5 ms·

> I just disagree that leaving off the toast is (in the cases cited) valuable. But adding a toast isn't free. It's a distraction, and arguably a pretty intense

> I just disagree that leaving off the toast is (in the cases cited) valuable. But adding a toast isn't free. It's a distraction, and arguably a pretty intense one for ND folks -- especially when it becomes a standardized message center with multiple items queued up. In many cases the most useful toasts would also be better if they weren't toasts. For me, the most useful toast I interact with also demonstrates why toasts are bad UX: creating a new ticket in Jira. Since that can't happen instantly, it needs a delayed message to let you know when the ticket is created and you actually have a URL to open. A toast is useful in this case, but it's also far from optimal, because for some reason it's going to disappear in a few seconds, and it also won't tell me how many seconds I have left to read it. Why would distraction be the primary mechanism? We figured out decades ago how to put a button in the header that opens a messages feed which the user can read and dismiss at will. While it's possible to implement such a feed badly so that it's annoying, it's difficult to implement toasts in a way that aren't annoying. Maybe even impossible.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> But adding a toast isn't free. It's a distraction, and arguably a pretty intense one for ND folks -- especially when it becomes a standardized message center with multiple items queued up. Diagnosed with ADHD, so I'm guessing an ND folk here: modern applications in general, and webshit in particular, give me huge anxiety because of all the eventual consistency and optimistic actions bullshit[0], coupled with flakiness and bloat of entire modern software stacks[1]. Maybe "toasts" aren't the bee's knees, but they work as lagging indicator that something happened that I otherwise wouldn't notice, and in some apps even lets me undo the unwanted operation. That does a lot to relieve my anxiety and help me use software with less frustration. -- [0] - That itself is a big antipattern. Software lying to user about its state is a form of gaslighting; it makes interaction more error-prone, and prevents users from building correct mental models of the application and its interactions with other systems. [1] - My Android flagship lags often enough on taps and drags that every other day my input gets misinterpreted and does something unwanted. Similarly, I type faster than most software - webshit in particular - can react, so e.g. a small jitter can turn "ctrl+t n e w s <ret>" into "ctrl" (held, released) and then "n e w s <ret>", which does $deity knows what in the current tab.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- digging 2y ago
  > Maybe "toasts" aren't the bee's knees, but they work as lagging indicator that something happened that I otherwise wouldn't notice, and in some apps even lets me undo the unwanted operation. That does a lot to relieve my anxiety and help me use software with less frustration. All things that a message log does better than toasts!
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Why not both? A message log can always be consulted later, but it doesn't give you a live feed of things that are happening. I'm also ADHD and, like OP, I appreciate having the stream of toasts that lets me know what the software did. It's saved my butt a bunch of times when I accidentally do something I didn't mean to (deleting instead of archiving, for example). A message log would just get ignored, but toasts help a ton because they're visible.
    - digging 2y ago
      A message log can also be visible...? The only differences between messages in toasts vs messages in a log is that toasts control the user rather than the other way around.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        Isn't a toast just the tail of a message log that's visible for a few seconds after a new message is added? I don't always want the entire log to be occupying space on my screen, but I do want to see when new items get added.
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        The problem is that everyone implements toasts, and no one implements the message log, even though it's the latter that's more important to have.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> But adding a toast isn't free. It's a distraction, and arguably a pretty intense one for ND folks -- especially when it becomes a standardized message center with multiple items queued up. Diagnosed with ADHD, so I'm guessing an ND folk here: modern applications in general, and webshit in particular, give me huge anxiety because of all the eventual consistency and optimistic actions bullshit[0], coupled with flakiness and bloat of entire modern software stacks[1]. Maybe "toasts" aren't the bee's knees, but they work as lagging indicator that something happened that I otherwise wouldn't notice, and in some apps even lets me undo the unwanted operation. That does a lot to relieve my anxiety and help me use software with less frustration. -- [0] - That itself is a big antipattern. Software lying to user about its state is a form of gaslighting; it makes interaction more error-prone, and prevents users from building correct mental models of the application and its interactions with other systems. [1] - My Android flagship lags often enough on taps and drags that every other day my input gets misinterpreted and does something unwanted. Similarly, I type faster than most software - webshit in particular - can react, so e.g. a small jitter can turn "ctrl+t n e w s <ret>" into "ctrl" (held, released) and then "n e w s <ret>", which does $deity knows what in the current tab.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
digging 2y ago
> Maybe "toasts" aren't the bee's knees, but they work as lagging indicator that something happened that I otherwise wouldn't notice, and in some apps even lets me undo the unwanted operation. That does a lot to relieve my anxiety and help me use software with less frustration. All things that a message log does better than toasts!
- lolinder 2y ago
  Why not both? A message log can always be consulted later, but it doesn't give you a live feed of things that are happening. I'm also ADHD and, like OP, I appreciate having the stream of toasts that lets me know what the software did. It's saved my butt a bunch of times when I accidentally do something I didn't mean to (deleting instead of archiving, for example). A message log would just get ignored, but toasts help a ton because they're visible.
  - digging 2y ago
    A message log can also be visible...? The only differences between messages in toasts vs messages in a log is that toasts control the user rather than the other way around.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Isn't a toast just the tail of a message log that's visible for a few seconds after a new message is added? I don't always want the entire log to be occupying space on my screen, but I do want to see when new items get added.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        The problem is that everyone implements toasts, and no one implements the message log, even though it's the latter that's more important to have.