The Mobile App Design Tail Wags the Desktop Software Design Dog

CowboyRobot writes "The metaphors and conventions of mobile apps on phones and tablets are now driving the design of desktop software. For example, dialog boxes in typical desktop software used to be complex, requiring lots of interaction. But these are now typically much simpler with far fewer options in a single pane. Drop-down menus are evolving, too. The former style of multiple cascading menus is being replaced. Drop-downs today have a smaller range of options (due to mobile screens being so small and the need to have the entries big enough that a finger touch can select it), and they never use the cascading menu. In Web-based apps, the mobile metaphors are finding greater traction as well. One need only look at the new Google Mail (GMail) interface and see how it's changed over the last year to view the effects of this new direction: All icons are monochrome, the number of buttons is very limited, and there's a More button that keeps the additional options off the main screen."

Comments

Dumbing down

[Hatta]

The dumbing down of computers continues. What else is new?

Re:Dumbing down

[Kenshin]

I honestly don't see what's wrong with that, as long as it's not the dumbing down of *all* computers.

Car analogy time: I can't fucking stand manual transmission, but do I understand why people like it. They can have it. But the people who like manual transmission look down upon automatic transmission and complain "it's the dumbing down of cars."

Re:Dumbing down

[Hatta]

For how long? We might have the source, but there's no guarantee that there will be hardware to run it on in the future. And Microsoft is doing everything in its power to make that happen.

Re:Dumbing down

[Darkness404]

Except for the fact that it is the dumbing down of the vast majority of computers. Ever used Windows 8? There's no way to switch back to the start menu without downloading third-party software (such as RetroUI). While Windows 8 is undeniably better than Windows 7 at supporting tablets, it doesn't make much sense to shoehorn a tablet/phone UI on a computer. To use a car analogy its like Microsoft is discontinuing any manual transmission cars and there's no way to get back a manual transmission once you've "upgraded".

Granted, if you use *Nix you can still customize your computer no matter what the idiot developers *cough* gnome *cough* have recently done, but if you use Windows you are out of luck. And if you use a Mac, well, you long ago gave up customization.

Re:Dumbing down

[vlueboy]

The dumbing down of computers continues. What else is new?

I would not call it dumbing down when the fact is that "the dumb" expect an intuitiveness that is just NOT here yet. A trend started by toolbars decades ago ASSUMES previous familiarity. If we learned anything from the backslash caused back in Office 2003 when the file menu went away, it was that it's hard to explain to someone over the phone what to click on when even your description of the icon can fall flat or cause ambiguity in what the user thinks you're suggesting.

Today, smartphone feature reduction (more like forced simplification) has bled into webmail GUIs. For the adults I tutor one on one, I chose setting them up with Yahoo over Gmail due to richer, written interfaces. I also chose Firefox over Chrome due to the same, back before FF killed the menu in a copy-cat move that would undo this very effort. Imagine all the complaints I got from 3 of these students over 50+ years old when their Yahoo text labels went away last month. They instead got arrows, gear icons, disappearing options (dynamic) and paper clips where they expect "Reply", "Delete", "Attach". Those icons were always there, but they never cared to notice, kinda like people spend years clicking on "Edit \ Copy" without noticing what the Control - C and its icon are supposed to help with. The masses do not pay attention even when there's no pressure, and they did not take being forced to adapt very well. The ones who do are already computer savvy.

Even though the buttons are far fewer, tablets are even worse. My mother unlearned how to Attach a file a dozen times. Finally, she learned the tablet GUI provides fewer confusion, but she's still greatly confused and is afraid of exploring what she thinks is a cryptic GUI and invisible "if you see nothing helpful, you're supposed to hold your finger down for the menu the programmer hid for that option". Android's interface is terrible for teaching an older person with limited memory AND time --I've had limited exposure to iPhones but find them friendlier and more likely to use words. See that gear icon over there [settings]? See that three line icon over here [menu]? See that bifurcating icon over here [share]? See that magnifying glass [search], not to be confused with this magnifying glass with a PLUS in it [zoom]? See those overlapping squares [windows]? Heck, I new it was trouble when I found it impossible to have them master multiple windows, let alone summoning and handling multiple tabs (plus icon in one browser, or square tabby thing in IE, or File \ New Tab in another)

Older people tend to

1) refuse to read our notes, books or sign up for classes in a real school with real homework. Too busy with fun and an "I need it now" attitude
2) tablets have no mouseover help labels
3) refuse to think through "geeky" words when 95% of the sentence makes sense.

With things my mother enjoys on facebook, she constantly uses the hardcover dictionary to confirm spelling and meanings. The second there's a geeky word, she completely locks up and wants a quick way out. Dumbing down provides such a way, but becomes a trap destined to be understood only by the initiated, which are a much younger crowd that has no problem or shame in asking for help.

Re:Dumbing down

[RCL]

You can have a GP computer which will be locked from installing a third-party OS, at least for all practical reasons. Obsession with security is so high these days that this "only run trusted stuff" approach seems to be welcomed even by geeks - who are happy to build their own cage.

Re:Dumbing down

[The Master Control P]

I'd just like to say, I would totally buy an automatic transmission which had "drive" and "drive more" on it.

Re:Dumbing down

[Microlith]

The problem comes not with signing, but with who controls the chain of trust. That is what you need to be concerned about.

If I hold the keys to the chain of trust, then it's my computer and secure. Anything else is unacceptable and an abuse of security policies for the sake of control.

Re:Dumbing down

[Microlith]

I can't avoid the Modern interface. There are a rather large number of options in the OS that are only accessible via that UI and, conversely, many that cannot. The OS is schizophrenic and unable to function in one or the other exclusively.

Did Windows 8 suddenly make you so lazy that you can't download and install something that gives you the options you desire?

The Start Menu was removed for the sole purpose of shoving a tablet-centric UI down users throats for the sake of their presence in the Tablet market. The entire Modern environment is centered around that (and to establish Microsoft's walled garden.)

Re:Dumbing down

[Miamicanes]

> What changed?

Despair at seeing Linux's most influential distro doing its best to ruin itself as badly as Windows 8 has.

We naively thought Linux was an island of sanity, and believed abominations like Unity were something that only happened to Windows people.

Ubuntu scared the shit out of all of us by making it clear that Linux isn't immune to the insanity propagated by those who think crippling desktop apps to the limited functionality of phone apps is a *good* idea.

Re:Dumbing down

[sapphire wyvern]

My Motorola Atrix running Android 2.3 had a lot of text labels throughout its UI. I found it much more discoverable than iOS applications on my iPad, due to the greater use of text and the fixed location of the menu, search and back buttons.

I've got a Galaxy Note 2 now. It's a superb phone, much better than the Atrix overall, but I see what you mean about text labels getting replaced with cryptic icons. I'm inclined to agree that it makes the interface a lot less discoverable.

History

[jythie]

I think this is a classic example of 'those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it', but on a surprisingly rapid cycle.

So first people start realizing that the way menus and such are handled on the desktop did not work well in the touch screen or mobile space, so designers learned that lesson and developed more appropriate layouts.

Now we have a new batch of designers that is making the same mistake, taking the mobile layouts and trying to use them on a desktop where they do not make much sense.

Though really, it is probably just the old 'I learned to do X in environment Y and now I want to do X everywhere because Y rocked!' thing.

Re:History

[idontgno]

There might be that. Or there might be laziness. "OK, got the UI working for compact touchscreen devices. Now to design a completely different UI for a non-touchscreen large-format device with mouse and keyboard. Screw it. I'll just upscale the first UI. It'll work fine, and I just want to check this off and maybe go home on time for a change."

In a developer, laziness is next to godliness, in that it's simply another synonym for "efficient". The fact that a tablet UI is kinda yucky on a desktop system doesn't take away from the fact that it basically works. "Good enough".

Re:History

[DragonWriter]

So first people start realizing that the way menus and such are handled on the desktop did not work well in the touch screen or mobile space, so designers learned that lesson and developed more appropriate layouts. Now we have a new batch of designers that is making the same mistake, taking the mobile layouts and trying to use them on a desktop where they do not make much sense.

The trend of simplification on the desktop started before mobile was driving it. I think there is a convergence in that some things that usability studies and other factors were driving in general happened to also mesh very well with what fits on mobile device and works without a multibutton mouse; there is some analogy, I think, to how SQL and the relational model were motivated by theoretical concerns but really took off because they also happened to be convenient to implement in a performant way on disk-based storage and were introduced as disk-based storage was becoming popular.

Re:History

[10101001 10101001]

Now we have a new batch of designers that is making the same mistake, taking the mobile layouts and trying to use them on a desktop where they do not make much sense.

It's interesting you say that, but there's at least one area where the opposite was true to success: pie menus. With mice, a pie menu isn't as useful precisely because desktops have so many options and layered pie menus can quickly become confusing. Meanwhile, pie menus are a great fit on a touch screen with only a few options and layers (just gesture one of eight directions from the center of the screen). I think the difficult part is really knowing where, if anywhere, success will be with a design. Oh, and of course, it's not to say pie menus were a complete failure on desktops and mouse gesturing in general is something some people like. So, there are perhaps usage cases or users where mobile layouts are a good fit on the desktop much more than would otherwise seem.,/p>

Re:History

[jafac]

I'm just doing what my stupid customers and managers are telling me to do.
I don't want to call them stupid to their faces. (that didn't work out so well 15 years ago when we went through this exercise before). . .

Re:History

[aXis100]

I just did somethign similar. I was writing a karoke jukebox client/server system in my own time, and decided that:
1) Tablets woud be a convenient (and cool) client interface, and
2) I suck at UI aesthetics.

Using the jQuery Mobile library was a no brainer and all of the aesthetics were done for me. It looks and works great on a tablet/smartphone, and is still perfectly usable on a PC. I could make the PC interface richer and more information dense, but there is little incentive.

Re:History

[stewbacca]

While something tells me you are very happy with this sort of attitude, it's pretty much the one thing that sets mediocre and greatness apart. I guess you'll always be "good enough", which is fine if you don't ever want to be better. I want to be better.

Re:History

[im_thatoneguy]

I think this is an important point. I have used "touch" aka tablet friendly graphics software for over a decade and the tablet friendly UI's were all amazingly efficient UIs with a mouse and keyboard. People knock touch UIs as "dumbing down" UIs. But they said the exact same thing about GUIs *period*. You could say "dumbing down" or done well you could call it "removing excessive complexity". I could create the most cluttered UI imaginable just covered in buttons without any hierarchy. It would be extremely fast if you memorized where everything was. But a context menu would probably be better.

Re:History

[jythie]

Figuring out when 'good enough' really is good enough is an important part of greatness.

You only have to look at...

[Darkness404]

You only have to look at Windows 8 to see this trend.

Rather than doing the sane thing and making different views/OSes for phones, tablets, laptops with small screens and full-sized computers, we've come to where we try a "one size fits all" method that doesn't work. It used to be that we had desktop-style OSes, sites and applications on smaller devices, now we have it backwards.

Seriously, I've got a 24 inch screen, I don't need huge boxes for my applications like I might need on my tablet.

and apps running full screen does not work that we

[Joe_Dragon]

and apps running full screen does not work that well on a 24 inch screen or for desktop work flows.

Windows 8 is a half-baked creature

[dstyle5]

Been using Windows 8 on my "old" PC since the first public release and as they kept releasing new beta versions I kept expecting the Modern GUI to be cleaned up, apps given better interface, more functionality, the store to be somewhat usable at some point (its still garbage in the released version), etc, but alas the RC came and not a whole lot changed.

To me the UI feels 1/2 done, like they plopped a mobile UI on mouse and keyboard driven UI and called it a day. Given the tons of code in Windows you think they could add in a few if/else blocks to check which platform you are on and adjust the UI a bit to the platform. The Vista/Win8 comparisons are rather apt, IMO.

worried

[msheekhah]

I am seriously worried about the future of desktop computers. If the economies of scale shift too drastically, the hobbyist computer and computer gamer will be out of luck. While I think the current shift towards mobile is making computers more approachable to more people, for those of use that use computer for work rather than play, it's detrimental.

Re:worried

[Areyoukiddingme]

You have good reason to worry. Intel is exiting the motherboard market. That says something. Something worrisome. Other people say it's because Taiwan does it just as good now, so Intel doesn't have to care anymore, but it's more ominous than that. Google dropped Google Desktop Search and Sidebar when Microsoft created their own versions. Microsoft discontinued their own sidebar a little while later and let's face it, their search is STILL unreliable. Will we see the same series of events with motherboards and the commodity PC? Could be. A friend of mine has been worrying about the trend for months, and I'm starting to catch the bug.

that's because iOS is equated with value itself.

[cathector]

look at the amount of advertising for products completely unrelated to computing (mobile or otherwise) which choose to position the product being sold within the frame of an iPhone. it's a nearly ubiquitous advertising technique. this, imo, indicates that the iPhone has become popularly synonymous with "value". a few years ago this role was filled by laptops: if i was selling diapers, i'd show a smart-looking housewife viewing my product on a laptop. now it's iPhones. so what's happening is that UI designers are trying to convince you that their UI has Value by making it invoke iOS. my $0.02.

Thank God.

[Dynedain]

UX designers and experts have been clamouring for simplification for years, but clients refused to change until everyone started asking "why doesn't this work on my phone/tablet".

Perfect example:
Cascading drop menus that require click+hold, or click+hover to keep open. These are almost impossible to keep open multiple levels deep with anything other than a keyboard or mouse. Touchpads, thinkpad nipples, trackballs, all require precise movements, and even a mouse is less than ideal. But we tolerate it because that's what we're used to. Since click+hold, or click+hover doesn't make sense on a touch device, people are finally beginning to accept UX recommendations that it's not a good menu behavior to use.

Depth of functionality != Complexity. Watch this video for more understanding. It describes video game design, but the same idea applies to any user interface.

Pleasure UX

[velvet_stallion]

I look forward to the day when my desktop recognizes my hand gestures and begins playing the appropriate porn...

Re:Honestly....

[MightyYar]

Honestly I pity the world my kids would grow up in.

Seriously? You can walk into a store and buy a "phone" running Linux for under $200. It gets several hours of battery life, and has a better processor and more memory and storage than anything available on the desktop 15 years ago. The screen is on par with desktop standards of the same timeframe. If you handed me one in 1980, I would have believed you were a time traveler or an alien.

I can buy a $35 computer that far exceeds anything that a $3000 computer could do when I was a kid into computers in the 80s. The $35 computer is completely open, unlike anything from the 80s. Just like those computers, you can hook it up to your TV - but now your TV is a 55 inch 1080-line monster instead of a 20 inch 192-line lead and glass behemoth.

I have 5TB of redundant storage sitting in the basement - 15 years ago Microsoft was so proud of the ability to index a single TB that they launched Terraserver just to show off.

There will always be proprietary stuff out there, but I see no reason to pity my kids.

Re:Honestly....

[RCL]

Open source was never about "clean code". Remember, Linux (the kernel) was regarded as an "obsolete design" by academia from the start. It was a quick hack that people liked and started to develop, there was no grand plan behind it (except for "copying" Unix, which itself had no coherent design).

Open source in its purest form is a patchwork of solutions that make sense locally, but may badly fit each other (or be redundant) in the big picture view - and this is natural. The wider world as we know it heavily relies upon redundancy and diversity.

Now, regarding your suggestion that money might have destroyed the originally technically sound open source approach. Dare I say, money is more likely to improve the situation than worsen it. Money is the ultimate metric by which we can measure whether some approach has practical merits. Without the monetary feedback, we are likely to be trapped in the infinite loop of designing "the right things" which will never be "right" in the real world. Things may get messy at times when we are stuck in the local minima of existing solutions, but in the long run I believe that money will sort it out... because better technology allows - ceteris paribus - to make more money :)

Re:Honestly....

[jcfandino]

If you handed me one in 1980, I would have believed you were a time traveler or an alien.

And you would have been right about the first thing.
I don't know the GP about the second thing, though.

Re:Honestly....

[gTsiros]

the generation that grew up learning on those relics you describe has far more intimate knowledge of how computers work and how to take advantage of their abilities due to how they work, not because they have a TB of ram and 16 execution units.

the software of my calculator (48gx) is far better than almost anything I've seen in modern computers.

Re:Honestly....

[jcfandino]

Thinking about the computers on the 80s. Computers at that era booted right into BASIC interpreter.
Kids had magazines with programs on source code, and many of those kids probably learned something useful, besides just paying games.
Nowadays devices rarely come with any language interpreter at all (batch?).
Linux does, but you're probably an advanced user and already introduced in the CS universe.
I don't much see probable that a kid with a pc or mobile device steps on a programming language by chance.

Re:Honestly....

[BasilBrush]

today I'd rather have a less-efficient library written in some portable language.

I can date the point at which my enjoyment of programming started to fade as the point at which I was on a platform where I had to use libraries to make programs. The real fun for me is creating the whole thing, not being a client of libraries.

That would be about 1987. I only rediscovered the level of fun of early 80s programming when I got hold of Andre Le Moth's "Hydra" console, and made made games from the ground up, including the video driver.

Don't get me wrong, if I'm doing work, then of course I'll use libraries. But they ain't fun as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Honestly....

[Anne Thwacks]

I think you will find the entire "PC era" derives from the concept of IBM clones. DEC also published full details of hardware. Apple did indeed stamp on loads of clones.

The IBM BIOS was published, providing detailed API information. Software was provided as source by both DEC and IBM. Unix (BSD and AT&T) was also supplied as source.

Software was not closed until Bill Gates closed it.