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IMHO skeuomorphic design had a few wins, but also plenty of losses. Sometimes the real world interface is just not as intuitive as it should have been. But I'

IMHO skeuomorphic design had a few wins, but also plenty of losses. Sometimes the real world interface is just not as intuitive as it should have been. But I'm 100% behind you on "make buttons look like buttons" and "don't hide functionality behind arbitrary gestures that you never tell the user". UI designers may hate menus these days, but they were so good for letting a user browse through looking for the thing they want. Search boxes are a good speed improvement, but should never be the only interface object because many times the user doesn't know exactly what they're looking for. This is also why most voice assistants don't get used very much, there's no easily accessible list of phrases they know and they aren't smart enough to really understand what the person wants, so people end up using the one or two phrases they know the assistant can handle and forget about it otherwise.

ben_w 1y ago
> This is also why most voice assistants don't get used very much, there's no easily accessible list of phrases they know and they aren't smart enough to really understand what the person wants, so people end up using the one or two phrases they know the assistant can handle and forget about it otherwise. Thank you for saying this, you've just made me realise they share all the problems of text adventures while having none of the excitement.
- gmueckl 1y ago
  I was actually complaining about this the other day: there is no manual (or even a searchable database) of recognized commands/features. I often discover that something was possible with Google Assistant when the announcement comes that it's being removed.
  - sixothree 1y ago
    When you start a timer with Siri, it often announces that you can also tell it to stop the timer by saying stop. This tells me that even the most rudimentary functions of starting and stopping timers is not yet learned by users. Every time I hear that message I think of how much of a failure this whole thing has been.
    - tuetuopay 1y ago
      Oh timers, you mean the one thing I use daily for cooking where they changed the recognized phrase between iOS 17 and iOS 18? It used to understand "notify me in 15 minutes" meant to set a timer. Now it asks for what I want to be reminded about to add it to the calendar. I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer". So long for muscle memory (oh and for consiseness, it's worse in French). Anyways, that's the prime reason there's no list: either they want to change the commands willy-nilly, or they don't know them because that's whatever the model's learned.
      - NaOH 1y ago
        >I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer". Only saying "15 minutes" initiates a timer for that long.
        tuetuopay 1y ago
        OMG thanks, it also works in french! This goes even deeper in the "undiscoverable commands" issue at hand. "notify me in 15 minutes" feels natural and casual, and how I'd expect to interact with modern voice assistants. "set a 15 minutes timer" feels overly formal and redundant (it does not help that in French, a timer is "minuteur", so you repeat the "minutes" sound twice), and how I'd expect to interact with old voice assistants. This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut.
        NaOH 1y ago
        >This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut. Among the many shortcomings of Siri is that it seems as if it's not good with verbs. I've learned to avoid them as much as possible. Put another way, it's better with nouns, so I focus on them. I guess that's why "15-minute timer" and "15 minutes" work well. But similarly, I wanted to use the stopwatch the other day. Not something I ever really do. Just saying, "Stopwatch" got it open. And testing now on some non-Apple apps also worked (in case Siri has some built-in pro-Apple bias). One was WhatsApp. The other was an app for an insurance and banking company. That one, just saying its name opened the contact card I have for the company. That's fair. Trying again, and saying "company name app" opened the app. Of course, sometimes the verbs are necessary. But I've had more success when I could avoid them. Do note that I say all this using a Siri-only phone that is too old for any of Apple Intelligence that may get mixed in with Siri.
layer8 1y ago
I think we need a word for “buttons look like buttons”, as opposed to “the Contacts app looks like a real-world leather-cladded address book” skeuomorphism. I’m seeing “skeuomorphism” increasingly used for the former, where people mostly mean “not flat design”, whereas originally it meant only the latter.
- seanwilson 1y ago
  > I think we need a word for “buttons look like buttons”, as opposed to “the Contacts app looks like a real-world leather-cladded address book” skeuomorphism. Likely related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#As_perceived_action_possibilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#As_perceived_action..., but it's a jargon word most tech people and others don't know, and it creates debates about what it means among those that do know it. I usually say something like it should be obvious it's clickable, or obvious what it does, when it comes up.
  - layer8 1y ago
    Affordances is a more general term, not necessarily purely visual, or even visual at all (it can be tactile, or auditory, etc.). It doesn’t denote a particular visual design, and full-blown skeuomorphic elements would also exhibit affordances. But yes, it approaches the heart of the problem.
    - seanwilson 1y ago
      Signifiers? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-difference-between-the-terms-affordances-and-signifiers https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-diffe... > Affordances are what an object can do (truth). Perceived affordances are what one thinks an object can do (perception). Signifiers make affordances clearer (closing the gap between truth and perception). Signifiers often reduce number of possible interpretations and/or make intended way of using an object more explicit. > A grey link on the screen might afford clicking (truth). But you might perceive it just as a non-interactive label (perception). Styling it as a button (background, shadow etc.) is a signifier that makes it clearer that the link can be clicked. I don't think there's any more widely known terms here, and not any used within general tech audiences. I'd like it if there was a useful shorthand too but devs/users/clients are probably going to stick with e.g. "I couldn't tell that was a button" because the above have failed to catch on. "Visual cues" feels accurate enough. I immediately understand "Buttons should look like buttons".
bombcar 1y ago
This is exactly the problem with Siri - if it was nothing but a vocal command line that I had to memorize exactly how to talk to it, and I could find a list of commands to learn, it'd be 1000x better.
- cubefox 1y ago
  This is similar to WolframAlpha. Theoretically, it can do countless different things, but you wouldn't know about them just from looking at the empty text box. The difference to something like ChatGPT is that it can interpret arbitrary commands, even if it can't properly execute them.
keyringlight 1y ago
I think one thing that is involved in this is conventions, and when you've learned one set of rules on how to communicate on one form of interface that it transfers to other applications on that interface. If there's certain ways to use graphical elements, gestures, console keywords/option flags, spoken keywords, while other applications have the freedom to do their own thing it should be seen as better not to diverge and reinvent the wheel (so each needs learning its own rules) too much without good reason.

ben_w 1y ago

> This is also why most voice assistants don't get used very much, there's no easily accessible list of phrases they know and they aren't smart enough to really understand what the person wants, so people end up using the one or two phrases they know the assistant can handle and forget about it otherwise. Thank you for saying this, you've just made me realise they share all the problems of text adventures while having none of the excitement.

gmueckl 1y ago
I was actually complaining about this the other day: there is no manual (or even a searchable database) of recognized commands/features. I often discover that something was possible with Google Assistant when the announcement comes that it's being removed.
- sixothree 1y ago
  When you start a timer with Siri, it often announces that you can also tell it to stop the timer by saying stop. This tells me that even the most rudimentary functions of starting and stopping timers is not yet learned by users. Every time I hear that message I think of how much of a failure this whole thing has been.
  - tuetuopay 1y ago
    Oh timers, you mean the one thing I use daily for cooking where they changed the recognized phrase between iOS 17 and iOS 18? It used to understand "notify me in 15 minutes" meant to set a timer. Now it asks for what I want to be reminded about to add it to the calendar. I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer". So long for muscle memory (oh and for consiseness, it's worse in French). Anyways, that's the prime reason there's no list: either they want to change the commands willy-nilly, or they don't know them because that's whatever the model's learned.
    - NaOH 1y ago
      >I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer". Only saying "15 minutes" initiates a timer for that long.
      - tuetuopay 1y ago
        OMG thanks, it also works in french! This goes even deeper in the "undiscoverable commands" issue at hand. "notify me in 15 minutes" feels natural and casual, and how I'd expect to interact with modern voice assistants. "set a 15 minutes timer" feels overly formal and redundant (it does not help that in French, a timer is "minuteur", so you repeat the "minutes" sound twice), and how I'd expect to interact with old voice assistants. This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut.
        NaOH 1y ago
        >This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut. Among the many shortcomings of Siri is that it seems as if it's not good with verbs. I've learned to avoid them as much as possible. Put another way, it's better with nouns, so I focus on them. I guess that's why "15-minute timer" and "15 minutes" work well. But similarly, I wanted to use the stopwatch the other day. Not something I ever really do. Just saying, "Stopwatch" got it open. And testing now on some non-Apple apps also worked (in case Siri has some built-in pro-Apple bias). One was WhatsApp. The other was an app for an insurance and banking company. That one, just saying its name opened the contact card I have for the company. That's fair. Trying again, and saying "company name app" opened the app. Of course, sometimes the verbs are necessary. But I've had more success when I could avoid them. Do note that I say all this using a Siri-only phone that is too old for any of Apple Intelligence that may get mixed in with Siri.

layer8 1y ago

I think we need a word for “buttons look like buttons”, as opposed to “the Contacts app looks like a real-world leather-cladded address book” skeuomorphism. I’m seeing “skeuomorphism” increasingly used for the former, where people mostly mean “not flat design”, whereas originally it meant only the latter.

seanwilson 1y ago
> I think we need a word for “buttons look like buttons”, as opposed to “the Contacts app looks like a real-world leather-cladded address book” skeuomorphism. Likely related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#As_perceived_action_possibilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#As_perceived_action..., but it's a jargon word most tech people and others don't know, and it creates debates about what it means among those that do know it. I usually say something like it should be obvious it's clickable, or obvious what it does, when it comes up.
- layer8 1y ago
  Affordances is a more general term, not necessarily purely visual, or even visual at all (it can be tactile, or auditory, etc.). It doesn’t denote a particular visual design, and full-blown skeuomorphic elements would also exhibit affordances. But yes, it approaches the heart of the problem.
  - seanwilson 1y ago
    Signifiers? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-difference-between-the-terms-affordances-and-signifiers https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-diffe... > Affordances are what an object can do (truth). Perceived affordances are what one thinks an object can do (perception). Signifiers make affordances clearer (closing the gap between truth and perception). Signifiers often reduce number of possible interpretations and/or make intended way of using an object more explicit. > A grey link on the screen might afford clicking (truth). But you might perceive it just as a non-interactive label (perception). Styling it as a button (background, shadow etc.) is a signifier that makes it clearer that the link can be clicked. I don't think there's any more widely known terms here, and not any used within general tech audiences. I'd like it if there was a useful shorthand too but devs/users/clients are probably going to stick with e.g. "I couldn't tell that was a button" because the above have failed to catch on. "Visual cues" feels accurate enough. I immediately understand "Buttons should look like buttons".

bombcar 1y ago

This is exactly the problem with Siri - if it was nothing but a vocal command line that I had to memorize exactly how to talk to it, and I could find a list of commands to learn, it'd be 1000x better.

cubefox 1y ago
This is similar to WolframAlpha. Theoretically, it can do countless different things, but you wouldn't know about them just from looking at the empty text box. The difference to something like ChatGPT is that it can interpret arbitrary commands, even if it can't properly execute them.

keyringlight 1y ago

I think one thing that is involved in this is conventions, and when you've learned one set of rules on how to communicate on one form of interface that it transfers to other applications on that interface. If there's certain ways to use graphical elements, gestures, console keywords/option flags, spoken keywords, while other applications have the freedom to do their own thing it should be seen as better not to diverge and reinvent the wheel (so each needs learning its own rules) too much without good reason.