Kieran Healy
Me planning to teach computing stuff, imagining exchanges:
— So, the file system is like a filing cabinet with an index …
— What’s a filing cabinet?
— And you have these files in it …
— What's a file?
— OK imagine a bunch of index cards th–
— Wh–
— Sorry, sorry. Uh, you know the wallpaper on your laptop screen?
— Yes
— Imagine that was a real desk.
— OK. Do I have to share it?
— No. You know all the documents you have on it?
— Yeah
— Imagine they were really on the real desk
— OK?
— Now,
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@cstross @Oggie @darkling @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om wait they're gray now?? I haven't used trashOS since around 2016 and they were colored back then, it's like the most noticeable thing about macOS lol
Charlie Stross
@Oggie @darkling @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om My favourite (not favourite) was when Apple dumped skeuomorphism for Metal design and *turned all the window controls grey* (instead of red/amber/green). Which rendered my 85-yo mother unable to resize or minimize windows for the rest of her life. (She was colour-cued, not position-cued.)
Oggie
@darkling @cstross @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om
This is absolutely the sort of thing I mean. Other fun ones are 'We decided to move everything about 5% to the left because we feel it meets our aesthetic better' on a product that's been out for 6 years.
Or 'We have randomly exchanged the position of two buttons. See if you can figure out which!'
Or 'We changed our keybinds, and made space for another control. We declined to add the control at this time'.
Oggie
@cstross @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om
On that note, can we possibly work out some sort of scaling punishment for UI designers who randomly just move shit around for no goddamn reason in products that we are already extremely familiar with?
I can understand it (somewhat) if there is a reasonable straightforward path, but just swapping around things that worked just fine via forced updates is absolutely infuriating to me.
Hugo Mills
@Oggie @cstross @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om I've tried using qgis (a open-source geospatial data tool), and (a) they have a load of toolbar buttons, all with obscure icons and no tooltips, and (b) they've moved them around and redrawn them at least once.
This means that many extant how-tos are simply wrong. "Press the pre-sliced yoghurt button". Umm... which one's that in this version?
Charlie Stross
@genecowan @kjhealy @id1om BUT ... while the skeuomorphism doesn't work for the kids, it's VITAL to help orient the cognitively-impaired elderly! Who are nowadays folks who've been using computers for decades but find them increasingly prone to random irritating change.
Gene Cowan 🏳️🌈
@kjhealy @id1om And now we know why Apple dropped all the skeuomorphic design in iOS. Interesting that it’s still there in desktop UIs.
Khleedril
@kjhealy
... press windows-e and imagine the desk automorphs into a Web browser...
I'm actually against stupid paradigms, they told progress back.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@cstross @Oggie @darkling @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om honestly the lack of skeumorphism in modern design doesn't bother me at all because I'm one of a sort of "in-between" generation that grew up with desktop computers from childhood instead of either filing cabinets OR mobile phones, so the paradigm that I think in is literally just computer user interface trees themselves, but the thing that drives me absolutely batshit insane about Apple's software design choices is how often they hide necessary or useful actions behind completely unexplained gestures or arbitrary tiny button menus somewhere and stuff like that. They insist on squirreling away everything to make the UI as blank as possible and so sacrifice the actual usability and discoverability of their interfaces for making those interfaces seem superficially simple so they don't overwhelm people on initial impression. It's essentially sacrificing long-term usability in favor of the short term appearance or feeling of usability.
Charlie Stross
@anarchopunk_girl @Oggie @darkling @genecowan @kjhealy @id1om They went grey for a while: I blame Jony Ive. (Now they're coloured but flat.)
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@genecowan @cstross @Oggie @darkling @kjhealy @id1om it's why, despite how much people revile them, I actually vastly prefer the UI/UX of Linux and Android — they're by far the least afraid of just.... having lots of buttons on the screen.
Gene Cowan 🏳️🌈
@anarchopunk_girl @cstross @Oggie @darkling @kjhealy @id1om My feelings precisely. The hidden items and deep dives required to find something (see: latest system prefs UI) are maddening.
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