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Finally some research on ADHD and UI. I have it and have always found GUIs confusing as hell. Most people seem to find Windows an intuitive OS, for instance. N

Finally some research on ADHD and UI. I have it and have always found GUIs confusing as hell. Most people seem to find Windows an intuitive OS, for instance. Not me. Windows up to and including XP felt pretty intuitive, but since then every version has gotten more confusing. I never know where to find stuff, how to navigate around. I'm sure there are visual cues that I'm just not capable of processing. Icons for buttons mean nothing to me. Text does. So the design of HN for instance is wonderfully easy to understand because almost everything clickable is just plain text. Something like Microsoft Word is completely mind-boggling to me. Both before and after "ribbons". I would love some sort of global setting for GUI frameworks to replace all icons with their alt text or something.

123pie123 3y ago
whoever created the UI/ UX in MS Teams needs a good talking to MS Teams overloads my brain through very bad design
- xmcqdpt2 3y ago
  I hate Teams and wish so much there was a better client for it. Why does is the "teams" pane different from the individual chats pane ??? Do I just have to deal with the sluggish UI switch every time I want to chat with my team? do I not understand how it works or something?
  - solardev 3y ago
    No, it's just bad. Microsoft rushed it to market so Zoom wouldn't eat them alive. Then they just stopped caring...
lachlan_gray 3y ago
This is why I’m convinced vim is great for the ADHD brain. You don’t need to remember where something is or what it looks like, you just have to know the name of what you want to do, and you tell the editor to do it!
wpm 3y ago
I detest the modern trend of "grey-on-grey" hieroglyphics. Everything melts into some amorphous blob of whitespace with some scribbles on it, and you just have to magically know or painfully learn that this little scribble means "Sharpen" and this one means "Smudge". And god forbid we add a little color! Or detailed icons where I can look for an actual shape of something like "blue folder with yellow splotch", which my brain reinforces as meaning "Sharing Preferences" every time I use it since it says "Sharing" right underneath it. If you download Pixelmator Pro on a Mac, on first launch (controlled by preference key `toolsOnboardingCompleted` in the plist), the default toolset on the right side of the window is a row of small, grey, hieroglyphics , but with textual labels off to the side. The moment you select one, the labels disappear forever to "make room" for a vertical pane with settings for the tool you have selected. Which, thank god, it's not like I have 2880 horizontal pixels to use. You are given 1 single moment to learn what all these stupid tiny grey blobs mean, otherwise, you get to wait 5 seconds for the tooltip to appear to let you know. Hence, I never use Pixelmator until I absolutely have to, because it's a load of ballache to use. The people studying UX academically know that text labels are good. But muh SiMpLiCiTy! Muh MiNimALiSm! It's gotten absurd. FWIW, if you're on macOS, and the application you're using is displaying an NSToolbar, you can typically force it into "Icon and Text" mode even if that option isn't displayed in the context menu on the toolbar by using PlistBuddy. Find the app's preferences `.plist` file, then look for a Key called `NSToolbar Configuration someUUID`. That key's dict will have a key called "TBDisplayMode". Setting it to 1 will force it into Icon and Text. Setting it to 3 will force it to Text Only. For example, I can force Pixelmator Pro to show me just text labels on the top toolbar of the window (the actual tool palette is some other likely custom UI component) by running: /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set NSToolbar\ Configuration\ bigLongUUID:TB\ Display\ Mode 3" /homedir/Library/Containers/com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.x/Data/Library/Preferences/com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.x.plist Then just quit and relaunch. The key's possible values are in the enum here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstoolbar/displaymode https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstoolbar/d... This is one of the minor but "big in my mind" reasons I despise most web-app-in-a-box apps: they almost universally do not use CoreFoundation APIs to get preference keys from a file, which means none of what I sussed out, tested, and applied in the 10 minutes it took for me to hunt these keys down and find the documentation works.

123pie123 3y ago

whoever created the UI/ UX in MS Teams needs a good talking to MS Teams overloads my brain through very bad design

xmcqdpt2 3y ago
I hate Teams and wish so much there was a better client for it. Why does is the "teams" pane different from the individual chats pane ??? Do I just have to deal with the sluggish UI switch every time I want to chat with my team? do I not understand how it works or something?
- solardev 3y ago
  No, it's just bad. Microsoft rushed it to market so Zoom wouldn't eat them alive. Then they just stopped caring...

lachlan_gray 3y ago

This is why I’m convinced vim is great for the ADHD brain. You don’t need to remember where something is or what it looks like, you just have to know the name of what you want to do, and you tell the editor to do it!

wpm 3y ago

I detest the modern trend of "grey-on-grey" hieroglyphics. Everything melts into some amorphous blob of whitespace with some scribbles on it, and you just have to magically know or painfully learn that this little scribble means "Sharpen" and this one means "Smudge". And god forbid we add a little color! Or detailed icons where I can look for an actual shape of something like "blue folder with yellow splotch", which my brain reinforces as meaning "Sharing Preferences" every time I use it since it says "Sharing" right underneath it. If you download Pixelmator Pro on a Mac, on first launch (controlled by preference key `toolsOnboardingCompleted` in the plist), the default toolset on the right side of the window is a row of small, grey, hieroglyphics , but with textual labels off to the side. The moment you select one, the labels disappear forever to "make room" for a vertical pane with settings for the tool you have selected. Which, thank god, it's not like I have 2880 horizontal pixels to use. You are given 1 single moment to learn what all these stupid tiny grey blobs mean, otherwise, you get to wait 5 seconds for the tooltip to appear to let you know. Hence, I never use Pixelmator until I absolutely have to, because it's a load of ballache to use. The people studying UX academically know that text labels are good. But muh SiMpLiCiTy! Muh MiNimALiSm! It's gotten absurd. FWIW, if you're on macOS, and the application you're using is displaying an NSToolbar, you can typically force it into "Icon and Text" mode even if that option isn't displayed in the context menu on the toolbar by using PlistBuddy. Find the app's preferences `.plist` file, then look for a Key called `NSToolbar Configuration someUUID`. That key's dict will have a key called "TBDisplayMode". Setting it to 1 will force it into Icon and Text. Setting it to 3 will force it to Text Only. For example, I can force Pixelmator Pro to show me just text labels on the top toolbar of the window (the actual tool palette is some other likely custom UI component) by running: /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set NSToolbar\ Configuration\ bigLongUUID:TB\ Display\ Mode 3" /homedir/Library/Containers/com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.x/Data/Library/Preferences/com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.x.plist Then just quit and relaunch. The key's possible values are in the enum here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstoolbar/displaymode https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstoolbar/d... This is one of the minor but "big in my mind" reasons I despise most web-app-in-a-box apps: they almost universally do not use CoreFoundation APIs to get preference keys from a file, which means none of what I sussed out, tested, and applied in the 10 minutes it took for me to hunt these keys down and find the documentation works.