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   The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:05:37 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

   Been writing up some super basic notes on using “intuitive” tech for an octogenarian who has never used a touchscreen before and let me tell you, so many things people consider “intuitive” are absolutely not when you try to explain them from first principles. I think we’ve got worse at building truly intuitive interfaces in the last 20 years because no-one involved has known a time before many of these assumed behaviours existed

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:08:54 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     Old intuitive interface design was rooted in the concept of “affordance”, in that things did what they looked like they did, or felt they did when you touched them. Buttons were raised and went down, knobs turned, sliders only went back and forth. Now, nothing looks like what it does; everything assumes a meta knowledge, something that is completely the opposite of intuition

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:17:02 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     Take this post. How do I know the flat icons underneath the post are buttons I can press, and yet this icon:
     ➡️
     is not? Only because I already know the context rules. I have to know them to know what’s interactive and what’s not. The amount of pre-knowledge UIs expect these days would make UI designers of old spin in their graves

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     Dad (geekanddad@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:37:06 JST Dad

     in reply to

     @sinbad And on early Macintosh a reduction of hidden commands. Everything you could do was visible in a menu or on screen.

     But the sections in the early Macintosh manual on how to use a mouse (which was limited to 1 button to make them easier to learn for complete neophytes) is multiple pages with graphics and so on. Really shows how far we’ve come from those first days.

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:37:06 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • Dad

     @GeekAndDad yeah, and these days Apple are leading the way in design that sacrifices obviousness for prettier looking devices

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     andrewwillmott (andrewwillmott@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:37:30 JST andrewwillmott

     in reply to

     @sinbad It feels like we've lost so much knowledge from the era of the classic Apple "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" book.

     (Including Apple, a company that on iOS came up with the idea of a search box that you can only access by knowing you have to scroll upwards to reveal it. With nothing to indicate that it's there.)

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 07:19:38 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • andrewwillmott

     @andrewwillmott yeah, huge fall from their original ideals

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 07:23:16 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • Chris Armstrong

     @armstrong I’ve had to write that “tap” means “a short touch with the tip of your finger, not the nail” based on previous experience with older folks

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     Chris Armstrong (armstrong@mastodon.design)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 07:23:17 JST Chris Armstrong

     in reply to

     @sinbad I remember handing an iPad to my nan and telling her to tap the screen, and she hit it with her knuckle

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     posniewski (posniewski@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 08:24:36 JST posniewski

     in reply to

     @sinbad PREACH!

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     Laura (landelare@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 08:50:49 JST Laura

     in reply to

     @sinbad UX has been going downhill since Windows 8 / IOS 7 :(

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     Joni Korpi (jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 20:51:03 JST Joni Korpi

     in reply to

     @sinbad This is very much the case. Dwindling use of affordances along with rising use of “modes” (the same action does very different things depending on context) is what has ruined UIs. We learned this like 25 years ago and somehow forgot. https://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-Interactive/dp/0201379376

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 21:22:32 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • Joni Korpi

     @jonikorpi I think it’s worse, I think designers deliberately threw this away because they prioritise things looking pretty & “modern” over being intuitive

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     Joni Korpi (jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 21:28:32 JST Joni Korpi

     in reply to

     @sinbad From my perch all I’ve really seen is the entire industry copying Apple. After a while Apple stopped being good at design, but the copying didn’t stop.

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     Markus Latvala (markuslatvala@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 21:31:52 JST Markus Latvala

     in reply to

     • Joni Korpi

     @sinbad @jonikorpi Maybe organizations have simply fired the actual UX designers because "anyone can do it".

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 21:50:52 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • Markus Latvala
     • Joni Korpi

     @markuslatvala @jonikorpi I've known some good visual designers, and some good UX designers, and it's absolutely not the same skill. Sadly web & phone app design has completely elevated the former at the expense of the latter. It goes all the way to the top too, e.g. Jony Ive making some terrible design decisions in the pursuit of the clean lines and thinness that undermined usability badly

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     Markus Latvala (markuslatvala@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 23:09:41 JST Markus Latvala

     in reply to

     • Joni Korpi

     @sinbad @jonikorpi It's not the same skill because it's not even the same field. HCI is engineering, visual design is art.

     Heck, even the car manufacturers have now taken the looks over usability route. I really hate those new VWs and whatnots with their haptic feedback buttons and poorly designed operating systems.