16 ms·

The world is designed against the elderly, writes Don Norman

202 points by grzm 3y ago

OnlyMortal 3y ago
Inside Macintosh Volume 1?
iamcalledrob 3y ago
Apple's switch away from the physical home button to gestures has created a usability threshold for the iPhone that many can't cross. Intricate gestures are difficult to grok for some, and difficult to perform for others. Try using an iPhone and closing an app with shaky hands. Currently the iPhone SE still has a physical button, but I'm worried what device I'll start recommending to older/less tech savvy people when that goes away. iOS itself is a bit of a disaster zone too now. I see people constantly get stuck having activated the "press to edit your lock screen" by mistake, or getting confused by a constant stream of ads for iCloud, Apple Arcade etc. It's sad because most of this poor UX is unnecessary. It feels like its origins are in Apple no longer caring, combined with running out of real ideas and getting distracted with things like widgets.
- staplers 3y ago
  Generally it's when the bean-counters get more leverage during economic slowdowns you see the dark patterns emerge.
  - bornfreddy 3y ago
    Not sure if they are to blame here though. Cars, sure. But for phones design and software cost doesn't decrease with worse UX, support costs probably even rise.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- jgtrosh 3y ago
  Not an elderly or disabled person, I probably even fit some people's definition of a touch screen wizard since I regularly use swiping keyboards without looking, but I really can't be bothered with those weird slidey gestures between apps on iOS or Android. At least on Android I can switch to regular (configurable!) bottom buttons.
  - causi 3y ago
    Gods I miss having real customizable gestures on Android. It took me years to unlearn my gesture set, especially "double tap with three fingers" to close the current app and go home.
    - nottheengineer 3y ago
      I used to use xposed edge to configure the crap out my gestures, it was great. Now that xposed isn't really a thing anymore, I followed the rest of the world and use my phone with two hands most of the time and use my index finger for the top of the screen with one hand. Not terribly hard at my age, but why do I have to?
  - layer8 3y ago
    In principle, I like for example the four-finger sliding gesture to switch apps on the iPad, but it’s implemented in a way that makes it very easy to accidentally swipe to the second-next app instead of to the next app. Similarly, there’s a gesture for Speak Screen where you swipe down from the top with two fingers, but it regularly takes me more than three attempts before it doesn’t instead swipe down the lock screen or the control center. I honestly don’t understand how they think this is fine.
- Frost1x 3y ago
  My biggest gripe is continuously changing interfaces. You've sold me. I'm a customer, I'm using your thing. Why do you want to make it difficult for me to memorize my use of your thing? Moving menus and buttons around all the time is craziness. I don't have time, cognitive capacity, or interest in finding new ways to do the same functionality from before. Things do need to change over time, I get it, I create things too. Sometimes new functionality evolves and has to go somewhere, sometimes you find a previous design was bad and there truly is an improved layout that will help most. Fine. Those sorts of states should converge quickly so I can memorize and dedicate it to muscle memory vs having to actively look and think all the time.
  - nottheengineer 3y ago
    This is a big part of what made me start using linux. On windows, there's a new way to do basic stuff all the time and they screw around with menus that work perfectly well just to have something new. That means that any tutorials will quickly get outdated and you can spend half your mental capacity just keeping up with this crap. The amount of times I googled how to do something in MS office, clicked an article from half a year ago and found that one of the options it mentions doesn't exist anymore is too damn high. Things are nice on linux, especially the CLI world. You learn a little program once and use it for decades without thinking about it.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      As always with Linux it depends on which distribution you're on but that hasn't been my experience at all with distributions like Ubuntu and Mint. I used Ubuntu back when the close, maximise and minimise buttons were on the top right and they moved them right from under me. I've tried to adjust to using flat packs but struggled with their very serious limitations while programs I rely on are no longer available in other package types. I have seen them see-saw between the horrible global menu and window menus, make wholesale changes to areas of the settings screen like display settings and mouse and trackpad settings. And I don't even know how many wildly different iterations of that horrible main menu application selector UI I have had to suffer through.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  >... getting confused by a constant stream of ads for iCloud, Apple Arcade etc. It's sad because most of this poor UX is unnecessary. UX went from an altruist field around making tasks easier to perform to tricking people into spending money, clicking away rights to their personal data, etc. It's the logical path of end users being the product. This axiom started around "free" services like Facebook, but now we see it even in expensive products like iPhones and Windows 11.
- user_7832 3y ago
  > Apple's switch away from the physical home button to gestures has created a usability threshold for the iPhone that many can't cross. Funny you mention home buttons being more usable. I've got mild wrist pain (not RSI levels fortunately), and I find the pressure required to press it disturbingly high, often resorting to using the assitivetouch button instead.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    It was better with actual physical button. Current SE has a fake software button that didn't move, only vibrate at certain pressure. It feels more difficult to press even at easiest setting because of the way pressure detection works.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Imo ios gestures are not even that good compared to android. The ability to go back by swiping from any edge is so much easier than reaching to the top left of the screen...
  - thiht 3y ago
    iOS does that too though, you almost never have to use the top left arrow
- chadcmulligan 3y ago
  My mum finds the iPhone hard to use (she has early stage dementia), she has an Apple Watch for fall detection, I've tried turning off everything but still there's stacks of stuff you can't turn off. I'd love to make a simple interface with "Answer Phone" and a list of people she can call but its not possible, once you see her use it, you realise how insanely complex the UI is. Swiping is also harder for older people because their hands are dryer and less conductive. We need to keep the iPhone though for the fall detection, I'm examining options but there's not much around.
  - kridsdale3 3y ago
    Luckily this kind of thing was announced this year: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/16/apple-previews-ios-17-accessibility-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/16/apple-previews-ios-17-a...
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Wow, Point and Speak looks amazing. Despite all their faults, Apple really deserves credit for bringing great accessibility stuff like this to millions of consumers. >Detection Mode in Magnifier and Point and Speak >In the Magnifier app, Point and Speak helps users interact with physical objects that have several text labels. For example, while using a household appliance, Point and Speak combines input from the Camera app, the LiDAR Scanner, and on-device machine learning to announce the text on buttons as users move their finger across the keypad. >Point and Speak is built into the Magnifier app on iPhone and iPad , works with VoiceOver, and can be used with other Magnifier features such as People Detection, Door Detection, and Image Descriptions to help users navigate their physical environment more effectively.
      - askafriend 3y ago
        > to millions of consumers. It's billions!
        PeterisP 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
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- nikau 3y ago
  The samsung s8 was the best compromise for this - it didn't have a physical home button, but had an area on screen where the home button would normally be that acted like the home button with a firm press of the finger. Not sure if it had special hardware or just well written drivers, but it always worked flawlessly even with a hung app in the foreground.
frankfrank13 3y ago
this is the author of Design of Everyday Things, which I have to assume is at the high end of the unread-after-buying ratio. Still a super impressive person.
- lxe 3y ago
  We read it at an HCI class I took in college, and I found it to be one of the most useful, if not THE most useful class for my software engineering career.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Hmmm, I dunno about that assumption. Only because the writing is very engaging and the subjects are novel. It's not a dry textbook, staid non-fiction, or a doorstop... Admittedly, I have only read specific chapters, but all were easy reading.
  - efitz 3y ago
    It was a super easy read and interesting to boot- it was not a typical dry academic text. I don’t see why it would go unread. Tufte is a much harder read.
- ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
  > Design of Everyday Things, which I have to assume is at the high end of the unread-after-buying ratio. I don't believe that. I'd say the high-end begins with Knuth's TAOCP with the end of the spectrum being something like HOTT https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/ https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Those who own it and haven't yet read it are missing out. Even if your role isn't design (i.e., it's more tech / code) DoEDT is a solid foundation that anyone who works on product - digital or physical - should read.
lxe 3y ago
Don Norman's gripe applies not only to the elderly. I think good usability benefits everyone, and I do sympathise with him when it comes to the direction Apple has been taking for the past 10 years or so. I don't think it's aesthetics vs usability that's at the core here -- I don't think at all that aesthetics and usability are somehow mutually exclusive. I think it's simply the lack of focus on first principles outlined by Don Normal himself. HCI used to be front and center in the collective minds of the Internet, but it slowly faded to the background. As an example, check out the dates on the articles referenced in the "Mystery Meat Navigation" Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation#Refere... I think it's neat that our affordances are evolving (we don't need to have things looking exactly like physical buttons anymore for us to click on them). But at the same time, we should still apply ergonomic guidelines when designing interfaces, whether it's for the elderly, or not.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  -edit- thanks for that mystery meat link, now I have a name for that. - My special gripe is removing text labels below abstract, monochrome icons. The Markup toolbar being a good example of this {expletives deleted}. That an how finder colour labels turned into tiny little dots. John Siracusa's Mac OS X reviews, do a good job of documenting the downfall at least for Mac OS X (before it became the barf that is macos). Here's a start https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2005/04/macosx-10-4/3/#mail-turns-ugly https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2005/04/macosx-10-4/3/#mail-...
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    If I understand what you're saying, it's the macos UI that is degenerate? I say that because the reliability with advanced hardware (power management, power per watt) has been famously rejoiced over increasingly with the M1 and M2 hardware and macos on it. Personally I too get annoyed with the UI inflexibilities, prefer Asahi so i can just control the visual aspects.
    - sillywalk 3y ago
valine 3y ago
Those gestures that have to be memorized allow you to efficiently navigate your phone. I don't want a phone that sacrifices efficiency for ease of use. If you're actually struggling to use your phone please just turn on assistive access. https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welcome/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...
- jfim 3y ago
  Ease of use and efficiency for power users aren't necessarily opposites, just like menus don't prevent users from using keyboard shortcuts.
- sowbug 3y ago
  Please set a reminder to re-read your comment when you're 45 years old.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  I don't think there's any complaint about the gestures. The complaint is about discoverability of these gestures. It was practically major news when "someone discovered" that you could navigate the iPhones cursor by holding down the spacebar (turning it into a trackpad). Meanwhile, I only learned yesterday that if you hold down Option on macOS when you click the WiFi menu-bar, it gives you a bunch of legitimately useful info...it's the only menubar item that does something like this as far as I can tell, although it does harken back to an era when you could almost always get denser/expert context menus by holding down Option. There's very little natural discovery. And this is made worse when the gestures don't consistently work for you. This is common for older people who develop "zombie finger" where contact with a touchscreen only sometimes activates the capacitive screen, but if they knew they were otherwise doing the gesture "correctly" they might be okay. Another fun one is that my Apple Watch just updated, and the swipe left/right gesture doesn't do anything anymore (it used to change watch faces). It took me longer than I care to admit hire long it took me to find out that I needed to Force Touch or Long Press in order to access a new menu where I can swipe left/right to change the face. Other gestures were also just straight up removed. There was no explanation and no tutorial. These are just small examples of many. I do want power-user features. I just want them to be defined cohesively, so that once you've learn discovery for one set of gestures, you can easily access your "cheat sheet" for deploying them in new contexts, even for Apple applications you've never used before.
stakhanov 3y ago
While I agree with him in substance, I think it's also worth pointing out that the "negative nancy" has been a rhetorical device he's been using throughout his career. So instead of "What I see today horrifies me", it should more accurately be "What I've been seeing has consistently horrified me, to this day". No real newsflash here.
karaterobot 3y ago
> Then there’s the aesthetic problem. When products are developed for the elderly, they tend to be ugly and an unwanted signal of fragility. Just an observation: My main takeaway from The Design of Everyday Things was that design should make it obvious what the thing is for, and how to use it. Affordance is the big keyword. I think these mobility tools succeed in that respect. Maybe his point here is that an ugly cane makes it look like it's a tool for dying slowly, but a more likely explanation is that it is what he's saying on the surface: that aesthetics matter too. I wonder whether this is a change of heart, of just a change of emphasis for this particular article.
- layer8 3y ago
  Making it obvious how to use it and making it look pretty are often in conflict. That doesn’t mean you can’t have both, but it’s generally hard work. The people who are nowadays being hired to design UIs tend to prioritize the latter over the former, whereas good usability requires the former but not the latter.
  - neuralRiot 3y ago
    > Making it obvious how to use it and making it look pretty are often in conflict. Probably because modern design took the “less is more” mantra as its root value and thus became lazy. Less is not more, it’s easier to make it look good, it’s like throwing away all your furniture and painting everything white and calling that interior design.
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    I've worked as a designer for a couple decades. There's a lot of bad UI out there, but it's only bad because making complex apps usable is really, really hard. And, in general, web UX and usability has come a long way in a short time. For example, small companies didn't usability test at all when I started out, unless they were way in front of the trend. Nowadays they do, unless they are way behind the trend. I have also not observed a change that emphasizes form over function. If anything it's been the opposite, because today's product-driven world knows that websites which are easy to use make more money. (There is this question of whether the design benefits the users, or if it is only to serve the company's bottom line, even at the expense of user happiness. These incentives lead to so-called dark patterns, but I don't call that behavior "bad" in the sense of execution, even though it is "bad" in the sense of morality.) There's also been a ton of standardization in UI patterns, which lowers the floor on just how awful a UI can really be. Those had to be invented, and now they're relatively stable. We have good patterns now for how to make a product listing, or a detail page, or a checkout process, or an accessible form. And they are widely known. In many cases they've just been internalized by younger designers before they even start. There aren't many Kai's Power Tools style UIs out there anymore. In general, I've observed web design getting better and better. It's easy to cherry pick counterexamples, but I would not go back to the design of the average early 00s website.
sopooneo 3y ago
Just posting this here for anyone like me that had read some of Don Norman's work, but not The Design of Everyday Things, and was confused by a certain differing use of vocabulary. In his original coining of the term, Normal used "affordance" to mean a thing an object allowed to be done, but some user, usually a human, sometimes another object. For instance, a chair affords sitting by a person. A door handle affords opening. But in the design world "affordance" is now almost ubuiquitously used to mean some visual hint added to a design element to indicate what can be done with it. For instance, in a UI, you might say that you added an "affordance" in the form of a drop shadow to show a button is clickable (probably a crappy example, me being a non-ui person). In the later editions of Design of Everyday Things, Norman addresses this difference (perhaps we could say evolution) of his idea and term. If I remember correctly, he does not love this conflation of ideas, but has come to terms with it.
- drewcon 3y ago
  “Perceived affordance” is the term I believe.
- OJFord 3y ago
  I don't understand the distinction? Just that it isn't physical? (Also, affordance isn't mentioned in the article anyway?)
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    The distinction is that in the original meaning, it meant "to make the action possible." In the new meaning, it means "to suggest the action is possible visually." The original meaning had to do with actual usability, as opposed to just visual design.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      Huh, ok. If Norman said that himself then fair enough, but it surprises me. I learnt it from Bob Spence, I recall he used the example of door handles and push plates: you can pull or push the handle, but it visually invites pulling, especially in contradistinction to the plate, which clearly says 'push me' - that's essentially suggesting the action by what's not possible visually. I thought (not necessarily, but probably visual) design (to tell you how to use the thing) was the whole point. The original meaning as you say seems pretty redundant, that's just the same as the thing's function?
m3kw9 3y ago
This the reason Apple started with skeumorph UI when they released the iPhone because of affordances life like button, but as more people use it and get used to it, they can afford to get away from it(7 years later in iOS 7). And then (iOS 13 another almost 7 years) to all gesture front screen. And this will of course leave some people behind that have never used a full touch device but it’s hard to move forward but still have classic controls. I suppose there was a time when hardware buttons had the same issue when they first came out 100s of years ago
scarygliders 3y ago
> Designers and companies of the world, you are badly serving an ever-growing segment of your customer base, a segment that you too will one day inhabit. That last part - "a segment that you too will one day inhabit" - is one which should be shouted from the rooftops and ingrained into folks when they are in their early teens or twenties - before they get employed as designers of any kind.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I think manuals should be written, but not required for simple usage of an OS UI. "Tutorial" style introductions to the OS make sense. I remember when Ubuntu first came out with Unity, and had really powerful window tiling features bound to variations of "Super" key + arrow key, as well as some other hotkeys. The great thing about it was that you could hold down "Super" for 1 second, and a reference would show up explaining all the different keybinds.
JSavageOne 3y ago
As I load this article on mobile a video pops up taking up half my screen with no obvious way to get rid of it, how ironic.
- deleted 3y ago
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esquivalience 3y ago
This is Don Norman whose work led to the term a Norman Door. A push door which has a pullable handle on it tricks the user into thinking it's a pull door. Sure, you can just push it if you know; but good design should be intuitive without prior knowledge.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  To clarify, it's named after him, it's what he is criticizing, but he didn't invent the Norman Door".
virtualritz 3y ago
I think the issue can be party broken down to this: UX != HCI. I can't remember the last time I sat in a meeting with someone with the title "interface designer". Everyone in this realm today is a "UX something" and commonly it seems these people have never: - heard the term HCI or know what it actually stands for. - read and/or internalized the human interface guidelines for the platform(s) they're building for (there is a lot of overlap but still). - thought in way that puts ease of use/discoverability/context dependence front and center, over anything else. How to do something seems often arbitrary/there seem to be no HCI-based guide rails by which decisions are taken. That said, there are exceptions of course, but they seem rarer by the year. One issue is that we now have a generation of young people that just grok stuff because they grew up completely digital and with apps that already have arguably crappy interfaces. I.e. they can and will work with even the worst interface or something that shuns all standards/guidelines of the platform/OS it runs under. When you then have people from this generation getting jobs as "UX something" you have self a perpetuating loop that inevitably leads to the increased enshittification of user interfaces. And no one is really to blame for it.
spit2wind 3y ago
> Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Is that the whole article? If not, maybe it should be.
theyinwhy 3y ago
It's ironic there is a non-closable video at the bottom that just keeps distracting while reading.
GMoromisato 3y ago
Not in this article, but Don Norman also frequently rails against complex conceptual models. The other day, my mom was complaining that her phone was not ringing and it took me forever to figure it out. I had to go to Google to find a troubleshooting guide. The problem is that there are multiple ways to prevent a phone call from ringing. You can switch the hardware button (silent mode), you can set focus mode on (or have it set automatically), and you can mute individual people in the address book. Or you can add people to a group so that they ring even if the phone is in focus mode (but not in silent mode). There are probably other ways I've forgotten. Already we've introduced a bunch of concepts: silent mode, focus mode, muting individual people, exceptions to focus mode, etc. And the user has to figure out these concepts just from looking at the UI. But if you don't understand the entire conceptual model, you may not know why something is not working. This problem can't be solved with better affordances or more text labels, unfortunately. Maybe LLMs will eventually save us. Instead of the user having to figure out the capabilities and UI of the device, the device tries to figure out the intent of the user.
- deleted 3y ago
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- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The problem is one device responsible for too many different things. At some point it gets confusing, and sensible "affordances" become impossible with so many modes of operation.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  This 'rings' with me, when you have to do root-cause-analysis to find out why your phone doesn't ring. Conceptual complexity aside, for this case I wonder if it's almost a cultural/social problem. Before ubiquitous cell phones, you could be "disconnected", and this was normal. Now, it may seem weird to say, 'don't call unless it's an emergency'.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  https://www.pamelazave.com/faq.html https://www.pamelazave.com/faq.html - FAQ Sheet on Feature Interaction > What is a feature interaction? > A feature interaction is some way in which a feature or features modify or influence another feature in defining overall system behavior. Feature interactions are especially common in telecommunications, because all features are modifying or enhancing the same basic service, which is real-time communication among people. > Features are popular because they are easy to add and change. The dark side of features is feature interaction, which is implicit in feature composition and therefore difficult to understand. [emphasis added]
fredgrott 3y ago
Be careful folks, why? Ever read both Don Norman's books? One clearly counters the other one and yet most design posers never have noticed!
DonHopkins 3y ago
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman
zzzeek 3y ago
cosign on the small text thing. I had perfect eyesight and could read anything a mile away until I was 50. now I can't even read my phone, and there's literally some manuals / printing that I still cannot read even with my reading glasses on. My eyes always used to work great so you have no idea what a big change this is until all the sudden it happens.
jupp0r 3y ago
I agree with Don Norman's points on product design, but I couldn't help but think that the current world is also designed to benefit those people who will never live long enough to be impacted by the consequences of our current inaction to stop/reverse/mitigate climate change.
gumby 3y ago
A couple of good examples of "good usability benefits everyone": The company OXO makes kitchen gadgets originally designed for reduced mobility (i.e. older people) but now popular with everyone. The ADA: having, for example, a ramp, doesn't just help people in wheelchairs: if I have something difficult to carry (or am using a cart) or have a temporary injury that makes steps hard to navigate I'm glad there's a ramp. In many ways I consider the vast majority of designers and architects to be working away from their putative goals, instead pursuing egotism.
bitwize 3y ago
I'm deeply concerned about when my dad is forced to update to Windows 11. He's 80 years old now, bought his first computer about 40 years ago, and used it to write programs to do engineering calculations. So, a fairly technical user from the jump, and has gotten accustomed to everything from 8-bit micros, through DOS and Unix to Windows. And dammit, the shit these companies are pulling is just going to invalidate his prior knowledge and leave him confused and pissed off, calling me for help (like I know jack about how the modern hodgepodge of Windows works). When Don Norman writes that the digital realm is no country for old men, I can see it in my father's increasing bafflement, I can feel it in myself. I think that a big part of the reason why vi (later vim) and Emacs used to enjoy dual status as the canonical hackers' text editors is because their interfaces didn't change much, so skill with them would serve you a lifetime and could be passed to upcoming generations. I recently fired up Xenix in an emulator, and found that I was quite facile in using its copy of vi to manipulate text, because the skills I'd developed on Vim on modern Linux machines translated well all the way back to that ancient editor. Vim added a lot but the fundamentals are the same. When the interface changes, just for the sake of changing, every two years or less, how can you feel like anything you learn will be relevant?
nitwit005 3y ago
> Then there’s the aesthetic problem. When products are developed for the elderly, they tend to be ugly and an unwanted signal of fragility. As a result, people who need walkers or canes often resist. Once upon a time, a cane was stylish: Today it is seen as a medical device. The canes didn't change. If anything they look nicer, and you have more options. People are going to hate anything associated with being handicapped or elderly, no matter what the design is.
syngrog66 3y ago
reminds me to write a piece about GUI anti-patterns one day

202 points by grzm 3y ago

Inside Macintosh Volume 1?

Apple's switch away from the physical home button to gestures has created a usability threshold for the iPhone that many can't cross. Intricate gestures are difficult to grok for some, and difficult to perform for others. Try using an iPhone and closing an app with shaky hands. Currently the iPhone SE still has a physical button, but I'm worried what device I'll start recommending to older/less tech savvy people when that goes away. iOS itself is a bit of a disaster zone too now. I see people constantly get stuck having activated the "press to edit your lock screen" by mistake, or getting confused by a constant stream of ads for iCloud, Apple Arcade etc. It's sad because most of this poor UX is unnecessary. It feels like its origins are in Apple no longer caring, combined with running out of real ideas and getting distracted with things like widgets.

staplers 3y ago
Generally it's when the bean-counters get more leverage during economic slowdowns you see the dark patterns emerge.
- bornfreddy 3y ago
  Not sure if they are to blame here though. Cars, sure. But for phones design and software cost doesn't decrease with worse UX, support costs probably even rise.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jgtrosh 3y ago
Not an elderly or disabled person, I probably even fit some people's definition of a touch screen wizard since I regularly use swiping keyboards without looking, but I really can't be bothered with those weird slidey gestures between apps on iOS or Android. At least on Android I can switch to regular (configurable!) bottom buttons.
- causi 3y ago
  Gods I miss having real customizable gestures on Android. It took me years to unlearn my gesture set, especially "double tap with three fingers" to close the current app and go home.
  - nottheengineer 3y ago
    I used to use xposed edge to configure the crap out my gestures, it was great. Now that xposed isn't really a thing anymore, I followed the rest of the world and use my phone with two hands most of the time and use my index finger for the top of the screen with one hand. Not terribly hard at my age, but why do I have to?
- layer8 3y ago
  In principle, I like for example the four-finger sliding gesture to switch apps on the iPad, but it’s implemented in a way that makes it very easy to accidentally swipe to the second-next app instead of to the next app. Similarly, there’s a gesture for Speak Screen where you swipe down from the top with two fingers, but it regularly takes me more than three attempts before it doesn’t instead swipe down the lock screen or the control center. I honestly don’t understand how they think this is fine.
Frost1x 3y ago
My biggest gripe is continuously changing interfaces. You've sold me. I'm a customer, I'm using your thing. Why do you want to make it difficult for me to memorize my use of your thing? Moving menus and buttons around all the time is craziness. I don't have time, cognitive capacity, or interest in finding new ways to do the same functionality from before. Things do need to change over time, I get it, I create things too. Sometimes new functionality evolves and has to go somewhere, sometimes you find a previous design was bad and there truly is an improved layout that will help most. Fine. Those sorts of states should converge quickly so I can memorize and dedicate it to muscle memory vs having to actively look and think all the time.
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  This is a big part of what made me start using linux. On windows, there's a new way to do basic stuff all the time and they screw around with menus that work perfectly well just to have something new. That means that any tutorials will quickly get outdated and you can spend half your mental capacity just keeping up with this crap. The amount of times I googled how to do something in MS office, clicked an article from half a year ago and found that one of the options it mentions doesn't exist anymore is too damn high. Things are nice on linux, especially the CLI world. You learn a little program once and use it for decades without thinking about it.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    As always with Linux it depends on which distribution you're on but that hasn't been my experience at all with distributions like Ubuntu and Mint. I used Ubuntu back when the close, maximise and minimise buttons were on the top right and they moved them right from under me. I've tried to adjust to using flat packs but struggled with their very serious limitations while programs I rely on are no longer available in other package types. I have seen them see-saw between the horrible global menu and window menus, make wholesale changes to areas of the settings screen like display settings and mouse and trackpad settings. And I don't even know how many wildly different iterations of that horrible main menu application selector UI I have had to suffer through.
dfxm12 3y ago
>... getting confused by a constant stream of ads for iCloud, Apple Arcade etc. It's sad because most of this poor UX is unnecessary. UX went from an altruist field around making tasks easier to perform to tricking people into spending money, clicking away rights to their personal data, etc. It's the logical path of end users being the product. This axiom started around "free" services like Facebook, but now we see it even in expensive products like iPhones and Windows 11.
user_7832 3y ago
> Apple's switch away from the physical home button to gestures has created a usability threshold for the iPhone that many can't cross. Funny you mention home buttons being more usable. I've got mild wrist pain (not RSI levels fortunately), and I find the pressure required to press it disturbingly high, often resorting to using the assitivetouch button instead.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  It was better with actual physical button. Current SE has a fake software button that didn't move, only vibrate at certain pressure. It feels more difficult to press even at easiest setting because of the way pressure detection works.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Imo ios gestures are not even that good compared to android. The ability to go back by swiping from any edge is so much easier than reaching to the top left of the screen...
- thiht 3y ago
  iOS does that too though, you almost never have to use the top left arrow
chadcmulligan 3y ago
My mum finds the iPhone hard to use (she has early stage dementia), she has an Apple Watch for fall detection, I've tried turning off everything but still there's stacks of stuff you can't turn off. I'd love to make a simple interface with "Answer Phone" and a list of people she can call but its not possible, once you see her use it, you realise how insanely complex the UI is. Swiping is also harder for older people because their hands are dryer and less conductive. We need to keep the iPhone though for the fall detection, I'm examining options but there's not much around.
- kridsdale3 3y ago
  Luckily this kind of thing was announced this year: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/16/apple-previews-ios-17-accessibility-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/05/16/apple-previews-ios-17-a...
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Wow, Point and Speak looks amazing. Despite all their faults, Apple really deserves credit for bringing great accessibility stuff like this to millions of consumers. >Detection Mode in Magnifier and Point and Speak >In the Magnifier app, Point and Speak helps users interact with physical objects that have several text labels. For example, while using a household appliance, Point and Speak combines input from the Camera app, the LiDAR Scanner, and on-device machine learning to announce the text on buttons as users move their finger across the keypad. >Point and Speak is built into the Magnifier app on iPhone and iPad , works with VoiceOver, and can be used with other Magnifier features such as People Detection, Door Detection, and Image Descriptions to help users navigate their physical environment more effectively.
    - askafriend 3y ago
      > to millions of consumers. It's billions!
      - PeterisP 3y ago
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nikau 3y ago
The samsung s8 was the best compromise for this - it didn't have a physical home button, but had an area on screen where the home button would normally be that acted like the home button with a firm press of the finger. Not sure if it had special hardware or just well written drivers, but it always worked flawlessly even with a hung app in the foreground.

frankfrank13 3y ago

this is the author of Design of Everyday Things, which I have to assume is at the high end of the unread-after-buying ratio. Still a super impressive person.

lxe 3y ago
We read it at an HCI class I took in college, and I found it to be one of the most useful, if not THE most useful class for my software engineering career.
ryanklee 3y ago
Hmmm, I dunno about that assumption. Only because the writing is very engaging and the subjects are novel. It's not a dry textbook, staid non-fiction, or a doorstop... Admittedly, I have only read specific chapters, but all were easy reading.
- efitz 3y ago
  It was a super easy read and interesting to boot- it was not a typical dry academic text. I don’t see why it would go unread. Tufte is a much harder read.
ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
> Design of Everyday Things, which I have to assume is at the high end of the unread-after-buying ratio. I don't believe that. I'd say the high-end begins with Knuth's TAOCP with the end of the spectrum being something like HOTT https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/ https://homotopytypetheory.org/book/
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Those who own it and haven't yet read it are missing out. Even if your role isn't design (i.e., it's more tech / code) DoEDT is a solid foundation that anyone who works on product - digital or physical - should read.

lxe 3y ago

Don Norman's gripe applies not only to the elderly. I think good usability benefits everyone, and I do sympathise with him when it comes to the direction Apple has been taking for the past 10 years or so. I don't think it's aesthetics vs usability that's at the core here -- I don't think at all that aesthetics and usability are somehow mutually exclusive. I think it's simply the lack of focus on first principles outlined by Don Normal himself. HCI used to be front and center in the collective minds of the Internet, but it slowly faded to the background. As an example, check out the dates on the articles referenced in the "Mystery Meat Navigation" Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation#Refere... I think it's neat that our affordances are evolving (we don't need to have things looking exactly like physical buttons anymore for us to click on them). But at the same time, we should still apply ergonomic guidelines when designing interfaces, whether it's for the elderly, or not.

sillywalk 3y ago
-edit- thanks for that mystery meat link, now I have a name for that. - My special gripe is removing text labels below abstract, monochrome icons. The Markup toolbar being a good example of this {expletives deleted}. That an how finder colour labels turned into tiny little dots. John Siracusa's Mac OS X reviews, do a good job of documenting the downfall at least for Mac OS X (before it became the barf that is macos). Here's a start https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2005/04/macosx-10-4/3/#mail-turns-ugly https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2005/04/macosx-10-4/3/#mail-...
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  If I understand what you're saying, it's the macos UI that is degenerate? I say that because the reliability with advanced hardware (power management, power per watt) has been famously rejoiced over increasingly with the M1 and M2 hardware and macos on it. Personally I too get annoyed with the UI inflexibilities, prefer Asahi so i can just control the visual aspects.
  - sillywalk 3y ago

valine 3y ago

Those gestures that have to be memorized allow you to efficiently navigate your phone. I don't want a phone that sacrifices efficiency for ease of use. If you're actually struggling to use your phone please just turn on assistive access. https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welcome/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...

jfim 3y ago
Ease of use and efficiency for power users aren't necessarily opposites, just like menus don't prevent users from using keyboard shortcuts.
sowbug 3y ago
Please set a reminder to re-read your comment when you're 45 years old.
IggleSniggle 3y ago
I don't think there's any complaint about the gestures. The complaint is about discoverability of these gestures. It was practically major news when "someone discovered" that you could navigate the iPhones cursor by holding down the spacebar (turning it into a trackpad). Meanwhile, I only learned yesterday that if you hold down Option on macOS when you click the WiFi menu-bar, it gives you a bunch of legitimately useful info...it's the only menubar item that does something like this as far as I can tell, although it does harken back to an era when you could almost always get denser/expert context menus by holding down Option. There's very little natural discovery. And this is made worse when the gestures don't consistently work for you. This is common for older people who develop "zombie finger" where contact with a touchscreen only sometimes activates the capacitive screen, but if they knew they were otherwise doing the gesture "correctly" they might be okay. Another fun one is that my Apple Watch just updated, and the swipe left/right gesture doesn't do anything anymore (it used to change watch faces). It took me longer than I care to admit hire long it took me to find out that I needed to Force Touch or Long Press in order to access a new menu where I can swipe left/right to change the face. Other gestures were also just straight up removed. There was no explanation and no tutorial. These are just small examples of many. I do want power-user features. I just want them to be defined cohesively, so that once you've learn discovery for one set of gestures, you can easily access your "cheat sheet" for deploying them in new contexts, even for Apple applications you've never used before.

stakhanov 3y ago

While I agree with him in substance, I think it's also worth pointing out that the "negative nancy" has been a rhetorical device he's been using throughout his career. So instead of "What I see today horrifies me", it should more accurately be "What I've been seeing has consistently horrified me, to this day". No real newsflash here.

karaterobot 3y ago

> Then there’s the aesthetic problem. When products are developed for the elderly, they tend to be ugly and an unwanted signal of fragility. Just an observation: My main takeaway from The Design of Everyday Things was that design should make it obvious what the thing is for, and how to use it. Affordance is the big keyword. I think these mobility tools succeed in that respect. Maybe his point here is that an ugly cane makes it look like it's a tool for dying slowly, but a more likely explanation is that it is what he's saying on the surface: that aesthetics matter too. I wonder whether this is a change of heart, of just a change of emphasis for this particular article.

layer8 3y ago
Making it obvious how to use it and making it look pretty are often in conflict. That doesn’t mean you can’t have both, but it’s generally hard work. The people who are nowadays being hired to design UIs tend to prioritize the latter over the former, whereas good usability requires the former but not the latter.
- neuralRiot 3y ago
  > Making it obvious how to use it and making it look pretty are often in conflict. Probably because modern design took the “less is more” mantra as its root value and thus became lazy. Less is not more, it’s easier to make it look good, it’s like throwing away all your furniture and painting everything white and calling that interior design.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  I've worked as a designer for a couple decades. There's a lot of bad UI out there, but it's only bad because making complex apps usable is really, really hard. And, in general, web UX and usability has come a long way in a short time. For example, small companies didn't usability test at all when I started out, unless they were way in front of the trend. Nowadays they do, unless they are way behind the trend. I have also not observed a change that emphasizes form over function. If anything it's been the opposite, because today's product-driven world knows that websites which are easy to use make more money. (There is this question of whether the design benefits the users, or if it is only to serve the company's bottom line, even at the expense of user happiness. These incentives lead to so-called dark patterns, but I don't call that behavior "bad" in the sense of execution, even though it is "bad" in the sense of morality.) There's also been a ton of standardization in UI patterns, which lowers the floor on just how awful a UI can really be. Those had to be invented, and now they're relatively stable. We have good patterns now for how to make a product listing, or a detail page, or a checkout process, or an accessible form. And they are widely known. In many cases they've just been internalized by younger designers before they even start. There aren't many Kai's Power Tools style UIs out there anymore. In general, I've observed web design getting better and better. It's easy to cherry pick counterexamples, but I would not go back to the design of the average early 00s website.

sopooneo 3y ago

Just posting this here for anyone like me that had read some of Don Norman's work, but not The Design of Everyday Things, and was confused by a certain differing use of vocabulary. In his original coining of the term, Normal used "affordance" to mean a thing an object allowed to be done, but some user, usually a human, sometimes another object. For instance, a chair affords sitting by a person. A door handle affords opening. But in the design world "affordance" is now almost ubuiquitously used to mean some visual hint added to a design element to indicate what can be done with it. For instance, in a UI, you might say that you added an "affordance" in the form of a drop shadow to show a button is clickable (probably a crappy example, me being a non-ui person). In the later editions of Design of Everyday Things, Norman addresses this difference (perhaps we could say evolution) of his idea and term. If I remember correctly, he does not love this conflation of ideas, but has come to terms with it.

drewcon 3y ago
“Perceived affordance” is the term I believe.
OJFord 3y ago
I don't understand the distinction? Just that it isn't physical? (Also, affordance isn't mentioned in the article anyway?)
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  The distinction is that in the original meaning, it meant "to make the action possible." In the new meaning, it means "to suggest the action is possible visually." The original meaning had to do with actual usability, as opposed to just visual design.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Huh, ok. If Norman said that himself then fair enough, but it surprises me. I learnt it from Bob Spence, I recall he used the example of door handles and push plates: you can pull or push the handle, but it visually invites pulling, especially in contradistinction to the plate, which clearly says 'push me' - that's essentially suggesting the action by what's not possible visually. I thought (not necessarily, but probably visual) design (to tell you how to use the thing) was the whole point. The original meaning as you say seems pretty redundant, that's just the same as the thing's function?

m3kw9 3y ago

This the reason Apple started with skeumorph UI when they released the iPhone because of affordances life like button, but as more people use it and get used to it, they can afford to get away from it(7 years later in iOS 7). And then (iOS 13 another almost 7 years) to all gesture front screen. And this will of course leave some people behind that have never used a full touch device but it’s hard to move forward but still have classic controls. I suppose there was a time when hardware buttons had the same issue when they first came out 100s of years ago

scarygliders 3y ago

> Designers and companies of the world, you are badly serving an ever-growing segment of your customer base, a segment that you too will one day inhabit. That last part - "a segment that you too will one day inhabit" - is one which should be shouted from the rooftops and ingrained into folks when they are in their early teens or twenties - before they get employed as designers of any kind.

unethical_ban 3y ago

I think manuals should be written, but not required for simple usage of an OS UI. "Tutorial" style introductions to the OS make sense. I remember when Ubuntu first came out with Unity, and had really powerful window tiling features bound to variations of "Super" key + arrow key, as well as some other hotkeys. The great thing about it was that you could hold down "Super" for 1 second, and a reference would show up explaining all the different keybinds.

JSavageOne 3y ago

As I load this article on mobile a video pops up taking up half my screen with no obvious way to get rid of it, how ironic.

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esquivalience 3y ago

This is Don Norman whose work led to the term a Norman Door. A push door which has a pullable handle on it tricks the user into thinking it's a pull door. Sure, you can just push it if you know; but good design should be intuitive without prior knowledge.

sillywalk 3y ago
To clarify, it's named after him, it's what he is criticizing, but he didn't invent the Norman Door".

virtualritz 3y ago

I think the issue can be party broken down to this: UX != HCI. I can't remember the last time I sat in a meeting with someone with the title "interface designer". Everyone in this realm today is a "UX something" and commonly it seems these people have never: - heard the term HCI or know what it actually stands for. - read and/or internalized the human interface guidelines for the platform(s) they're building for (there is a lot of overlap but still). - thought in way that puts ease of use/discoverability/context dependence front and center, over anything else. How to do something seems often arbitrary/there seem to be no HCI-based guide rails by which decisions are taken. That said, there are exceptions of course, but they seem rarer by the year. One issue is that we now have a generation of young people that just grok stuff because they grew up completely digital and with apps that already have arguably crappy interfaces. I.e. they can and will work with even the worst interface or something that shuns all standards/guidelines of the platform/OS it runs under. When you then have people from this generation getting jobs as "UX something" you have self a perpetuating loop that inevitably leads to the increased enshittification of user interfaces. And no one is really to blame for it.

spit2wind 3y ago

> Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Is that the whole article? If not, maybe it should be.

theyinwhy 3y ago

It's ironic there is a non-closable video at the bottom that just keeps distracting while reading.

GMoromisato 3y ago

Not in this article, but Don Norman also frequently rails against complex conceptual models. The other day, my mom was complaining that her phone was not ringing and it took me forever to figure it out. I had to go to Google to find a troubleshooting guide. The problem is that there are multiple ways to prevent a phone call from ringing. You can switch the hardware button (silent mode), you can set focus mode on (or have it set automatically), and you can mute individual people in the address book. Or you can add people to a group so that they ring even if the phone is in focus mode (but not in silent mode). There are probably other ways I've forgotten. Already we've introduced a bunch of concepts: silent mode, focus mode, muting individual people, exceptions to focus mode, etc. And the user has to figure out these concepts just from looking at the UI. But if you don't understand the entire conceptual model, you may not know why something is not working. This problem can't be solved with better affordances or more text labels, unfortunately. Maybe LLMs will eventually save us. Instead of the user having to figure out the capabilities and UI of the device, the device tries to figure out the intent of the user.

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SoftTalker 3y ago
The problem is one device responsible for too many different things. At some point it gets confusing, and sensible "affordances" become impossible with so many modes of operation.
sillywalk 3y ago
This 'rings' with me, when you have to do root-cause-analysis to find out why your phone doesn't ring. Conceptual complexity aside, for this case I wonder if it's almost a cultural/social problem. Before ubiquitous cell phones, you could be "disconnected", and this was normal. Now, it may seem weird to say, 'don't call unless it's an emergency'.
Jtsummers 3y ago
https://www.pamelazave.com/faq.html https://www.pamelazave.com/faq.html - FAQ Sheet on Feature Interaction > What is a feature interaction? > A feature interaction is some way in which a feature or features modify or influence another feature in defining overall system behavior. Feature interactions are especially common in telecommunications, because all features are modifying or enhancing the same basic service, which is real-time communication among people. > Features are popular because they are easy to add and change. The dark side of features is feature interaction, which is implicit in feature composition and therefore difficult to understand. [emphasis added]

fredgrott 3y ago

Be careful folks, why? Ever read both Don Norman's books? One clearly counters the other one and yet most design posers never have noticed!

DonHopkins 3y ago

"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman

zzzeek 3y ago

cosign on the small text thing. I had perfect eyesight and could read anything a mile away until I was 50. now I can't even read my phone, and there's literally some manuals / printing that I still cannot read even with my reading glasses on. My eyes always used to work great so you have no idea what a big change this is until all the sudden it happens.

jupp0r 3y ago

I agree with Don Norman's points on product design, but I couldn't help but think that the current world is also designed to benefit those people who will never live long enough to be impacted by the consequences of our current inaction to stop/reverse/mitigate climate change.

gumby 3y ago

A couple of good examples of "good usability benefits everyone": The company OXO makes kitchen gadgets originally designed for reduced mobility (i.e. older people) but now popular with everyone. The ADA: having, for example, a ramp, doesn't just help people in wheelchairs: if I have something difficult to carry (or am using a cart) or have a temporary injury that makes steps hard to navigate I'm glad there's a ramp. In many ways I consider the vast majority of designers and architects to be working away from their putative goals, instead pursuing egotism.

bitwize 3y ago

I'm deeply concerned about when my dad is forced to update to Windows 11. He's 80 years old now, bought his first computer about 40 years ago, and used it to write programs to do engineering calculations. So, a fairly technical user from the jump, and has gotten accustomed to everything from 8-bit micros, through DOS and Unix to Windows. And dammit, the shit these companies are pulling is just going to invalidate his prior knowledge and leave him confused and pissed off, calling me for help (like I know jack about how the modern hodgepodge of Windows works). When Don Norman writes that the digital realm is no country for old men, I can see it in my father's increasing bafflement, I can feel it in myself. I think that a big part of the reason why vi (later vim) and Emacs used to enjoy dual status as the canonical hackers' text editors is because their interfaces didn't change much, so skill with them would serve you a lifetime and could be passed to upcoming generations. I recently fired up Xenix in an emulator, and found that I was quite facile in using its copy of vi to manipulate text, because the skills I'd developed on Vim on modern Linux machines translated well all the way back to that ancient editor. Vim added a lot but the fundamentals are the same. When the interface changes, just for the sake of changing, every two years or less, how can you feel like anything you learn will be relevant?

nitwit005 3y ago

> Then there’s the aesthetic problem. When products are developed for the elderly, they tend to be ugly and an unwanted signal of fragility. As a result, people who need walkers or canes often resist. Once upon a time, a cane was stylish: Today it is seen as a medical device. The canes didn't change. If anything they look nicer, and you have more options. People are going to hate anything associated with being handicapped or elderly, no matter what the design is.

syngrog66 3y ago

reminds me to write a piece about GUI anti-patterns one day