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I was unimpressed when Apple removed their 'refresh' button in iPhone 'Mail' and replaced it with a pull-down gesture. How would a someone who has never before

by MarkMc 14y ago

I was unimpressed when Apple removed their 'refresh' button in iPhone 'Mail' and replaced it with a pull-down gesture. How would a someone who has never before used a touch-screen device know how to refresh the list?

kybernetikos 14y ago
I've been having lots of conversations recently about the lack of affordance in touch interfaces. To some extent, this is simply because the visual language hasn't developed yet - when you see something engraved on a 3d plinth in a desktop application, you know that it's a button that can be clicked. Touch interfaces haven't got to this level yet. Pretty much the only widely used affordance I can think of is a folded corner to show that you can swipe to turn the page, but even that is inconsistently applied. How do you know on an android contact that you can swipe sideways to SMS and the other direction to phone? Or even that swiping horizontally in either direction does anything at all? I could imagine some universally agreed way to indicate this, perhaps very subtle visual hints or gradients or a system where if you press and hold without moving you get a set of icon overlays that show you what you can do. There are a few different options, but to form a useful language they need to be widely adopted. One of the articles that triggered these conversations was "No to NoUI" http://www.elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-no-ui http://www.elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-no-ui which laments the modern tendency to hide interactions.
- unwind 14y ago
  Plain old drag and drop on desktop computers, which I guess has been around for at least 30 years by now (disclosure: figure out of the air, not researched) still hasn't developed much of a visual language. It's almost impossible to know when you can drag and drop things, and the only way to learn is to start trying by dragging on random UI elements. Of course, knowing what happens once you drop them on something that cares is just as impossible as knowing what you can drag in the first place. Sorry if I sound pessimistic, I hope development and focus is better now, and of course touch screen devices are in front of a much wider audience which might prompt a more rapid development of some standards.
MrScruff 14y ago
Pull to refresh makes a lot of sense where you have a vertically scrolling list with the most recent entries at the top. The user will discover it naturally as they look for more entries past the current top one. However I've seen it used in different contexts (eg. a web browser) where it's less easy to defend.
derefr 14y ago
Other, similar gestures: 1. Swipe to delete 2. Shake to shuffle
potatolicious 14y ago
How would someone know what the trio of "min, max, close" buttons do on Windows? The smartphone market has reached a level of maturity and ubiquity that we can start setting down a baseline for knowledge, and build on top of it. It happened to the PC before, and it's happening to smartphones now. The original iPhone was criticized (especially in demographics like ours) for being insultingly shallow and toy-like. This is the smartphone becoming more complex now that (nearly) everyone has had a go.
totalforge 14y ago
Mail checks for messages on launch and at intervals by itself. If the user doesn't know the gesture, they still get their messages. If the design blocks the user, then it's a problem. It is also very easy to trip over the feature by scrolling the list.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Yeah, I hate pull to refresh and a lot of these other "innovative" gestures. It's much more efficient to just have a refresh button, even if it's not as sexy.
moogleii 14y ago
The same way you and I learned how to use it, I think. I don't really recall being trained on it. One day my refresh button was gone, and I was just scrolling and dragging around, and "Oh what's this do?" If this hypothetical person has never used a touch device before, they'll be stuck on the "scrolling and dragging around" step, but it won't be long 'til they stumble upon the pull-down.

by MarkMc 14y ago

kybernetikos 14y ago

I've been having lots of conversations recently about the lack of affordance in touch interfaces. To some extent, this is simply because the visual language hasn't developed yet - when you see something engraved on a 3d plinth in a desktop application, you know that it's a button that can be clicked. Touch interfaces haven't got to this level yet. Pretty much the only widely used affordance I can think of is a folded corner to show that you can swipe to turn the page, but even that is inconsistently applied. How do you know on an android contact that you can swipe sideways to SMS and the other direction to phone? Or even that swiping horizontally in either direction does anything at all? I could imagine some universally agreed way to indicate this, perhaps very subtle visual hints or gradients or a system where if you press and hold without moving you get a set of icon overlays that show you what you can do. There are a few different options, but to form a useful language they need to be widely adopted. One of the articles that triggered these conversations was "No to NoUI" http://www.elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-no-ui http://www.elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-no-ui which laments the modern tendency to hide interactions.

unwind 14y ago
Plain old drag and drop on desktop computers, which I guess has been around for at least 30 years by now (disclosure: figure out of the air, not researched) still hasn't developed much of a visual language. It's almost impossible to know when you can drag and drop things, and the only way to learn is to start trying by dragging on random UI elements. Of course, knowing what happens once you drop them on something that cares is just as impossible as knowing what you can drag in the first place. Sorry if I sound pessimistic, I hope development and focus is better now, and of course touch screen devices are in front of a much wider audience which might prompt a more rapid development of some standards.

MrScruff 14y ago

Pull to refresh makes a lot of sense where you have a vertically scrolling list with the most recent entries at the top. The user will discover it naturally as they look for more entries past the current top one. However I've seen it used in different contexts (eg. a web browser) where it's less easy to defend.

derefr 14y ago

Other, similar gestures: 1. Swipe to delete 2. Shake to shuffle

potatolicious 14y ago

How would someone know what the trio of "min, max, close" buttons do on Windows? The smartphone market has reached a level of maturity and ubiquity that we can start setting down a baseline for knowledge, and build on top of it. It happened to the PC before, and it's happening to smartphones now. The original iPhone was criticized (especially in demographics like ours) for being insultingly shallow and toy-like. This is the smartphone becoming more complex now that (nearly) everyone has had a go.

totalforge 14y ago

Mail checks for messages on launch and at intervals by itself. If the user doesn't know the gesture, they still get their messages. If the design blocks the user, then it's a problem. It is also very easy to trip over the feature by scrolling the list.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Yeah, I hate pull to refresh and a lot of these other "innovative" gestures. It's much more efficient to just have a refresh button, even if it's not as sexy.

moogleii 14y ago

The same way you and I learned how to use it, I think. I don't really recall being trained on it. One day my refresh button was gone, and I was just scrolling and dragging around, and "Oh what's this do?" If this hypothetical person has never used a touch device before, they'll be stuck on the "scrolling and dragging around" step, but it won't be long 'til they stumble upon the pull-down.