7 ms·

> 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

> 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 :/.
- jychang 5y ago
  Well, if that wasn't the worst slippery slope argument I've seen in a while. That's like me saying "dogs and cats are both mammal pets" and you jump in and say "WELL JELLYFISH IS AN ANIMAL WITH DNA TOO SO OBVIOUSLY PEOPLE CAN'T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN JELLYFISH AND DOGS/CATS". Uhhh, no, that's a massive jump to an extreme conclusion. There's a BIG difference between someone typing "facebook" into a URL bar, and them putting their trash in their mailbox. I'm not saying you should put literally everything including "change settings" or "access your bookmarks" in the omnibar, merely that combining the URL bar and the Search bar was clearly a common sense UI idea, and even Firefox bowed in after a while. Your job as a developer isn't to force the user to learn more things. Your job as a developer is not to be arrogant and insist that the user must understand some technical model they don't care about. If they want to go to BankOfAmerica.com, and they typed in "BOA", your job is to make it easier for them to do their banking, even if they're massive idiots when it comes to tech. Human brains have a universal structure, which merely means you need to target the lowest common denominator when it comes to design. As an aside, this is why Apple products historically are known for being very easy to use by the elderly. I certainly am grateful for the fact that my grandparents were able to learn to use Facetime and looked forward to using that software before they passed away. I'm not sure if Apple's ease-of-use is still true, for what it's worth- they've added a lot of complexity in recent years. --- Addendum: This is HN, full of very smart tech people who also happen to be terrible at empathy, so I'll give the usual spiel on empathy (which is usually disregarded by people with overly large egos): The person who typed "BOA" into the URL bar might be a tech idiot, but that tech idiot may just be a really good neurosurgeon, and that person may just prefer to spend their brain cells dealing with their own specialty. Humans are good at specialization, and I'd rather my brain surgeon not know or care or spend too much of their energy in understanding DNS, or the difference in how Chrome distinguishes URLs from search queries. For that matter, I'd rather not have to teach my grandparents the difference between a URL and a search query, either. If you (the reader) is anything like the average tech guy, there's a good chance you're physically unhealthy in multiple ways, and in an alternate universe there's an internet forum of doctors lacking empathy who are shaking their heads and saying "why can't our patients simply spent a bit of their brain cells and time on eating correct amounts of the precise macronutrients, identifying each of the 13 major muscle groups and stretch and exercise them every day, actually doing the correct amount of cardio where they track if they hit 160bpm and sustain that amount (under age 45), sleep at the precise time each day for optional functioning of the central nervous system, etc". There's probably a mechanic forum that's complaining about tech guys who own cars and saying "why can't they just do a blackstone oil test to know what's the optimal amount of mileage for their car to do an oil change, why don't they routinely fill up their tires to the labeled air pressure to maximise fuel economy, etc". None of what these doctors or mechanics are suggesting something /unreasonable/ per se... but most of that stuff just aren't priorities for an average person to learn and deal with. In conclusion, you can be extremely smart in the tech industry (or any other field) and still be an absolute idiot in so many ways, and that's okay- but you need to keep in mind that the same thing applies to your users for their fields of non-specialty. In summary: https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/ Full disclosure, I started writing this after I took my sleeping pills for the night, so ignore any grammatical issues or bad structure

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 :/.

jychang 5y ago
Well, if that wasn't the worst slippery slope argument I've seen in a while. That's like me saying "dogs and cats are both mammal pets" and you jump in and say "WELL JELLYFISH IS AN ANIMAL WITH DNA TOO SO OBVIOUSLY PEOPLE CAN'T DISTINGUISH BETWEEN JELLYFISH AND DOGS/CATS". Uhhh, no, that's a massive jump to an extreme conclusion. There's a BIG difference between someone typing "facebook" into a URL bar, and them putting their trash in their mailbox. I'm not saying you should put literally everything including "change settings" or "access your bookmarks" in the omnibar, merely that combining the URL bar and the Search bar was clearly a common sense UI idea, and even Firefox bowed in after a while. Your job as a developer isn't to force the user to learn more things. Your job as a developer is not to be arrogant and insist that the user must understand some technical model they don't care about. If they want to go to BankOfAmerica.com, and they typed in "BOA", your job is to make it easier for them to do their banking, even if they're massive idiots when it comes to tech. Human brains have a universal structure, which merely means you need to target the lowest common denominator when it comes to design. As an aside, this is why Apple products historically are known for being very easy to use by the elderly. I certainly am grateful for the fact that my grandparents were able to learn to use Facetime and looked forward to using that software before they passed away. I'm not sure if Apple's ease-of-use is still true, for what it's worth- they've added a lot of complexity in recent years. --- Addendum: This is HN, full of very smart tech people who also happen to be terrible at empathy, so I'll give the usual spiel on empathy (which is usually disregarded by people with overly large egos): The person who typed "BOA" into the URL bar might be a tech idiot, but that tech idiot may just be a really good neurosurgeon, and that person may just prefer to spend their brain cells dealing with their own specialty. Humans are good at specialization, and I'd rather my brain surgeon not know or care or spend too much of their energy in understanding DNS, or the difference in how Chrome distinguishes URLs from search queries. For that matter, I'd rather not have to teach my grandparents the difference between a URL and a search query, either. If you (the reader) is anything like the average tech guy, there's a good chance you're physically unhealthy in multiple ways, and in an alternate universe there's an internet forum of doctors lacking empathy who are shaking their heads and saying "why can't our patients simply spent a bit of their brain cells and time on eating correct amounts of the precise macronutrients, identifying each of the 13 major muscle groups and stretch and exercise them every day, actually doing the correct amount of cardio where they track if they hit 160bpm and sustain that amount (under age 45), sleep at the precise time each day for optional functioning of the central nervous system, etc". There's probably a mechanic forum that's complaining about tech guys who own cars and saying "why can't they just do a blackstone oil test to know what's the optimal amount of mileage for their car to do an oil change, why don't they routinely fill up their tires to the labeled air pressure to maximise fuel economy, etc". None of what these doctors or mechanics are suggesting something /unreasonable/ per se... but most of that stuff just aren't priorities for an average person to learn and deal with. In conclusion, you can be extremely smart in the tech industry (or any other field) and still be an absolute idiot in so many ways, and that's okay- but you need to keep in mind that the same thing applies to your users for their fields of non-specialty. In summary: https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/ Full disclosure, I started writing this after I took my sleeping pills for the night, so ignore any grammatical issues or bad structure