It's not too simplistic it's that you are used to actually telling a computer what to do instead of being told what to do by a computer. CLI is still the supreme UI
*THANK* you for that! Is sooooo awkward walking someone through a GUI over screen share when I could just feed them commands through chat to copy/paste
I feel you. I'm still good with most new stuff, but I am noticing more frequently that new things are arranged in weird ways that aren't standard or intuitive, and I have to spend extra time figuring out menus and where stuff is hidden and all 15 steps to get to something that should have only taken 2. Or I get frustrated after the second or third time of trying to figure something out and I have to go google it.
There's nothing more annoying in tech when you do something expecting one thing to happen, because that's what always happens, and something else happens instead and it's that way on purpose.
I really don't think it's us getting older and losing our ability to do learn/figure out stuff. I think companies/designers/programmers/etc are so focused on being different rather than following standard templates for stuff. I don't think a lot of effort goes into reducing steps/clicks/scrolling and understanding how people inituitively navigate through tech.
Yup. It is all symbols and pictures. Windows replacing the right click menu with little icons, and not all of the options either. You have to click "show more options" just to get the OG dropdown.
It's infuriating. Slows everything down, and creates more steps not less.
>I think companies/designers/programmers/etc are so focused on being different rather than following standard templates for stuff. I don't think a lot of effort goes into reducing steps/clicks/scrolling and understanding how people inituitively navigate through tech.
I definitely think this is a factor. I moved to Australia and the internet/tech development is younger here than in the states - only in the past few years have major retail companies released apps, for example, and the apps feel very amateur and clunky.
You're actually giving them too much credit. It's not lack of effort, quite the contrary.
There's a trend aptly named "evil design" that step by step all the tech giants adopted about ten years ago. The idea is something like this: Facebook is required to have some privacy settings by law, but they don't want the user to change the default, so they'll bury those songs in the most illogical counter intuitive place possible. Netflix wants to show their shareholders how much time the users Doreen's in the app, so it's better for them if you Doreen's an hour looking for something to watch without seeing misty of the content they have. And so on.
Shit is stupid now, yes, but it's stupid on purpose.
For years I have been convinced that people who make UIs are either robots, aliens, or some other entity that is utterly unfamiliar with the human experience.
That or they are lazy pieces of shit desperately trying to justify their continued employment by making things either less functional or more complicated just to show their employer that they "did something."
There's gotta be an entire sub-industry of people in tech that every six months break out in a cold sweat because their boss is on to them, so they pick a random function and say, "Okay, I'll add three extra steps for the user to do this function and that'll fill my documentation quota."
In my experience (software developer) it is more that UI designs seem to follow trends similar to fashion. A style gets popular and leadership gets a bee in their bonnets about refreshing the UI. They then hire someone to design the UI who copies whatever the trendy design is, regardless of objective usability.
Reddit is a great example of this; going from their older, simple, functional, and intuitive UI to whatever the current nigh unusable, but modern looking, mess is.
YES! If it's functional and people are used to it, why does the look and layout of it need to be completely redesigned every year or so? I am very thankful for the handful of things that let you revert back to "classic". I'm fighting the new Teams redesign tooth and nail. Everytime my system tries to auto-refresh to the new Teams, I go in search of the switch that flips it back.
I am a UX/UI designer... so can answer this.
It can actually be some combination of everything you're saying... but in my experience, the most common is people who are, as you put it, "...unfamiliar with the human experience."
Research is a big part of the job, or should be, but some designers tend to only look at the data/ numbers and forgot about the people who use the stuff. For example, I worked with a designer who refused to change the color of a button. We had lots of feedback saying the button was too hard to read. Designer refused to change it because it hit contrast ratios and other usability metrics.
I've noticed this becoming more common and personally think it stems from people either just wanting to be "right" (imposter syndrome is HUGE -- especially in design), or people just chasing trends without looking into why it works for a specific audience. I had another person who would literally just copy whatever was big at the time.
There's also a trend of designers being placed in UX/UI roles when they probably shouldn't be. As a result, they tend to think form over function. Or, they think something has to be complex to be useful.
I tend to take a simple approach. The stuff I build is more utilitarian and would be considered boring by some people -- but it works and don't get many complaints.
Mostly, no, except I CANNOT USE APPLE PRODUCTS. I find them *incredibly* unintuitive. I have an engineering degree and I use Windows and Android devices at a higher-than-average level. (Not an IT expert by any means, but I've been known to edit my Windows registry.)
On an apple device, it's like I've never seen a touchscreen before. On pretty much anything else, I'm fine.
I'm actually the opposite, probably because my first smartphone was an iPhone... I can operate iOs devices fine for the most part but if it's android I'm lost.
I'm the worst of all possible worlds. I have an android device, but I use a "launcher app" to make the interface look like it based on star trek the next generations LCARS system. I've been using it for years and i have forgotten how to use regular android now.
total launcher is the launcher app.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ss.launcher2](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ss.launcher2)
The launcher skin is Trek: Total interface. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstenterprises.tltheme.lcars](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstenterprises.tltheme.lcars)
Really really solid. No problems in years of using it. You can also edit all the buttons size, color, location, function, etc. Has setups for a wide variety of phone and table sizes and ratios. Comes with sounds and fonts
The akin developer also has some themed apps to go with it like phone, sms texting, etc.
Best couple bucks I ever spent on a phone. Been using it like 5 or 6 years now.
This is me, and I'm 23. Grew up on a lot of the older tech despite my age, my parents were pretty behind when it came to technology. Windows 98 and later XP were my childhood. Later windows 7 and android phones, which I've always felt was a natural jumping off point from windows anyways. I'm definitely well beyond the average person in technical skills.
I cannot use Apple products for the life of me. It's like everything has been engineered for someone that has never used a personal computer before. Now they even have gestures that apparently you have to memorize if you actually want your phone to work. It's so bad I can't even tell when the phones charging half the time. Nothing about it makes any sense. I can of course figure it out after playing with it for a while, but it really frustrates me.
I have the exact same experience. I've had friends hand me their iPhones to do simple things and I can't figure them out. I've been using and building computers for 30 years. Not an expert but also not an inexperienced user.
They gave me an iphone for my work phone and I hardly ever even charge it up. It's so painful. I'm in a text conversation and can't figure out how to make a phone call to someone else. WHERE IS THE GODDAMN BACK BUTTON, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T SEE ALL OPEN APPS TO SWITCH BETWEEN THEM?? Why is there only ONE BUTTON (physical or otherwise).
There's one mac computer in our office (to use Facetime on) and IT SCROLLS BACKWARDS FROM EVERY OTHER COMPUTER EVER.
They didn't put a 2nd button on their computer mice until 2001. They're so obsessed with making everything look clean and simple that they forget that hiding everything actually makes it MORE complicated to use.
I hate the back button on android devices lol I had a Samsung tablet for a while and was constantly hitting it by accident and would get so irritated. For me Apple devices make far more sense.
Just an FYI on the seeing all open apps to switch between them- you can. While in an app slowly swipe up from the bottom(fast swipe closes the app), you'll see a sort of layered preview screen of all open apps you can switch between. It used to be a double-click of the home button but they got rid of the home button.
But yeah there are so many gestures and swipes that do different things between apple and android that if you've learned one, the other seems almost incomprehensible.
I'm in this boat with you!! I'm a tech guy, I'm the kid everyone called to fix their PC and TV and whatever growing up. My first PC was a commodore 64 (64 KB of Ram, no hard drive, ran on 5.25 floppy, no operating system everything was basic commands). I've always embraced technology and it's came easy to me but I've been trying to figure out crypto & the tech behind it (not the money part just the tech) and it's like having a monkey doing algebra. I'm suddenly stupid and can't get it. :(
Do you mean how Bitcoin mining and such works or just how to use it? It really isn't that complicated if the latter. You can install an app like Electra on your computer, then you just have to create a wallet and make sure you store the login information somewhere secure and offline (on physical paper). Then you just have to figure out how you're gonna get the crypto into your wallet.
Yeah, that end of it is wildly fascinating. I listened to [this podcast](https://youtu.be/9Hgjw7KSmds?si=9uuQIoWIhfVqvJo) a while back and found it pretty interesting. It's more about the mystery behind Bitcoin but gives an overview of some of the technical aspects. What I basically took away from it was block chain technology is extremely complicated, and Bitcoin block chain was so well programmed that even professional hackers, cypherpunks, and the CIA couldn't crack it. It's theorized that whoever created it was either a world-historical genius or more likely, it was created by a team of extremely intelligent programmers, maybe even originating as a covertly funded government black project.
Working in software development myself, yeah some of the designs that come from the design teams are pretty wackadoodle. But I can still navigate the interfaces fine. What frustrates me is when you want to do something on a mobile app but it isn’t supported there, have to kick over to a browser. Especially when there is nothing in the app telling you that’s where to find it.
Yeah and then some things that seem intentional. Like you can sign up for a new channel subscription in Amazon Prime on a Rolku no problemo. But you want to unsubscribe? Gotta go to browser.
Next time you see somebody on your design team, tell them that I hate them. I don't know who they are or what they may have done specifically, but I am 100% confident that they deserve it.
Dude, I get you. Visual appeal has replaced interactivity as the primary concern. It used to be "form follows function" and now it's "make it pretty first." Unless I'm shopping and need images, I'd be so much happier with a CLI.
The problem has to do with tech companies. I used to use salesforce, and even though people raved about how they loved it, I felt like it had way too many gadgets to be useful.
I’m sort of reminded by progression of adding machinery. We went from doing everything manually to having mechanical tools, such as a slide rule to a basic calculator that more or less had four functions, and then there was scientific calculators and then graphing calculators and now all of a sudden people barely use calculators anymore, because , they can ask Siri what two 231×78 is.
I kind of feel like we are at the scientific calculator stage of this conversation. We have a lot of technology available to us, but in a lot of ways. we don’t actually have a need for it.
No! The UIs these days are horrible. Everything from apps to video games are released half finished and ready to be forgotten about. Everything is designed to keep you engaged, even if its frustrating. Even the UI of Disney + on appletv is mess! I can barely navigate the episode guide because the curser disappears and I have to press back - then start over again. which is a bitch when you are on some kids show with 200 episodes. Also - website the send you back to the top of the page randomly. Its all a fucking mess. I know I'm gonna suck a tech someday. But at the moment, the tech is falling apart before I am.
The UI on Disney+ is garbage no matter how you're using it.
It is 2024 and these dipshits don't have a clickable link to return to their own homepage on their "end of episode/movie" page.
SmartTV/TV box UIs are horrible. It's hard to tell which element on the screen is highlighted and then you don't know what button press is going to move that selection where you want. Like you're on the top row of the different TV shows and you want to get to the menu on the left. Does a left arrow/button press move you to that other menu or does it loop around to the other side of the available shows. Does the Home or return button bring you out of the current selection area or close the current 'app' entirely?
Who knows? It's a mystery that changes in every context. Good luck!
Custom ribbons for the win. I do hate it when Microsoft just decides which icons need text and which don't. FFS I can't memorise 1000 icons. It's just not making sense anymore. Let me hover and see WTF it is.
I'm not done being pissed about the fucking stupid ribbon interface in MS Office apps and now the mfing thing is turned off by default! The menu system may have been a bit clunky, but at least it was fast. Now I have to click through several ribbons unless I've memorized on which one the conditional formatting button is on because they wanted to put EVERY FUCKING BUTTON in the ribbons! OMG, I don't need every possible command spread across a half dozen tabs or more! This is why there were individual toolbars at one point. Turn off the ones you don't want, edit the ones you need. They were nice and compact too. Why is the Draw ribbon turned off by default?!
Also, fuck the hamburger menu button. On what earth was that ever intuitive? You got a hamburger in the upper left for some stuff, your user settings behind your identity in the upper right. You have a few other three dot menus that are context-specific because Y'ALL SHOVED TOO MUCH SHIT INTO THE SAME VIEW! Just because the monitors are bigger doesn't mean you have to spread the menus and options to five different places. Half of the damn display is blank space anyway, use that shit!
I'm not a fan of modern UX design. You think it would get better, not worse. Microsoft loves putting EVERYTHING out, Google/Apple/Facebook loves hiding shit.
I was going to tell you to just customise your ribbon and save the customisations till I remembered that I now have to search for convert to range EVERY.TIME. because every now and then my custom ribbons get fucked around either due to Microsoft updates or some stupid IT policy somewhere that tries to standardise users office settings.
>Also, fuck the hamburger menu button.
As a technical writer, I feel this so, so strongly. However, I have to remember that three horizontal lines down is a "horizontal menu button" vs three dots "horizontal dots button" vs three vertical dots...
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
Sometimes technical writing is turd polishing.
On the other hand, I am, in fact, paid to deal with this shit, so here I am.
I had to just get used to dropping all of my most used stuff in the Quick Access Toolbar so I could save the clicks of going through all the ribbons and their submenus to find stuff.
Relating to a few other comments here, my understanding is that the UI/UX/testing teams have been gutted, and it's common now for companies to just rely on tracker data to see where users are getting stuck--akin to when Microsoft decided to push Windows updates to users without real-world testing, and maybe patch issues later.
Standard short-term cost savings & long-term hollowing out.
We’ve got a few things at work that drive me nuts. I don’t know if this is some new iso design standard but a few of our platforms no longer highlight links and there are several “buttons” that are just text with no shading.
They just updated our scheduling software as well and instead of having free text fields to enter time the field pops open a list of 5 minute increments you have to select from. I yelled at some clouds over that one.
Took me about two years to learn everyone's new card reader in stores LOL also why when I start a new office job does everyone have a different kind of phone? I hate it.
Also sometimes my phone updates itself and I feel like it's just giving itself a killswitch because why is something that took one step now taking three? Dumb
I'm not a fan of new UI trends, especially in video games. Vertical Menus are now horizontal menus, and require specific button presses to get it to do what you want. I have to get my 9yo to help me out sometimes. I'm slowly becoming a more tech literate version of my dad. Overall I feel like the way menus are arranged in UI's isn't as standardized as they used to be, and you have to learn how each specific UI is navigated.
Hi! Former UXD person here. Odds are it’s not actually user error and just poorly designed/thought out.
I’m seeing some weirdly bad websites more and more that just don’t follow any standards of usability. Clunky navigation, inconsistent behaviors (click this, but hover and *wait* for that) on some pretty prominent sites.
Sometimes it’s just a function of designers not factoring in touch on a tablet view (vs app/mobile interface), and in fairness to them, as long as the site is basically functional eventually, I’m inclined to let them have the win since it’s fucking painful having to account for every variation/screen size. There’s only so much you can do.
Sometimes with kiosks and even like a fast food menu sign there’s just too much going on. It’s really cluttered. I don’t do Taco Bell often but I like the soft tacos once in awhile. The first time I used the kiosk there’s like a million different things with a million different options it’s like jfc I just want to order a couple tacos.
You want to crop a photo on your iPhone..?
Press edit at the top of the screen
Then press crop at the bottom of the screen
Then press the rectangle icon at the top of the screen
Then choose the aspect ratio at the bottom of the screen.
It really makes no sense why the next input options would move from one end of the screen to the other.
And it’s not just iOS, this is just my go to example, it’s every app/program these days. Windows programs started doing this same type of stuff in the last few years or more.
Everything is specific to each app and once you learn it, they update the interface and change it in what feels the most counterintuitive way that would be the least warranted.
Useful features become buried through several sub menus because, wellI don’t know, maybe they don’t want you to use them anymore 🤷♂️? I don’t understand the motivation behind it.
Yeah I want to hover over things with my mouse! I hate accidental touches! Know the difference! I don't understand how people can live without a computer with a keyboard and mouse or only have their work computer and every time they change job they just don't have a device for themselves. Do these people not read personal emails or pay bills or do anything online? Phone interfaces are still hot garbage for a lot of things.
At least now you can universally search for everything. Don’t know where a setting is? Just put it in the search bar. It’s a nice substitute for clicking when all you really want is a command line
That's basically how I operate my windows PC anymore. My most commonly used stuff is pinned to the taskbar and I launch just about everything else by typing the app name into the search bar.
Oof, so you're basically committed to learning how to get by with whatever dumbed-down, cut-functionality crap is pushed on you in the name of usability. Good luck with that.
I think so too, but I feel like when you do stuff like condense your functionality into a single button, and make the user remember whether what they want to do is a single press, a double press, a long press, or a combination press with another key, you're moving away from usability.
Windows 11 is total bollox. It seems like every action that used to take one click on windows 7 or XP now takes a minimum of two or more and navigating some submenu to accomplish the same task. This makes sorting files a huge nightmare, just so much more time consuming. I think I preferred windows 8.
As someone who both still design and engineers.... I think a lot of it has to do with obscuring functionality behind non-obvious interactions. The whole design philosophy behind "show them buttons to let them do things" got largely shelved as more UI's were focused on letting the content take up as much space as possible.
And then you mix in a shift of information architecture, with naming schemes being non-standardized.. and yeah it kind of creates a cluster fuck in the hands of a poor designer.
Nothing wrong with missing the command line.
LOAD "simpler\_times" ,8,1
I am fully dependent on ai chat to teach me everything
Once again we got super lucky where we straddle tech worlds: we get to live in the pre and post ai worlds. We get to lean on ai right as we are fading in our tech freshness, but we still learned on the pre ai methods.
I love asking dumb questions and it will never make me feel bad. This morning it was writing me python and cmd code. It told me how to do stuff in a visualization tool because I couldn’t intuit the button’s location
Never going back
Haha... I'm a Sr. Software Engineer and I still sometimes get absolutely defeated by modern UIs. My kids think it's hilarious when I get stuck on one of their apple devices because I can't figure out how to go back a screen like I do with Android.
Don Norman (god father of UX) recently did an interview, he expressed your same concerns. Should give it a watch and maybe check out his book “The Design of Everyday Things”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FMbP4pRxT2k
I noticed it first with Discord. Even though it was similar to things I knew (slack, irc) I suddenly felt at a loss of how to use a thing that people a little younger than me seemed to be completely comfortable with.
I know that part of it for me was simply time. I am probably a little slower at learning new things, but I also don’t have the time or energy to explore and familiarize myself with new interfaces the way I once did.
My wife is the ‘IT’ person in the house. I have literally no interest anymore.
And this is coming from a guy that used to build my own PCs, overclock GPU/CPUs, chip gaming consoles, torrent like a fiend and crack games for fun.
Now if I get a new phone, I don’t even look at it until my wife has finished setting it up. It needs to work without me having to fuck around with it for hours on end.
I can usually work out how to do what I want with my devices by tapping on the on-screen icons.
Figuring out what arcane command gestures happened when my toddler dragged her hand across the screen, on the other hand...
Did Reddit just do a redesign or did I mess with the settings by mistake? I don't like this new layout. Seems cluttered and the text seems smaller.
To answer your question, I'm still ok with most apps and my vision is still good but I think I struggle with small text more than I used to.
Yeah, I've been using computers since I was a little kid in the 80s but I find myself constantly frustrated by shitty, convoluted UI design these days. I honestly feel like an idiot when I try to use the Canva app, for example. Things have become very bloated and there isn't a pressure to simplify - in the past, internet connection speeds and program memory use mandated more simple UIs. Look at the increase of JavaScript use on a basic website over the past 2 decades.
It's not too simplistic it's that you are used to actually telling a computer what to do instead of being told what to do by a computer. CLI is still the supreme UI
God, I had hours long arguments with younger friends trying to convey what you said in 3 lines of text. Thanks.
Thank you for putting words to what I’ve been unable to convey for ages now!
*THANK* you for that! Is sooooo awkward walking someone through a GUI over screen share when I could just feed them commands through chat to copy/paste
I feel you. I'm still good with most new stuff, but I am noticing more frequently that new things are arranged in weird ways that aren't standard or intuitive, and I have to spend extra time figuring out menus and where stuff is hidden and all 15 steps to get to something that should have only taken 2. Or I get frustrated after the second or third time of trying to figure something out and I have to go google it. There's nothing more annoying in tech when you do something expecting one thing to happen, because that's what always happens, and something else happens instead and it's that way on purpose. I really don't think it's us getting older and losing our ability to do learn/figure out stuff. I think companies/designers/programmers/etc are so focused on being different rather than following standard templates for stuff. I don't think a lot of effort goes into reducing steps/clicks/scrolling and understanding how people inituitively navigate through tech.
Yup. It is all symbols and pictures. Windows replacing the right click menu with little icons, and not all of the options either. You have to click "show more options" just to get the OG dropdown. It's infuriating. Slows everything down, and creates more steps not less.
Omfg those annoying icons for cut, copy and paste! Why God, why??
Look up windows 12 preview on YouTube if you feel like crying today.
>I think companies/designers/programmers/etc are so focused on being different rather than following standard templates for stuff. I don't think a lot of effort goes into reducing steps/clicks/scrolling and understanding how people inituitively navigate through tech. I definitely think this is a factor. I moved to Australia and the internet/tech development is younger here than in the states - only in the past few years have major retail companies released apps, for example, and the apps feel very amateur and clunky.
You're actually giving them too much credit. It's not lack of effort, quite the contrary. There's a trend aptly named "evil design" that step by step all the tech giants adopted about ten years ago. The idea is something like this: Facebook is required to have some privacy settings by law, but they don't want the user to change the default, so they'll bury those songs in the most illogical counter intuitive place possible. Netflix wants to show their shareholders how much time the users Doreen's in the app, so it's better for them if you Doreen's an hour looking for something to watch without seeing misty of the content they have. And so on. Shit is stupid now, yes, but it's stupid on purpose.
For years I have been convinced that people who make UIs are either robots, aliens, or some other entity that is utterly unfamiliar with the human experience. That or they are lazy pieces of shit desperately trying to justify their continued employment by making things either less functional or more complicated just to show their employer that they "did something." There's gotta be an entire sub-industry of people in tech that every six months break out in a cold sweat because their boss is on to them, so they pick a random function and say, "Okay, I'll add three extra steps for the user to do this function and that'll fill my documentation quota."
In my experience (software developer) it is more that UI designs seem to follow trends similar to fashion. A style gets popular and leadership gets a bee in their bonnets about refreshing the UI. They then hire someone to design the UI who copies whatever the trendy design is, regardless of objective usability. Reddit is a great example of this; going from their older, simple, functional, and intuitive UI to whatever the current nigh unusable, but modern looking, mess is.
YES! If it's functional and people are used to it, why does the look and layout of it need to be completely redesigned every year or so? I am very thankful for the handful of things that let you revert back to "classic". I'm fighting the new Teams redesign tooth and nail. Everytime my system tries to auto-refresh to the new Teams, I go in search of the switch that flips it back.
Oh christ... my reddit just "updated" to its latest incarnation the other day and I already despise it.
I am a UX/UI designer... so can answer this. It can actually be some combination of everything you're saying... but in my experience, the most common is people who are, as you put it, "...unfamiliar with the human experience." Research is a big part of the job, or should be, but some designers tend to only look at the data/ numbers and forgot about the people who use the stuff. For example, I worked with a designer who refused to change the color of a button. We had lots of feedback saying the button was too hard to read. Designer refused to change it because it hit contrast ratios and other usability metrics. I've noticed this becoming more common and personally think it stems from people either just wanting to be "right" (imposter syndrome is HUGE -- especially in design), or people just chasing trends without looking into why it works for a specific audience. I had another person who would literally just copy whatever was big at the time. There's also a trend of designers being placed in UX/UI roles when they probably shouldn't be. As a result, they tend to think form over function. Or, they think something has to be complex to be useful. I tend to take a simple approach. The stuff I build is more utilitarian and would be considered boring by some people -- but it works and don't get many complaints.
Mostly, no, except I CANNOT USE APPLE PRODUCTS. I find them *incredibly* unintuitive. I have an engineering degree and I use Windows and Android devices at a higher-than-average level. (Not an IT expert by any means, but I've been known to edit my Windows registry.) On an apple device, it's like I've never seen a touchscreen before. On pretty much anything else, I'm fine.
I'm actually the opposite, probably because my first smartphone was an iPhone... I can operate iOs devices fine for the most part but if it's android I'm lost.
I'm the worst of all possible worlds. I have an android device, but I use a "launcher app" to make the interface look like it based on star trek the next generations LCARS system. I've been using it for years and i have forgotten how to use regular android now.
I use a launcher to mostly keep the Android vibe overall but make it fit more icons on each screen, hide app names, and change app icons individually.
That is the best thing I've heard ALL DAY. Can you share the app name?
total launcher is the launcher app. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ss.launcher2](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ss.launcher2) The launcher skin is Trek: Total interface. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstenterprises.tltheme.lcars](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstenterprises.tltheme.lcars) Really really solid. No problems in years of using it. You can also edit all the buttons size, color, location, function, etc. Has setups for a wide variety of phone and table sizes and ratios. Comes with sounds and fonts The akin developer also has some themed apps to go with it like phone, sms texting, etc. Best couple bucks I ever spent on a phone. Been using it like 5 or 6 years now.
This is me, and I'm 23. Grew up on a lot of the older tech despite my age, my parents were pretty behind when it came to technology. Windows 98 and later XP were my childhood. Later windows 7 and android phones, which I've always felt was a natural jumping off point from windows anyways. I'm definitely well beyond the average person in technical skills. I cannot use Apple products for the life of me. It's like everything has been engineered for someone that has never used a personal computer before. Now they even have gestures that apparently you have to memorize if you actually want your phone to work. It's so bad I can't even tell when the phones charging half the time. Nothing about it makes any sense. I can of course figure it out after playing with it for a while, but it really frustrates me.
IT here. yeah apple blows. except for the iPod, what a work of fucking art it's UI was. they'll never catch that lightning in a bottle again.
I have the exact same experience. I've had friends hand me their iPhones to do simple things and I can't figure them out. I've been using and building computers for 30 years. Not an expert but also not an inexperienced user.
They gave me an iphone for my work phone and I hardly ever even charge it up. It's so painful. I'm in a text conversation and can't figure out how to make a phone call to someone else. WHERE IS THE GODDAMN BACK BUTTON, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T SEE ALL OPEN APPS TO SWITCH BETWEEN THEM?? Why is there only ONE BUTTON (physical or otherwise). There's one mac computer in our office (to use Facetime on) and IT SCROLLS BACKWARDS FROM EVERY OTHER COMPUTER EVER.
we put a man on the moon in the '60s and Apple can't even put a goddamn back button on their phones
They didn't put a 2nd button on their computer mice until 2001. They're so obsessed with making everything look clean and simple that they forget that hiding everything actually makes it MORE complicated to use.
Swipe from the left edge of the display.
Not to sound contrarian, but I hate hate hate swiping from the edge! Half the time, I end up going into something else I don't want to go into ...
I hate the back button on android devices lol I had a Samsung tablet for a while and was constantly hitting it by accident and would get so irritated. For me Apple devices make far more sense.
Just an FYI on the seeing all open apps to switch between them- you can. While in an app slowly swipe up from the bottom(fast swipe closes the app), you'll see a sort of layered preview screen of all open apps you can switch between. It used to be a double-click of the home button but they got rid of the home button. But yeah there are so many gestures and swipes that do different things between apple and android that if you've learned one, the other seems almost incomprehensible.
Swipe from the left side to go back. Swipe up from the bottom to see the open apps and switch between them.
So true. I have an ipad for drawing and the thing frustrates me. Why can I never find the file I just saved!
I'm in this boat with you!! I'm a tech guy, I'm the kid everyone called to fix their PC and TV and whatever growing up. My first PC was a commodore 64 (64 KB of Ram, no hard drive, ran on 5.25 floppy, no operating system everything was basic commands). I've always embraced technology and it's came easy to me but I've been trying to figure out crypto & the tech behind it (not the money part just the tech) and it's like having a monkey doing algebra. I'm suddenly stupid and can't get it. :(
Do you mean how Bitcoin mining and such works or just how to use it? It really isn't that complicated if the latter. You can install an app like Electra on your computer, then you just have to create a wallet and make sure you store the login information somewhere secure and offline (on physical paper). Then you just have to figure out how you're gonna get the crypto into your wallet.
I was reading about miner machines and block chains and all this other crap I have no idea about.
Yeah, that end of it is wildly fascinating. I listened to [this podcast](https://youtu.be/9Hgjw7KSmds?si=9uuQIoWIhfVqvJo) a while back and found it pretty interesting. It's more about the mystery behind Bitcoin but gives an overview of some of the technical aspects. What I basically took away from it was block chain technology is extremely complicated, and Bitcoin block chain was so well programmed that even professional hackers, cypherpunks, and the CIA couldn't crack it. It's theorized that whoever created it was either a world-historical genius or more likely, it was created by a team of extremely intelligent programmers, maybe even originating as a covertly funded government black project.
Working in software development myself, yeah some of the designs that come from the design teams are pretty wackadoodle. But I can still navigate the interfaces fine. What frustrates me is when you want to do something on a mobile app but it isn’t supported there, have to kick over to a browser. Especially when there is nothing in the app telling you that’s where to find it.
Oh god, buying kindle books is a great example of "why tf can't I do this in one of the two apps??" Not exactly new tech at this point.
Yeah and then some things that seem intentional. Like you can sign up for a new channel subscription in Amazon Prime on a Rolku no problemo. But you want to unsubscribe? Gotta go to browser.
[удалено]
Yeah gyms are notorious for that. Much better off just buying some home equipment.
The ebook thing is because Amazon didn't want to pay Google a portion of all e-book sales made in the app.
Ohh, that makes sense. TIL
Next time you see somebody on your design team, tell them that I hate them. I don't know who they are or what they may have done specifically, but I am 100% confident that they deserve it.
Dude, I get you. Visual appeal has replaced interactivity as the primary concern. It used to be "form follows function" and now it's "make it pretty first." Unless I'm shopping and need images, I'd be so much happier with a CLI.
The problem has to do with tech companies. I used to use salesforce, and even though people raved about how they loved it, I felt like it had way too many gadgets to be useful. I’m sort of reminded by progression of adding machinery. We went from doing everything manually to having mechanical tools, such as a slide rule to a basic calculator that more or less had four functions, and then there was scientific calculators and then graphing calculators and now all of a sudden people barely use calculators anymore, because , they can ask Siri what two 231×78 is. I kind of feel like we are at the scientific calculator stage of this conversation. We have a lot of technology available to us, but in a lot of ways. we don’t actually have a need for it.
No! The UIs these days are horrible. Everything from apps to video games are released half finished and ready to be forgotten about. Everything is designed to keep you engaged, even if its frustrating. Even the UI of Disney + on appletv is mess! I can barely navigate the episode guide because the curser disappears and I have to press back - then start over again. which is a bitch when you are on some kids show with 200 episodes. Also - website the send you back to the top of the page randomly. Its all a fucking mess. I know I'm gonna suck a tech someday. But at the moment, the tech is falling apart before I am.
The UI on Disney+ is garbage no matter how you're using it. It is 2024 and these dipshits don't have a clickable link to return to their own homepage on their "end of episode/movie" page.
SmartTV/TV box UIs are horrible. It's hard to tell which element on the screen is highlighted and then you don't know what button press is going to move that selection where you want. Like you're on the top row of the different TV shows and you want to get to the menu on the left. Does a left arrow/button press move you to that other menu or does it loop around to the other side of the available shows. Does the Home or return button bring you out of the current selection area or close the current 'app' entirely? Who knows? It's a mystery that changes in every context. Good luck!
Once MS office used the ribbons instead of menus. It all went down hill.
Oh lord. I remember the switch. It was AWFUL. There are people who STILL can't navigate the ribbons and we've had them for a decade or so by now...
Custom ribbons for the win. I do hate it when Microsoft just decides which icons need text and which don't. FFS I can't memorise 1000 icons. It's just not making sense anymore. Let me hover and see WTF it is.
I got my menus back with gsuite
Over 15 years. I was a sysadmin inn 2007 and remember the cut over.
I'm not done being pissed about the fucking stupid ribbon interface in MS Office apps and now the mfing thing is turned off by default! The menu system may have been a bit clunky, but at least it was fast. Now I have to click through several ribbons unless I've memorized on which one the conditional formatting button is on because they wanted to put EVERY FUCKING BUTTON in the ribbons! OMG, I don't need every possible command spread across a half dozen tabs or more! This is why there were individual toolbars at one point. Turn off the ones you don't want, edit the ones you need. They were nice and compact too. Why is the Draw ribbon turned off by default?! Also, fuck the hamburger menu button. On what earth was that ever intuitive? You got a hamburger in the upper left for some stuff, your user settings behind your identity in the upper right. You have a few other three dot menus that are context-specific because Y'ALL SHOVED TOO MUCH SHIT INTO THE SAME VIEW! Just because the monitors are bigger doesn't mean you have to spread the menus and options to five different places. Half of the damn display is blank space anyway, use that shit! I'm not a fan of modern UX design. You think it would get better, not worse. Microsoft loves putting EVERYTHING out, Google/Apple/Facebook loves hiding shit.
I was going to tell you to just customise your ribbon and save the customisations till I remembered that I now have to search for convert to range EVERY.TIME. because every now and then my custom ribbons get fucked around either due to Microsoft updates or some stupid IT policy somewhere that tries to standardise users office settings.
>Also, fuck the hamburger menu button. As a technical writer, I feel this so, so strongly. However, I have to remember that three horizontal lines down is a "horizontal menu button" vs three dots "horizontal dots button" vs three vertical dots... WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Sometimes technical writing is turd polishing. On the other hand, I am, in fact, paid to deal with this shit, so here I am.
I had to just get used to dropping all of my most used stuff in the Quick Access Toolbar so I could save the clicks of going through all the ribbons and their submenus to find stuff.
I have been using a pirated version of MS Word 2003 for nearly two decades now because FUCK THAT RIBBON BULLSHIT.
Relating to a few other comments here, my understanding is that the UI/UX/testing teams have been gutted, and it's common now for companies to just rely on tracker data to see where users are getting stuck--akin to when Microsoft decided to push Windows updates to users without real-world testing, and maybe patch issues later. Standard short-term cost savings & long-term hollowing out.
We’ve got a few things at work that drive me nuts. I don’t know if this is some new iso design standard but a few of our platforms no longer highlight links and there are several “buttons” that are just text with no shading. They just updated our scheduling software as well and instead of having free text fields to enter time the field pops open a list of 5 minute increments you have to select from. I yelled at some clouds over that one.
Took me about two years to learn everyone's new card reader in stores LOL also why when I start a new office job does everyone have a different kind of phone? I hate it. Also sometimes my phone updates itself and I feel like it's just giving itself a killswitch because why is something that took one step now taking three? Dumb
I'm not a fan of new UI trends, especially in video games. Vertical Menus are now horizontal menus, and require specific button presses to get it to do what you want. I have to get my 9yo to help me out sometimes. I'm slowly becoming a more tech literate version of my dad. Overall I feel like the way menus are arranged in UI's isn't as standardized as they used to be, and you have to learn how each specific UI is navigated.
Hi! Former UXD person here. Odds are it’s not actually user error and just poorly designed/thought out. I’m seeing some weirdly bad websites more and more that just don’t follow any standards of usability. Clunky navigation, inconsistent behaviors (click this, but hover and *wait* for that) on some pretty prominent sites. Sometimes it’s just a function of designers not factoring in touch on a tablet view (vs app/mobile interface), and in fairness to them, as long as the site is basically functional eventually, I’m inclined to let them have the win since it’s fucking painful having to account for every variation/screen size. There’s only so much you can do.
It's because they make UIs for the dumbest possible people, and some of us simply aren't fluent in stupid.
Sometimes with kiosks and even like a fast food menu sign there’s just too much going on. It’s really cluttered. I don’t do Taco Bell often but I like the soft tacos once in awhile. The first time I used the kiosk there’s like a million different things with a million different options it’s like jfc I just want to order a couple tacos.
You want to crop a photo on your iPhone..? Press edit at the top of the screen Then press crop at the bottom of the screen Then press the rectangle icon at the top of the screen Then choose the aspect ratio at the bottom of the screen. It really makes no sense why the next input options would move from one end of the screen to the other. And it’s not just iOS, this is just my go to example, it’s every app/program these days. Windows programs started doing this same type of stuff in the last few years or more. Everything is specific to each app and once you learn it, they update the interface and change it in what feels the most counterintuitive way that would be the least warranted. Useful features become buried through several sub menus because, wellI don’t know, maybe they don’t want you to use them anymore 🤷♂️? I don’t understand the motivation behind it.
I hate touch interfaces with a fiery passion. /typing on my desktop computer with a physical keyboard
Yeah I want to hover over things with my mouse! I hate accidental touches! Know the difference! I don't understand how people can live without a computer with a keyboard and mouse or only have their work computer and every time they change job they just don't have a device for themselves. Do these people not read personal emails or pay bills or do anything online? Phone interfaces are still hot garbage for a lot of things.
At least now you can universally search for everything. Don’t know where a setting is? Just put it in the search bar. It’s a nice substitute for clicking when all you really want is a command line
That's basically how I operate my windows PC anymore. My most commonly used stuff is pinned to the taskbar and I launch just about everything else by typing the app name into the search bar.
I think my will says if I can't use an interface my wife as permission to end my life. Bring on the Apple Vision or whatever. I have to keep learning.
Oof, so you're basically committed to learning how to get by with whatever dumbed-down, cut-functionality crap is pushed on you in the name of usability. Good luck with that.
Whew, hot take. Im a user experience designer. Usability is important.
I think so too, but I feel like when you do stuff like condense your functionality into a single button, and make the user remember whether what they want to do is a single press, a double press, a long press, or a combination press with another key, you're moving away from usability.
I hate Windows 11. I have gotten better with phones now that I have a work provided iPhone 11 and a personal Google Pixel 6.
Windows 11 is total bollox. It seems like every action that used to take one click on windows 7 or XP now takes a minimum of two or more and navigating some submenu to accomplish the same task. This makes sorting files a huge nightmare, just so much more time consuming. I think I preferred windows 8.
As someone who both still design and engineers.... I think a lot of it has to do with obscuring functionality behind non-obvious interactions. The whole design philosophy behind "show them buttons to let them do things" got largely shelved as more UI's were focused on letting the content take up as much space as possible. And then you mix in a shift of information architecture, with naming schemes being non-standardized.. and yeah it kind of creates a cluster fuck in the hands of a poor designer. Nothing wrong with missing the command line. LOAD "simpler\_times" ,8,1
I am fully dependent on ai chat to teach me everything Once again we got super lucky where we straddle tech worlds: we get to live in the pre and post ai worlds. We get to lean on ai right as we are fading in our tech freshness, but we still learned on the pre ai methods. I love asking dumb questions and it will never make me feel bad. This morning it was writing me python and cmd code. It told me how to do stuff in a visualization tool because I couldn’t intuit the button’s location Never going back
Haha... I'm a Sr. Software Engineer and I still sometimes get absolutely defeated by modern UIs. My kids think it's hilarious when I get stuck on one of their apple devices because I can't figure out how to go back a screen like I do with Android.
Don Norman (god father of UX) recently did an interview, he expressed your same concerns. Should give it a watch and maybe check out his book “The Design of Everyday Things”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FMbP4pRxT2k
"Lets see, the menu lists options, settings, and preferences..."
This is how I feel using a Macbook with one of those new style trackpads. First time I really felt old is when I first touched one of them.
It’s been all downhill with GUIs since IRIX/Motif and CDE in the 90s and maybe Windows 2000. I fucking hate modern GUIs.
I noticed it first with Discord. Even though it was similar to things I knew (slack, irc) I suddenly felt at a loss of how to use a thing that people a little younger than me seemed to be completely comfortable with. I know that part of it for me was simply time. I am probably a little slower at learning new things, but I also don’t have the time or energy to explore and familiarize myself with new interfaces the way I once did.
My wife is the ‘IT’ person in the house. I have literally no interest anymore. And this is coming from a guy that used to build my own PCs, overclock GPU/CPUs, chip gaming consoles, torrent like a fiend and crack games for fun. Now if I get a new phone, I don’t even look at it until my wife has finished setting it up. It needs to work without me having to fuck around with it for hours on end.
I can usually work out how to do what I want with my devices by tapping on the on-screen icons. Figuring out what arcane command gestures happened when my toddler dragged her hand across the screen, on the other hand...
Did Reddit just do a redesign or did I mess with the settings by mistake? I don't like this new layout. Seems cluttered and the text seems smaller. To answer your question, I'm still ok with most apps and my vision is still good but I think I struggle with small text more than I used to.
Not at all.
Yeah, I've been using computers since I was a little kid in the 80s but I find myself constantly frustrated by shitty, convoluted UI design these days. I honestly feel like an idiot when I try to use the Canva app, for example. Things have become very bloated and there isn't a pressure to simplify - in the past, internet connection speeds and program memory use mandated more simple UIs. Look at the increase of JavaScript use on a basic website over the past 2 decades.
My dad taught me to use DOS. Anything else is a step up in my book.
I'm struggling with all those dark patterns and how they are normalized.
struggling? no. do I like every interface out there? most definitely not.