would love to see a virtual reality app that plays with different organism layouts, and solving the usability issues. There is a lot of great sci-fi that tries to consider how a world would be designed for non-humanoids, or mixed aliens, or the reverse archaeological problem of calculating how aliens look from what they have left behind. I am struggling to think of any sci-fi that makes you deeply think about usability.
  - nanomonkey 5y ago
    "The Galaxy, and the Ground Within" by Becky Chambers (Book 4 in the Wayfarers Series) not only deals with a mixed alien usability environment, it also passes an alien Bechdel test of sorts. The whole Wayfarers series is amazing in my opinion.
    - BEEdwards 5y ago
      "A Closed and Common Orbit", the second in the series) is my favorite book ever.
- saurik 5y ago
  You didn't really make an argument for why "brains seem to have parts" leads to "Chrome's omnibar makes sense". The reason Chrome's design is "good"--which I put in quotes, as I absolutely agree that it is "destructive"--is because people are lazy: it is the same reason why co-mingled recycling is "good" and why a world in which trash and recycling were the same bin would be even better, and why a world in which trash, recycling, your toilet, and YOUR OUTGOING MAILBOX were magically all a single slot would somehow be the best thing ever and UX designers would shit themselves with glee over how clever they are for training users that there is a single hole that everything should go into and it is the job of an army of people on the other side of the hole to make that work most of the time... except for the occasional letter that gets recycled and the occasional empty box of cereal that gets mailed back to the cereal company :/.
  - 5y ago
Izkata 5y ago
> Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. There was a subtle joke about this in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Wesley Crusher, on a visit to a starbase to take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam, stood in front of a door confused until Picard used the handle to open it for him. Wesley had grown up on starships where the doors opened automatically as you approach, and had never seen a door handle before. According to Wesley's actor, this wasn't in the script and they came up with it right before doing the scene (and it made it into the episode).