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It’s not just iPhones (although I fully expect folks to jump all over Apple. They’re an easy target). It’s pretty much everything. That includes things like kit

It’s not just iPhones (although I fully expect folks to jump all over Apple. They’re an easy target). It’s pretty much everything. That includes things like kitchen gadgets, Web sites, government services, phone support, automobiles, etc. Android is every bit as bad as iOS. Windows is as bad as MacOS, and Linux is as bad as either of them. And it’s not just older folks. I routinely run into problems explaining technology to relatively younger folks; even highly educated ones. I’ll bet that the author would have been just as frustrated, teaching Android to a room full of doctors and lawyers. My doctor just sold his practice to NYU Langone, a very good organization (and he got lots of money, I’m sure). They installed a really intense (and expensive) IT setup in his office. I’ve been watching him and his staff, struggling with it. It’s actually an excellent system, and I’m sure that many folks here, would be proud of it, but they still struggle. He has a full-time staff member, supplied by Langone, whose only job, is to come in and help staff use the IT services. She’s very busy (and patient). I feel like Accessibility needs to include discoverability, affordance, and usability, as principal axes. The terminology we use, the words we pick, in user interface and feedback are vital. The design of affordances, the placement of UI elements, etc. Glossaries are really important, and I watch people’s eyes glaze over, when I start talking about them. You can have Design Language glossaries; not just text ones. It’s a huge topic, and not a particularly popular one. I feel that a good start, is highlighting examples of products that get it right, with discussion on how they do it. I get pretty tired of everyone complaining about the failures. That’s just discouraging, and tends to get people circling their wagons. I think good examples would be very helpful. I’ll start. My wife likes OXO kitchen gadgets a lot. So do I. She tends to buy stuff that I’d never get, if I were making the decision, but I find really good, once I start using it.

taminka 1y ago
unfortunately this is an inherent property of a system (software in this case) that punishes stability and rewards changes for the sake of changes if you don't modify your library, app, OS, etc for 2 years, it's perceived as abandoned or obsolete, meaning even if you're achieved perfection in your product in terms of ui, you can't stay there, you must move forward and break it (i'm not talking about bugs or security vulnerabilities here, only the functionality itself) prominent example is w/ microsoft word, where they kept adding an absurd number of features simply bc they felt like they had to, since ppl were paying for it, and this will KEEP HAPPENING TO EVERYONE so long as the software keeps moving at breakneck speed and backwards compatibility and stability are thrown out of the window...
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Yup. That’s one of the great things about the OXO stuff we have. I have a new vegetable peeler, that replaced one we had for over a decade. It’s basically, exactly the same one. I suspect the parts would be interchangeable. I think that Apple’s Snow Leopard MacOS release was almost identical, in surface features, to its predecessor, but is considered one of their best releases, ever, because it fixed so many bugs, and improved a lot of important functionality. Internally, it also established a technical fabric for the new architecture, but that wasn’t visible to users.
brap 1y ago
I’m seeing this happening in real time in my company. The product keeps getting worse. It should have been a form and about 3 buttons but instead it’s an increasingly complex UI with incoherent, overlapping, confusing features, many of them are footguns. The things you actually want the product to do are hard to find and are like 10 clicks away.
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  Having complex features is a form of moat I suppose. Companies might not actively seek out complexity, but thanks to the moat-iness of the problem they aren't as discouraged to remove complexity as they should be.
larrry 1y ago
Panic’s Playdate has been easy to pass around to friends to try. The device intro is a lot of fun and shows the main interactions, and then the games a snappy and easy to jump into. Definitely would recommend playing with one if you get the chance. Buying one… it depends on how much the device appeals to you, mine got active use for a couple months and then has fallen off
itissid 1y ago
> I feel like Accessibility needs to include discoverability, affordance, and usability, as principal axes. Would most people who struggle with modern UI/UX would customize the discovery in their own way i.e. should every UI be configurable in a way it aligns with each user's mental model? And how would a UX system *behave* to find the "best" model for the job?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  The customization seems to be the issue. Not sure if you are an iOS user, or not, but the Accessibility customization is batshit crazy. Lots of cool things to tweak, but there's way too many knobs and switches. Also, and this is an issue with settings/preferences in almost all apps, regardless of platform, the damn settings aren't where they are supposed to be. They get placed into screens that match the designer's structure, but not that match the user's mental model. I'd like to see customization models that match user mental models, and maybe better support for adapting to the user. "AI" may be helpful, here. I think previous "wizards" have not been up to the task.
  - itissid 1y ago
    I wonder what might be more formal ways to extract such mental models. 1. Most people have been exposed to some sort of a computing device in their lifetimes, if that experience had enough UI/UX to support what the user wants from the new platform/os then a new UI/UX start with that, no matter how "ugly" it looked. Maybe give the option to make the desktop os windowing and nav look just like the mobile OS, if the user knows the latter, so that challenged users can just start cold if they know the other. This could solve problems like: Most people know how to do attachments on one platform do not know how to do it on the other. 2. If one does not have any mental model you could gamify it and reward the user for learning a UI/UX and decrease the reward over time as the user gets better. 3. Too many times people forget compound actions e.g. publising an ad on Facebook or knowing how to do 2 fac auth. A strong voice driven navigator could aid in overcoming discovery difficulties, it would know how to do X and the user knows what(X) they want. Ideally since these things are done in a sequence, sequence models like LSTMs could learn what trips up people the most and it would reflect ones own mental model.
BrandoElFollito 1y ago
Yeah. I have an engineering degree, a PhD in physics, I code, and I build IoTs for fun -- and I did not manage to use the new water cooler at the office. I tried all the tricks gathered over 40 years of dealing with ever-evolving technology and then this WTF of not being able to switch on water. It happens, not everyone catches on to new tech. And then I heard my whole team explain among them where a "working water cooler" is. Fortunately, one of them knew how to use the closest one. The whole herd (me included) trotted for a demonstration and now I know that I have to press 3 buttons, then when the incorrect button is lit up, I need to continuously press the small "start" triangle which you see in video programs. All the lights flicker, something something and, tadaaam, the water flows. I have the same problem when I have to use a shower I do not know. This reminds me a time when I was trekking and saw my friends taking a shower under the faucet of the shower (yeah, the shower had a faucet) because they did not work out what needed to be pulled, turned, pushed, and whatnot.
- sevenseacat 1y ago
  haha I've had to call down to the front desk in a hotel before to ask how the shower worked. That was a bit awkward.
  - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
    I was in Malaysia and used the toilet in my hotel room. The handle was broken and was just turning idly. Since I was leaving for dinner, I told the reception desk that it was broken. They told me it would need fixed right away. I got back two hours later, check the toilet and it is still broken. Call the desk, they're sending an "engineer" right away. The guy comes in, goes to the toilet, I show him that the handle is just turning idly. He looks at me, surrounds my shoulders with his arm and tells me "I will show you". Proceeds to turn the handle the other way round and, tadaam, the water flushes... Awkward you said? :)

taminka 1y ago

unfortunately this is an inherent property of a system (software in this case) that punishes stability and rewards changes for the sake of changes if you don't modify your library, app, OS, etc for 2 years, it's perceived as abandoned or obsolete, meaning even if you're achieved perfection in your product in terms of ui, you can't stay there, you must move forward and break it (i'm not talking about bugs or security vulnerabilities here, only the functionality itself) prominent example is w/ microsoft word, where they kept adding an absurd number of features simply bc they felt like they had to, since ppl were paying for it, and this will KEEP HAPPENING TO EVERYONE so long as the software keeps moving at breakneck speed and backwards compatibility and stability are thrown out of the window...

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Yup. That’s one of the great things about the OXO stuff we have. I have a new vegetable peeler, that replaced one we had for over a decade. It’s basically, exactly the same one. I suspect the parts would be interchangeable. I think that Apple’s Snow Leopard MacOS release was almost identical, in surface features, to its predecessor, but is considered one of their best releases, ever, because it fixed so many bugs, and improved a lot of important functionality. Internally, it also established a technical fabric for the new architecture, but that wasn’t visible to users.

brap 1y ago

I’m seeing this happening in real time in my company. The product keeps getting worse. It should have been a form and about 3 buttons but instead it’s an increasingly complex UI with incoherent, overlapping, confusing features, many of them are footguns. The things you actually want the product to do are hard to find and are like 10 clicks away.

worldsayshi 1y ago
Having complex features is a form of moat I suppose. Companies might not actively seek out complexity, but thanks to the moat-iness of the problem they aren't as discouraged to remove complexity as they should be.

larrry 1y ago

Panic’s Playdate has been easy to pass around to friends to try. The device intro is a lot of fun and shows the main interactions, and then the games a snappy and easy to jump into. Definitely would recommend playing with one if you get the chance. Buying one… it depends on how much the device appeals to you, mine got active use for a couple months and then has fallen off

itissid 1y ago

> I feel like Accessibility needs to include discoverability, affordance, and usability, as principal axes. Would most people who struggle with modern UI/UX would customize the discovery in their own way i.e. should every UI be configurable in a way it aligns with each user's mental model? And how would a UX system *behave* to find the "best" model for the job?

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
The customization seems to be the issue. Not sure if you are an iOS user, or not, but the Accessibility customization is batshit crazy. Lots of cool things to tweak, but there's way too many knobs and switches. Also, and this is an issue with settings/preferences in almost all apps, regardless of platform, the damn settings aren't where they are supposed to be. They get placed into screens that match the designer's structure, but not that match the user's mental model. I'd like to see customization models that match user mental models, and maybe better support for adapting to the user. "AI" may be helpful, here. I think previous "wizards" have not been up to the task.
- itissid 1y ago
  I wonder what might be more formal ways to extract such mental models. 1. Most people have been exposed to some sort of a computing device in their lifetimes, if that experience had enough UI/UX to support what the user wants from the new platform/os then a new UI/UX start with that, no matter how "ugly" it looked. Maybe give the option to make the desktop os windowing and nav look just like the mobile OS, if the user knows the latter, so that challenged users can just start cold if they know the other. This could solve problems like: Most people know how to do attachments on one platform do not know how to do it on the other. 2. If one does not have any mental model you could gamify it and reward the user for learning a UI/UX and decrease the reward over time as the user gets better. 3. Too many times people forget compound actions e.g. publising an ad on Facebook or knowing how to do 2 fac auth. A strong voice driven navigator could aid in overcoming discovery difficulties, it would know how to do X and the user knows what(X) they want. Ideally since these things are done in a sequence, sequence models like LSTMs could learn what trips up people the most and it would reflect ones own mental model.

BrandoElFollito 1y ago

Yeah. I have an engineering degree, a PhD in physics, I code, and I build IoTs for fun -- and I did not manage to use the new water cooler at the office. I tried all the tricks gathered over 40 years of dealing with ever-evolving technology and then this WTF of not being able to switch on water. It happens, not everyone catches on to new tech. And then I heard my whole team explain among them where a "working water cooler" is. Fortunately, one of them knew how to use the closest one. The whole herd (me included) trotted for a demonstration and now I know that I have to press 3 buttons, then when the incorrect button is lit up, I need to continuously press the small "start" triangle which you see in video programs. All the lights flicker, something something and, tadaaam, the water flows. I have the same problem when I have to use a shower I do not know. This reminds me a time when I was trekking and saw my friends taking a shower under the faucet of the shower (yeah, the shower had a faucet) because they did not work out what needed to be pulled, turned, pushed, and whatnot.

sevenseacat 1y ago
haha I've had to call down to the front desk in a hotel before to ask how the shower worked. That was a bit awkward.
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  I was in Malaysia and used the toilet in my hotel room. The handle was broken and was just turning idly. Since I was leaving for dinner, I told the reception desk that it was broken. They told me it would need fixed right away. I got back two hours later, check the toilet and it is still broken. Call the desk, they're sending an "engineer" right away. The guy comes in, goes to the toilet, I show him that the handle is just turning idly. He looks at me, surrounds my shoulders with his arm and tells me "I will show you". Proceeds to turn the handle the other way round and, tadaam, the water flushes... Awkward you said? :)