I am impressed that UX and Usability can reach such lofty philosophical considerations, yet it's 2020 and I am still trapped by UIs that keep shifting around the content I'm about to interact with and trick me into clicking or tapping where I didn't intend to.
Not a day passes by that a partially-loaded screen moves that button or textarea just a couple milliseconds before I click on it (so now my click goes elsewhere), both on web apps, phone apps, and to a lesser extent, native apps.
There should be a hardcoded Rule #0 of User Experience: don't move anything on screen unless the user directly initiated an explicit action for the specific thing to move.
I remember one of the earliest programs I wrote as a kid was a button in a window that would jump away when you tried to click it. It seemed incredibly funny and witty at the time.
Keys too, like when a modal dialogs pops up and treats your Enter key as a confirmation for... something. Stuff that seems like it should have been ironed out at a deep layer 20 years ago.
And in the meantime, we have a constant stream of innovation: new ways to use angle brackets in your code, new ways to avoid angle brackets in your code, a new library that renders buttons and toggles, ways to add a depth illusion to the UI, ways to remove the depth illusion. None of it makes anything more usable.
That is usually because an ad is dynamically allocated to a slot (of a dynamic size often too), which starts after the page loads. If said ad is above the content you want to interact with, it pushes everything down (below) and there you go.
It can be resolved by a) not using dynamically allocated slots or b) by never putting ads above any content someone might interact with.
oh yeah, those are so annoying.
Paypal forever shuffling that stupid credit card button of theirs in place of the 'pay now'. What the hell, don't they have enough money they dont have to use dodgy tactics to get me to sign up to a credit card of theirs.
Just from the title I knew this article would involve Gavin Harrison. He's an incredibly talented drummer, not just technically but musically as well.
His clinic videos where he explains how he came up with various rhythmic designs and how they work with what the rest of his band plays are insightful on so many levels.
"But clarity is also this", followed by a screenshot of a booking that says "$73/night" even though the actual cost is $92/night (which it doesn't say - you have to work it out yourself).
I guess the author really _did_ work in advertising if they think that's clarity.
So, don’t feel bad about procrastinating when you need to
write. Humans put the whole thing of for a couple of
hundred thousand years. By a conservative estimate, we’ve
had writing for 4 % of the time we’ve been humans.
Chatting is easy, writing is an arduous chore.
— Erika Hall, Conversational Design
Seems like a good rule of thumb for any form of procrastination that's putting you off doing something creative.
(Sidenote) Although it is true that Gavin Harrison has been most visible playing with Porcupine Tree and Pineapple Thief (also King Crimson), both describable as "prog" with some level of accuracy, he doesn't really like to be thought of as a prog drummer at all.
He grew up surrounded by and listening to jazz; he is very vocal on the need for any professional drummer to be able to play as wide a variety of styles as possibles; his own albums feature distinctly non-prog styles.
It didn't really feel about UX writing at all, generally about product development on a very surface level and some on branding. The Twin Peaks allegories were very unnecessary as well.
It's fluffy and bordering on self-indulgence. There aren't useful practical takeaways, because that kind of "listening" turns out to be hard and is very audience/customer dependent.
You also need to have a talent for it, and very probably a specific personality type - which often tends to assume that everyone else has the same personality type.
To be fair, most personality types do that - and they're always wrong, which is one reason good UX is so hard.
UIs are not hard! They tale some skills and a certain personality type, which most of us are or can become, but the bottom line is to test out various ideas and listen to your users. Over 50% of it is simply that.
UIs are not UX. Also most programs have terrible UX (and bad UIs). UIs might not be hard, but there are not many people having the correct blend of skill, personality and motivation out there.
Do you know the difference? Tog gave a definition but I don't think UI people know what that is. They just call it UX cos it's the latest sexy term.
> Also most programs have terrible UX (and bad UIs).
And it's easy to cure. It involves a) testing and b) admitting your great idea isn't so great. That's most of it.
> but there are not many people having the correct blend of skill, personality
I've a pretty good feel for UIs and plenty of people can do it with a bit of training and a decent amount of practice. It takes that training, and a personality that is considerate of other's needs, and who's ego accepts they're wrong (the main thing). The rest follows.
> and motivation out there
Just like any other job.
UIs are not hard. They just aren't. It's a skill like any other.
> UIs are not hard. They just aren't. It's a skill like any other.
I think the idea behind the phrase "UIs are hard" is precisely that, they are hard like any other skill. So don't expect to be able to make one with zero experience or interest in them, like many developers do. The amount of armchair designers is astounding.
I took this article to advocate for explicitly considering the emotions of your users as they work through your interface. The underlying idea would be that interfaces, like words, communicate at two levels, with both denotative (explicit) meaning, and connotative (associative, emotional, implicit) meaning. So, the argument here is that UI language should serve the user experience at both levels. I thought the Slack example was a good illustration of the point, though personally I avoid using interfaces like that. I took the bits about listening to be really about finding ways to understand your user's emotions in relation to the tasks your interface supports. It's for me easier to think about connotative language in ad copy and in rewards for completing actions than in other parts of interaction, but that's why I found the article worthwhile. I have no idea what a "ghost note" might be in an interaction, but it's an interesting question.
Personal view here, articles like this talking about emotions etc. are a UI guy trying to justify themselves by suggesting there is some greater depth.
I don't really do much by way of UIs but one thing I am certain of is users use user interfaces to get a job done and little else. In terms of emotions, the only relevant one is that caused by pissing the user off. Any claims of the warm and cuddlies are misplaced, users don't care.
Some stupid MBA with a bow-tie was probably pitching how this is going to be a "game changer" for the product.
This is already thanksgiving, so probably he collected his nice bonus for "innovative contributions to the company" in reality it's just a disgusting weapon for management to bring it up as part of your 1:1s with your bosses or when you ask them for a raise.
Not a day passes by that a partially-loaded screen moves that button or textarea just a couple milliseconds before I click on it (so now my click goes elsewhere), both on web apps, phone apps, and to a lesser extent, native apps.
There should be a hardcoded Rule #0 of User Experience: don't move anything on screen unless the user directly initiated an explicit action for the specific thing to move.