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More generally, stop copying the smallest-common-denominator DX/UX of <famous mass market product> when designing for other markets. I recently overheard a ver

More generally, stop copying the smallest-common-denominator DX/UX of <famous mass market product> when designing for other markets. I recently overheard a very smart user struggle to find how to mute a group in Teams. And while I get it that the context menu is probably less "cluttered" if one doesn't include "mute", and I get that there might be confusion if someone mutes a channel without being aware, I still want modern UX to stop and think. When decluttering means you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu, was it worth it? Or when your userbase consist of people who go out of their way to avoid Chrome, maybe stop and think if copying Chrome at every step is a good idea? Same goes for a certain distro that at some point thought that their users was just people who couldn't afford Macs and threw out an IMO rather well functioning Gnome 2 setup for a what I consider a clone of the desktop of Mac OS X that had almost all of the problems from Mac OS X but unlike couldn't run Mac OS X software.

robomartin 2y ago
Yes, UI's (physical and software) have, in a lot of cases, gone off the rails. One of my examples is the change to the button on the side of iPhone 15 used to switch between vibration and sound-on. I press it all the time by accident just by grabbing the phone. And, often enough, I have no idea I did. So, the phone doesn't ring. Same with the ringer volume up/down buttons. Can I disable them in the lock screen? I don't think so. Once again, the ring volume is modified and you have no clue. The other one, which is a UI issue in the sense that there does not seem to be an obvious way to deal with it, is what happens when I connect my Plantronics single-ear headset. The volume is reduced to around 15%, which is fine. However, when I turn it off, the volume does not return to the prior setting. Which means that EVERY TIME I use the headset for a call I have to remember to raise the volume or the ringer will not be loud enough when the phone is in my pocket. My criteria has become simple these days: If you have to google how to do something with the UI of a piece of software or hardware, something could be wrong. I am not including complex tools like Maya, Solidworks, etc. Let's call those, professional tools. Anything else just needs to make sense. Not sure how anyone thought that not restoring a phone to the pre-headset level was a good idea, or having live buttons in lock mode that you cannot disable (or at least alter the way they respond in some reasonable way).
p_l 2y ago
Teams has probably worst notification handling in my experience out of all major systems in that space. It's not just muting, it's that it's either going to show me big honking unread counts begging for my action, or I have to mute the channel and As Far As I Know mute all notifications from it, even when someone explicitly pings me.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  It has all the worst everything in my experience out of all major systems in that space.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  You can get a notification when someone explicitly pings you by enabling an activity for it... (yeah, I know) My issue is stuff like it disabling notifications on the desktop because I turned my phone face-down, or meetings disappearing because... well, I have no idea why. And it delaying messages for hours, again no idea the reason.
  - p_l 2y ago
    Interactions between desktop and phone app were a whole extra kettle of electric eels.
Uehreka 2y ago
> Same goes for a certain distro that at some point thought that their users was just people who couldn't afford Macs and threw out an IMO rather well functioning Gnome 2 setup for a what I consider a clone of the desktop of Mac OS X that had almost all of the problems from Mac OS X but unlike couldn't run Mac OS X software. Ooh! Ooh! Lemme guess! Are we talking about… Deepin Linux? Or is it Elementary OS? I hope it’s not Pop OS, I’m on that now but haven’t seen COSMIC yet
- eitland 2y ago
  Elementary OS was actually nice last time I used it. Looked like Mac but didn't copy every stylistic and UX choice from the 90ies that doesn't belong in the 2020ies, like space saving menus that makes haves your mouse traversing both monitors to reach them or the mental overload CMD-tab that makes me stop and think every time if I want to switch app or window. I was talking about Unity. A system that had a working alt-tab bujilt in but was so insistent about us learning the Mac way that there was no way to toggle off broken window switching except hacking the configuration directly.
- AnonCoward42 2y ago
  My guess would be Ubuntu or Fedora and Unity/Gnome 3 respectively. Not that I share the hate, but Gnome 3 is certainly closely designed around some distinct Mac OSX design elements (app overview, handling of workspaces, and such).
rizzom5000 2y ago
> I recently overheard a very smart user struggle to find how to mute a group > you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.
- spoonjim 2y ago
  I hope you do understand that a system that can play almost every song ever recorded is going to have a more complex and error-prone user experience than a static 50 songs.
- Aerroon 2y ago
  I've had the same thought about alarms. Back in the day I had an alarm clock. I set it to go off at a specific time and it did. The only failure mode was the battery running out. Then I got a Nokia phone. It worked the same as the alarm clock, but I could even set myself notifications and what not. Worked great! Then I got an Android phone and sometimes the alarms just wouldn't work. And now today I'm using another Android phone and I give it about 80-20 odds that the alarm works correctly. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it does a quick alarm for a few seconds and stops. And I don't know why. Notifications on this are even worse. Sometimes the notifications are so unnoticeable that sitting next to the phone with headphones on will not actually alert me to the notification. I don't see others ever complain about it so I feel like I'm somehow missing something big but I don't know what. Notifications and alarms on modern phones seem extremely unreliable to me.
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    I had the other issue. I was at a standup comedy show with my phone appropriately silenced because I knew I could ignore the alarm this once. And the alarm still went off making noise. I managed to turn it off superquick such that the comedian got as far as looking in my general direction and saying I was lucky I was fast because he couldn't pick me out exactly.
chefandy 2y ago
If you ask any UI or UX designer about the interface of Teams, absolutely zero will say it's good. You're giving it the blessing of designers based on your assumption that designers approve of MS UI and UX practices. They don't. Sure, some flagship products are pretty decent, but they've famously sucked at UI (and all other sorts of) design since forever. Here's one (made by an MS designer as a joke) from 2006 talking about their entirely marketing-department-driven packaging design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k We use SO MANY interfaces every day-- every screen on every app and every webpage you use... text messages, ATM, ordering terminals, shopping carts, ad infinitum-- and using those is almost universally intuitive enough to be invisible. Designers use things like implied lines, gestalt, type variance, value contrast, and things like that to make a sane data hierarchy and give users signals for what's happening in the program and what they need to do to influence that. Good practices say they should then test and refine their designs for various kinds of users to make the best interface possible. If the UI design is invisible and users can just solve their problem without having to think about it, that's good design. When design "sticks out," it's usually for the wrong reasons. While bad designers exist, 99% of all "bad design" decisions cited by developers when talking trash about modern UI design were probably not made by designers-- they were likely made by project managers or developers that insisted their way was better, or they didn't need to check with the designer to modify something because they can make it "looks designed." If the interface looks "cluttered", they might remove useful things probably just needs to be organized. That's bad design.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  I don't get the point of this semantic distinction between the people producing (bad) designs and the ivory tower label you're calling "designers". If they're producing designs, are they not designers too? If none of the people with the title "designer" are meaningfully impacting products, who's employing them and why do they not have the same obligation other technical experts have of ensuring that meddling managers are steered in the direction of correct decisions?
  - chefandy 2y ago
injidup 2y ago
Honestly this feel like trolling. Right click on any group in teams and the channel notifications option is there which brings you to this UI https://i.imgur.com/z8BnaTn.png https://i.imgur.com/z8BnaTn.png I question how smart this "very smart user" actually is.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Well, I use Teams daily at work, and it's the first I see this particular panel, so shrug.
- eitland 2y ago
  Magically appeared now, thanks!
MR4D 2y ago
> When decluttering means you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu, was it worth it? Strong disagree here - let me use a real world example. On older Lexus models, the car stereo screen had play and pause buttons. It always bugged me. Why have BOTH a play button and a pause button? The play button doesn’t do anything if you click on it when a song is playing, and the pause button doesn’t do anything if the song is already paused. What Lexus should have done instead was have one button that changes state depending if something is playing or paused. It would take up less screen space and less cognitive load trying to move the cursor while I’m driving 75mph. And on a personal note, Teams is a horrid interface. But I’m not here to argue that today.
- staplung 2y ago
  I'm not sure you disagree as strongly as you think. I don't feel like the OP was suggesting that all decluttering is intrinsically bad. In the case that you describe it's pretty easy to argue that it's good because it made things easier to use (or at least harder to fuck up because you don't have to figure out which button is useless). Imagine instead that Lexus decided to get rid of both buttons and place them under a hamburger menu.
  - MR4D 2y ago
    > Imagine instead … Aghhhhh!!! Now you are trying to give me nightmares!!! :)
- lmm 2y ago
  > Why have BOTH a play button and a pause button? The play button doesn’t do anything if you click on it when a song is playing, and the pause button doesn’t do anything if the song is already paused. Because it's hard to hit a touchscreen button precisely once, especially when you're driving. And if a song is quiet you may not be able to tell whether it's playing or paused right now. Having a button that will always make it playing and a button that will always make it paused is good design.
  - 2y ago

robomartin 2y ago

Yes, UI's (physical and software) have, in a lot of cases, gone off the rails. One of my examples is the change to the button on the side of iPhone 15 used to switch between vibration and sound-on. I press it all the time by accident just by grabbing the phone. And, often enough, I have no idea I did. So, the phone doesn't ring. Same with the ringer volume up/down buttons. Can I disable them in the lock screen? I don't think so. Once again, the ring volume is modified and you have no clue. The other one, which is a UI issue in the sense that there does not seem to be an obvious way to deal with it, is what happens when I connect my Plantronics single-ear headset. The volume is reduced to around 15%, which is fine. However, when I turn it off, the volume does not return to the prior setting. Which means that EVERY TIME I use the headset for a call I have to remember to raise the volume or the ringer will not be loud enough when the phone is in my pocket. My criteria has become simple these days: If you have to google how to do something with the UI of a piece of software or hardware, something could be wrong. I am not including complex tools like Maya, Solidworks, etc. Let's call those, professional tools. Anything else just needs to make sense. Not sure how anyone thought that not restoring a phone to the pre-headset level was a good idea, or having live buttons in lock mode that you cannot disable (or at least alter the way they respond in some reasonable way).

p_l 2y ago

Teams has probably worst notification handling in my experience out of all major systems in that space. It's not just muting, it's that it's either going to show me big honking unread counts begging for my action, or I have to mute the channel and As Far As I Know mute all notifications from it, even when someone explicitly pings me.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
It has all the worst everything in my experience out of all major systems in that space.
marcosdumay 2y ago
You can get a notification when someone explicitly pings you by enabling an activity for it... (yeah, I know) My issue is stuff like it disabling notifications on the desktop because I turned my phone face-down, or meetings disappearing because... well, I have no idea why. And it delaying messages for hours, again no idea the reason.
- p_l 2y ago
  Interactions between desktop and phone app were a whole extra kettle of electric eels.

Uehreka 2y ago

> Same goes for a certain distro that at some point thought that their users was just people who couldn't afford Macs and threw out an IMO rather well functioning Gnome 2 setup for a what I consider a clone of the desktop of Mac OS X that had almost all of the problems from Mac OS X but unlike couldn't run Mac OS X software. Ooh! Ooh! Lemme guess! Are we talking about… Deepin Linux? Or is it Elementary OS? I hope it’s not Pop OS, I’m on that now but haven’t seen COSMIC yet

eitland 2y ago
Elementary OS was actually nice last time I used it. Looked like Mac but didn't copy every stylistic and UX choice from the 90ies that doesn't belong in the 2020ies, like space saving menus that makes haves your mouse traversing both monitors to reach them or the mental overload CMD-tab that makes me stop and think every time if I want to switch app or window. I was talking about Unity. A system that had a working alt-tab bujilt in but was so insistent about us learning the Mac way that there was no way to toggle off broken window switching except hacking the configuration directly.
AnonCoward42 2y ago
My guess would be Ubuntu or Fedora and Unity/Gnome 3 respectively. Not that I share the hate, but Gnome 3 is certainly closely designed around some distinct Mac OSX design elements (app overview, handling of workspaces, and such).

rizzom5000 2y ago

> I recently overheard a very smart user struggle to find how to mute a group > you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.

spoonjim 2y ago
I hope you do understand that a system that can play almost every song ever recorded is going to have a more complex and error-prone user experience than a static 50 songs.
Aerroon 2y ago
I've had the same thought about alarms. Back in the day I had an alarm clock. I set it to go off at a specific time and it did. The only failure mode was the battery running out. Then I got a Nokia phone. It worked the same as the alarm clock, but I could even set myself notifications and what not. Worked great! Then I got an Android phone and sometimes the alarms just wouldn't work. And now today I'm using another Android phone and I give it about 80-20 odds that the alarm works correctly. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it does a quick alarm for a few seconds and stops. And I don't know why. Notifications on this are even worse. Sometimes the notifications are so unnoticeable that sitting next to the phone with headphones on will not actually alert me to the notification. I don't see others ever complain about it so I feel like I'm somehow missing something big but I don't know what. Notifications and alarms on modern phones seem extremely unreliable to me.
- _carbyau_ 2y ago
  I had the other issue. I was at a standup comedy show with my phone appropriately silenced because I knew I could ignore the alarm this once. And the alarm still went off making noise. I managed to turn it off superquick such that the comedian got as far as looking in my general direction and saying I was lucky I was fast because he couldn't pick me out exactly.

chefandy 2y ago

If you ask any UI or UX designer about the interface of Teams, absolutely zero will say it's good. You're giving it the blessing of designers based on your assumption that designers approve of MS UI and UX practices. They don't. Sure, some flagship products are pretty decent, but they've famously sucked at UI (and all other sorts of) design since forever. Here's one (made by an MS designer as a joke) from 2006 talking about their entirely marketing-department-driven packaging design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k We use SO MANY interfaces every day-- every screen on every app and every webpage you use... text messages, ATM, ordering terminals, shopping carts, ad infinitum-- and using those is almost universally intuitive enough to be invisible. Designers use things like implied lines, gestalt, type variance, value contrast, and things like that to make a sane data hierarchy and give users signals for what's happening in the program and what they need to do to influence that. Good practices say they should then test and refine their designs for various kinds of users to make the best interface possible. If the UI design is invisible and users can just solve their problem without having to think about it, that's good design. When design "sticks out," it's usually for the wrong reasons. While bad designers exist, 99% of all "bad design" decisions cited by developers when talking trash about modern UI design were probably not made by designers-- they were likely made by project managers or developers that insisted their way was better, or they didn't need to check with the designer to modify something because they can make it "looks designed." If the interface looks "cluttered", they might remove useful things probably just needs to be organized. That's bad design.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
I don't get the point of this semantic distinction between the people producing (bad) designs and the ivory tower label you're calling "designers". If they're producing designs, are they not designers too? If none of the people with the title "designer" are meaningfully impacting products, who's employing them and why do they not have the same obligation other technical experts have of ensuring that meddling managers are steered in the direction of correct decisions?
- chefandy 2y ago

injidup 2y ago

Honestly this feel like trolling. Right click on any group in teams and the channel notifications option is there which brings you to this UI https://i.imgur.com/z8BnaTn.png https://i.imgur.com/z8BnaTn.png I question how smart this "very smart user" actually is.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Well, I use Teams daily at work, and it's the first I see this particular panel, so shrug.
eitland 2y ago
Magically appeared now, thanks!

MR4D 2y ago

> When decluttering means you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu, was it worth it? Strong disagree here - let me use a real world example. On older Lexus models, the car stereo screen had play and pause buttons. It always bugged me. Why have BOTH a play button and a pause button? The play button doesn’t do anything if you click on it when a song is playing, and the pause button doesn’t do anything if the song is already paused. What Lexus should have done instead was have one button that changes state depending if something is playing or paused. It would take up less screen space and less cognitive load trying to move the cursor while I’m driving 75mph. And on a personal note, Teams is a horrid interface. But I’m not here to argue that today.

staplung 2y ago
I'm not sure you disagree as strongly as you think. I don't feel like the OP was suggesting that all decluttering is intrinsically bad. In the case that you describe it's pretty easy to argue that it's good because it made things easier to use (or at least harder to fuck up because you don't have to figure out which button is useless). Imagine instead that Lexus decided to get rid of both buttons and place them under a hamburger menu.
- MR4D 2y ago
  > Imagine instead … Aghhhhh!!! Now you are trying to give me nightmares!!! :)
lmm 2y ago
> Why have BOTH a play button and a pause button? The play button doesn’t do anything if you click on it when a song is playing, and the pause button doesn’t do anything if the song is already paused. Because it's hard to hit a touchscreen button precisely once, especially when you're driving. And if a song is quiet you may not be able to tell whether it's playing or paused right now. Having a button that will always make it playing and a button that will always make it paused is good design.
- 2y ago