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> Every app update was a risk of the app rearranging itself, or features appearing/disappearing. This shit drives my parents insane. Me too, when I have to hel

> Every app update was a risk of the app rearranging itself, or features appearing/disappearing. This shit drives my parents insane. Me too, when I have to help them. I've had to spend tens of seconds looking at a major screen in the phone app, of all things, to figure out WTF I'm looking at so I could help them figure out what was up. Re-arranged every update (or new phone) for absolutely no reason, terrible affordances, poor use of their own design language. Ugh. I'd get them on iOS but they need larger screens and the $400 small iPhones (what I have) are already more expensive than they think a phone "should" cost, so they keep buying $200 Android phones about once a year (hoping the next one will be better) and not being able to use them because the UI is garbage.

bombcar 4y ago
It's doubly sad because the larger phone or iPad would be perfect, but every year it's another $200 to tell Google they're doing the right thing. At least on iPad/iPhone you can set the apps to access Google mail, etc, which doesn't change as often, but still too often.
selfhoster11 4y ago
At one point I was trying to set up my grandma with a popular video calling app on a dedicated device so we could stay in touch. Before I could give her the freshly grandparent-proofed device, said video calling app upgraded on my parents' PC first and changed literally every single element of the UI beyond recognition. To someone the age of my grandma, that would be literally like bricking the device remotely, because none of the buttons would look the same, and she would not be able to work out how to use the new interface. STOP CHANGING THINGS! Even if the new UI is better (debatable), some people just like or rely on a particular layout to operate the device or app. Don't rearrange without giving a ~permanent setting to use the old layout.
- corrral 4y ago
  > STOP CHANGING THINGS! Even if the new UI is better (debatable), some people just like or rely on a particular layout to operate the device or app. Don't rearrange without giving a ~permanent setting to use the old layout. The fact that we're 15 years into smartphones being popular and that phones & computerized address books were basically fully-solved interfaces long before those took off, and they're still fucking around with phone app UI in big ways, is a sign of some kind of institutional or industry-market failure to me. Or both. Allowed, I suppose, because Google's market position (i.e. monopoly across several markets) both gives them the surplus profit (i.e. rents) to fuck around and waste money on harmful to users crap like phone app redesigns, and insulates them from any actual threat to their profit due to those bad choices.
  - thatguy0900 4y ago
    Well, all of these companies employ teams of ui and ux designers. They will never show up to work one day and tell their boss the ui is done. No matter how perfect the design currently is
    - cupofpython 4y ago
      of course not. that's the responsibility of the company management to say "okay UI is good lets divert resources elsewhere"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- zanecodes 4y ago
  In the same way that we try to use semantic versioning to prevent unintended breakages in dependents of our public-facing APIs, I think we developers should start considering the UI/UX of our apps to be their public-facing API, and use the philosophy of semantic versioning accordingly. When we rename or remove a function from an API, that's a breaking change, any dependent software will no longer work unless it's modified to take that change into account. Similarly, when we move, rename, or remove a UI element, keyboard shortcut, or visual affordance, that should be considered a "breaking change" for our dependents, the humans on the other side of the screen. And in the same way, we should avoid making such changes unless the long-term benefit of doing so outweighs the short-term cost. Plus, users will know that moving from 7.x.x of your software to 8.x.x will require them to relearn some aspect of it.
  - account42 4y ago
    We should also keep arround long-term support releases of older versions of user-facing applications so that people can update at their own convenience and not at a point determined by some release manager. With server software and libraries no one expects everyone to upgrade immediately to new major versions but somehow this is an acceptable expectation from end users.
jl6 4y ago
If you put a dollar value on your own time spent providing training and tech support to your parents, the iPhone options start to look much cheaper.
- corrral 4y ago
  I've considered just getting them one but that's another new interface for them to learn. Though one that's much more stable across years.

bombcar 4y ago

It's doubly sad because the larger phone or iPad would be perfect, but every year it's another $200 to tell Google they're doing the right thing. At least on iPad/iPhone you can set the apps to access Google mail, etc, which doesn't change as often, but still too often.

selfhoster11 4y ago

At one point I was trying to set up my grandma with a popular video calling app on a dedicated device so we could stay in touch. Before I could give her the freshly grandparent-proofed device, said video calling app upgraded on my parents' PC first and changed literally every single element of the UI beyond recognition. To someone the age of my grandma, that would be literally like bricking the device remotely, because none of the buttons would look the same, and she would not be able to work out how to use the new interface. STOP CHANGING THINGS! Even if the new UI is better (debatable), some people just like or rely on a particular layout to operate the device or app. Don't rearrange without giving a ~permanent setting to use the old layout.

corrral 4y ago
> STOP CHANGING THINGS! Even if the new UI is better (debatable), some people just like or rely on a particular layout to operate the device or app. Don't rearrange without giving a ~permanent setting to use the old layout. The fact that we're 15 years into smartphones being popular and that phones & computerized address books were basically fully-solved interfaces long before those took off, and they're still fucking around with phone app UI in big ways, is a sign of some kind of institutional or industry-market failure to me. Or both. Allowed, I suppose, because Google's market position (i.e. monopoly across several markets) both gives them the surplus profit (i.e. rents) to fuck around and waste money on harmful to users crap like phone app redesigns, and insulates them from any actual threat to their profit due to those bad choices.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  Well, all of these companies employ teams of ui and ux designers. They will never show up to work one day and tell their boss the ui is done. No matter how perfect the design currently is
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    of course not. that's the responsibility of the company management to say "okay UI is good lets divert resources elsewhere"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zanecodes 4y ago
In the same way that we try to use semantic versioning to prevent unintended breakages in dependents of our public-facing APIs, I think we developers should start considering the UI/UX of our apps to be their public-facing API, and use the philosophy of semantic versioning accordingly. When we rename or remove a function from an API, that's a breaking change, any dependent software will no longer work unless it's modified to take that change into account. Similarly, when we move, rename, or remove a UI element, keyboard shortcut, or visual affordance, that should be considered a "breaking change" for our dependents, the humans on the other side of the screen. And in the same way, we should avoid making such changes unless the long-term benefit of doing so outweighs the short-term cost. Plus, users will know that moving from 7.x.x of your software to 8.x.x will require them to relearn some aspect of it.
- account42 4y ago
  We should also keep arround long-term support releases of older versions of user-facing applications so that people can update at their own convenience and not at a point determined by some release manager. With server software and libraries no one expects everyone to upgrade immediately to new major versions but somehow this is an acceptable expectation from end users.

jl6 4y ago

If you put a dollar value on your own time spent providing training and tech support to your parents, the iPhone options start to look much cheaper.

corrral 4y ago
I've considered just getting them one but that's another new interface for them to learn. Though one that's much more stable across years.