Slashdot Mirror
How Bad User Interfaces Can Ruin Lives
Lauren Weinstein writes: A couple of months ago, in "Seeking Anecdotes Regarding 'Older' Persons' Use of Web Services," I asked for stories and comments regarding experiences that older users have had with modern Web systems, with an emphasis on possible problems and frustrations. I purposely did not define "older" — with the result that responses arrived from users (or regarding users) self-identifying as ages ranging from their 30s to well into their 90s (suggesting that "older" is largely a point of view rather than an absolute). Before I began the survey I had some preconceived notions of how the results would appear. Some of these were proven correct, but overall the responses also contained many surprises, often both depressing and tragic in scope. The frustration of caregivers in these contexts was palpable. They'd teach an older user how to use a key service like Web-based mail to communicate with their loved ones, only to discover that a sudden UI change caused them to give up in frustration and not want to try again. When the caregiver isn't local the situation is even worse. While remote access software has proven a great boon in such situations, they're often too complex for the user to set up or fix by themselves when something goes wrong, remaining cut off until the caregiver is back in their physical presence.
ever heard of a Therac 25?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
suggesting that "older" is largely a point of view rather than an absolute)
Anyone without cognitive impairment or severe physical limitations can use most common user interfaces (which is definitely not to say they can't be made more usable and efficient).
That includes many 70 year olds, and a fair number of 90 year olds.
Listen up slashdot. "Share" vs. "Read More"...
I'd love interfaces that don't change every 2 weeks. Especially certain web browsers and desktop environments which seem to be plagued with such issues.
Perhaps Slashdot should take a cue from this article and stop messing around with the UI!
Hell, I'm not even 40 yet and I would like to see some of the websites I regularly use to stop changing UIs for the sake of change.
Progress I will accept it, but if I need to spend the better part of a morning trying to figure out how to do something that only took 3 clicks before the update, that's not progress in my book.
Hear hear!!
Get up out of that chair and go to walking.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So fitting a story about bad user interfaces is posted on slashdot. This site has turned unusable to each update. What happened to the magical benefits of open source making better software? This site design is a fucking shitshow and a joke.
Editors, you should take note please.
Having worked in user support and network administration for multiple industries, I can imagine the frustration for caregivers when even the remote support software is just too confusing for the user.
For instance, many of the most popular remote support services require the end user to jump through multiple hoops that may include surfing to a particular web address (which they invariably type into Google or Yahoo instead of the address bar), entering a series of digits they swear they typed correctly (but often haven't and are too stubborn to re-read what they typed), then watch the screen for browser interaction prompts (which may be reasonable-sized prominent pop-up dialogs, but are more often either a noticeable thin yellow bar at the top or bottom of the browser window, or even worse, a pop-up window that somehow ended up as a pop-under, even though that's not how it is supposed to be), then click only the buttons that answer in the affirmative. All of this assumes the user's browser even works correctly.
Some days, it seems that even the young-uns can't figure out how to allow a remote support session.
I do know there are a few less-complicated remote support products, but they are few and far between, do not seem to be popular enough to be in common use in these scenarios, and often have more security issues than the services I mention above.
Much of the remote support problem is the catch-22 of browser security. If you don't secure the browser more, the customer is at risk. If you do secure the browser more, the customer's experience is further complicated.
There are those who would say "just educate the user". These are the people who do not understand their fellow humans and the limitations different types of learner and different generational barriers.
So, what about writing down instructions ahead of time? That gets into what the original post discussed; The interface will inevitably change, either for the browser or for the remote support service.
I'm not saying I think there is a fix. I don't. I do think it is something that might could be solved if the industry becomes more aware of the Human Interface Design problem it has.
Lillian could write a letter and send a fax. We bought a fax for her assisted living home, and one for our house. She died at, I think, 96, in '07. But for the 3 years she was in that assisted living home my ex talked to her mom daily over that fax connection.
:)
About a year after she died I tried to craigslist the 2 fax machines, no joy. I gave them to goodwill and took a nice tax deduction. I can admit to that because the statue of limitations has passed
This is why I hate stuff like GNOME 3. "Hey guys, let's throw out our good working interface that people like and replace it with confusing trendy hipster bullshit!"
I've encountered a lot of situations where so-called software designers ("so-called" because they are often graphic designers who ended up with the title "software designer" without the experience or education associated with that title) feel the need to make the UI look "better" when the underlying software doesn't completely work. This is like putting lipstick on a pig - it's still a pig.
Another aspect of this is that designers forget that users don't use their software as often as they might. They see things every day that they don't like, and they want to change these things, but the users don't see that problem.
One example of software that became less useful with changes is the Now Utilities suite for the Mac that was made unusable by constant changes. Useful features were removed or made useless. I finally had to freeze my environment so I could actually get my work done. This often meant living with other bugs because upgrading the software was detrimental to the system as a whole.
Having done tech support for clueless customers and family members for years, I find a lot of older people treat using technology like following a recipe.
They don't understand (or are unwilling to understand) how their programs work, and they are unable to recognize patterns in similar UIs, so they follow a set of instructions to do what they need to do - 1) Click this button, 2) Click that button, etc.
A UI change is devastating to them because the instructions they were following are now useless. They have to go through all the motions again and make a new set of instructions for themselves.
This is made even worse by the stigma around old people and technology - "I'm too old to learn something new", "I can't keep up with all these changes", "I had so many steps to follow already, I can't handle any more".
They get overwhelmed by the perceived difficulty, their emotions take over, and it causes frustration for everyone involved.
Even if a company does create instructions and user guides it's not guaranteed to help. A company can only do so much to prepare users for changes; they can't change human nature.
strong. I don't want to say "failing" just very poor memory and the like caused by very poor health. One case is a man who was in the tech industry years ago, but that doesn't mean that as his mind was harmed by the effects of illness he could continue to make sense of Google's ever changing interface. He didn't have a problem with mail so much (he used thunderbird, so that interface wasn't changing), but he couldn't navigate Google's changing phone service interfaces. Combine that with poor eyesite and problems with phone drivers that occasionally have to reload ... and there would be days when he had no phone service until someone came by and fixed his computer.
Keep in mind that there are people (once again the same man) who at times find simply dialing a phone too hard. Maybe they're too slow for hospital phone that gives you 20 seconds of dial tone then gives up, or worse gives you 20 seconds but no audio cue like a dialtone.
For such people you need interfaces designed differently than ones for average customers. You need interfaces that NEVER change. You need interfaces that have no time-outs. You need interfaces that force modal interactions rather than assuming that the user will NOTICE something.
I think it was a combination of older people getting stuck in their ways and not easily learning new thing - along with the massive complexity in newer OSX - along with a little nine-headedness - like no right mouse button, but a billion was of needing that functionality and other less-than-obvious ways of accessing it (like pressing on the right SIDE of the Magic Mouse, etc)
In my spare time I pay visit to local elders and from them I have heard plenty of horrible anecdotes of how a change, no matter how minuscule that might be, might have a detrimental effect to some of the users - especially the elders
For example - for years there was a service whereby the older people can call up, and a human operator will answer. If the older people needs something that service would try to find people / resources to help out
That went on many years without problems and many elders, especially those staying alone, rely on the service
Then suddenly someone decide to save some money by installing an auto attendant, where callers must listen to some options and then dial a particular number for a particular task
For young people there should be no problem - but for older people where many have problem listening, and hand-eye coordination ability are no longer 'sharp', that auto attendant thing puts off many of the elderly
Couple with it the audio script that was badly scripted (long-winded and without clear roadmap), and was read by someone with a very lousy accent
Many of the elders have told me that they stopped calling that service because to them 'it's a torture'
In short - a UI change, no matter how minor it might seem, may whack some severe blows to users whose ability are not as sharp as others
The headline is terrible.
Come on, some lawyer will jump on this - just as soon as we get being a curmudgeon classified as a disability.
Or maybe anyone can self-identify as disabled?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
There's no way you're going to get for-profit corporations to maintain two UIs by asking nicely -- budgets I've seen barely cover one UI development pipeline, and even that goes south more often than not.
What you MIGHT be able to do, however, is get this passed legislatively as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) -- if it's required to do business online in the US that you have an Accessibility-focused UI, then people will reluctantly do it in the same way they (usually, not always) reluctantly spend extra money building wheelchair-accessible ramps to supplement the cheaper option of stairs.
We're at the point now where the internet is a public good, just like streets, and it's time to start thinking about how to solve the online problems like these in the same we solved it offline over the last 200 years.
So to all reading this: I'd suggest the call to action isn't "hey, let's do the right thing, tell your friends", but instead "hey, lobby your congressman / senator and get this passed as pat of the relevant disabilities and accessibility laws, and tell your friends to do the same".
I think what this story is really about is drunk texting and emailing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Although software is getting easier to use in many ways, mobile OSs manage to include both the best and worse in usability.
"Press that button below the screen, then tap the envelope picture to see your mail", is something that almost anyone could work out for themselves, but actions such as a long-hold on an item, swiping it left or right, tap with two fingers at once, dragging in a direction with two or three fingers, drag down to reveal the hidden search box above the list and drag from outside the screen area all are examples of interactions that you might never discover.
I've worked for two companies where "agile" methodology applied company-wide meant point releases every one or two weeks and minor UI changes with every point release to "get better with each version." This floated mgmt's boat and kept the UX/UI people busy and excited, but it was a nightmare for customer support and (evidently, by extension) for customers who could never quite feel as though they'd "learned" to use the software.
Every time they logged in they struggled to figure out how to repeat the workflows they'd struggled to get ahold of the previous time. Of course, the widgets, labels, views, etc. tended to change between logins. Kind of like a maze with moving walls.
I argued for UI changes to be batched for major versions, but this supposedly wasn't "agile."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
When I press a key or tap a button, I want INSTANT feedback.
It's really frustrating when I try to go to a webpage in Chrome on my brand-spankin-new Galaxy S6 edge sometimes, and nothing happens. No activity indicator. The network activity icon at the top of my screen is idle. I try to tap on the hyperlinks on the page; they don't work either. Soon after it replays every tap I made in the past thirty seconds...if I'm lucky. The rest of the time I have to kill the process.
Sometimes on my workstation I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail, and suddenly the letters stop appearing because some mundane process decided it's time to use 100% of my disk resource. I understand how that can happen sometimes...actually no I don't. That should never happen. I'm typing a damn e-mail; what background process could possibly be so important as to interrupt my keyboard input without notice?
Oh...and Cancel buttons on progress indicators....THEY SHOULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING USEFUL.
(p.s. while writing this post, I somehow managed to make the Chrome DevTools appear by an unfortunate mashing of a key I wasn't looking at).
One of my frustrations with the UI designers at a previous job was that they had an obsession with a "Clean" interface. That meant, only the barest labels. If there was text to tell you what an item did, that was bad. Any clickable UI elements had to be as small as possible. Never mind that the target audience was using a much smaller screen, and in less than ideal conditions with poor input methods. It was "clean".
Stop ruining my life!
Claiming that a UI of a service that is often free and has thousands of competitors is "ruining someone's life" is just stupid. If you don't like a UI, don't use it. In fact, there are plenty of UIs for mail and other services that have changed hardly at all in a decade; just use those.
First, this survey was not mainly about grandmothers. They had "ages ranging from their 30s to well into their 90s," and "a vast number of responses involved highly skilled, technologically-savvy individuals -- often engineers themselves."
The overwhelming complaints were of:
- "low-contrast interfaces and fonts, gray fonts on gray backgrounds"
- "Hidden menus. Obscure interface elements (e.g., tiny upside-down arrows). Interface and menu elements that only appear if you've moused over a particular location on the display. Interface elements that are so small or ephemeral that they can be a challenge to click even if you still have the motor skills of youth."
- "the sudden change of an icon from a wrench to a gear, or a change in a commonly used icon's position"
Lauren Weinstein wrote:
All I can say is Good Luck With That. Unless this plan comes with a new revenue stream to equal the cost, it's a non-starter.
Actually, no, I don't feel obligated to "better serve all users" (emphasis added). If I have limited resources (e.g. I'm not Microsoft, Apple, or Google), my primary concern is better serving that subset of the population that is profitable. Having a good UI that doesn't change weekly probably is a good way to serve my target audience. What I won't commit to is spending extra money to create a parallel UI just for gomers.
Modern UI's have evolved to reward users who can apply general concepts to new situations, and punish users who rely on rote memorization of the steps to perform.
in the subject box
Yahoo mail classic, remember why you never switched to the new yahoo mail? Well its standard now and you can't go back
Also apple why you change my ui? Ios 6 looked fine!.....why don't you support theming yet????
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
One day I counted click and scrolls for my use case and they doubled in Gnome 3 over Gnome 2. It wasn't a matter of not liking fonts or colors or how windows flew across the screen, it was knowing how easy it used to be making every extra click and scroll in Gnome 3 upsetting for me. How did the designers of that UI not see this? Currently writing this using Gnome 2 on Fedora 14.
Someone turning 65 this year, was born in 1950. If we take 1980 as a rough date for when personal computers became affordable & popular, that means in all likelihood this person spent 30 years with NO COMPUTER. I find it hard to believe someone like this, with 20, 30, 40 computerless years under their belt, can have their life RUINED by not using them in their later years. In other words for every elder who is heart-wrenchingly and helplessly falling out of step with the Great Boon, I guarantee there are at least two who are basically just blowing computers off, because they were never that attached to them in the first place.
I think software should offer an option (disabled by default, but mentioned when first used) which switches the interface to that of the previous version. If more than half of your users switch back, you line up your UI "experts" and give them each a kick in the nuts and a pink slip.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
With the Beta clicking on the title shows the summary and clicking on it again hides the summary. You have to copy the URL to get to the comments. The new /. beta is horrible.
..that the first third of that post was designed to avoid any friction with people that might be offended by being classified as old, and not about the subject matter itself. Nevermind, it looks like the story was from the US.
I think we can all agree GPG has usability problems. Here's a guy who wrote a shellscript to help manage passwords in GPG: https://github.com/drduh/pwd.sh
Except he includes a "tutorial" in which text appears in a screen and then is gone before it can be read.
And there's no way to provide feedback on it. What was he thinking?
> Anyone without cognitive impairment or severe physical limitations can use most common user interfaces
This is exactly the arrogant attitude which leads to the misery we are in. Combine this with "oh, shiny!" and we have a perfect recipe for disaster.
Mom was around Fifty when she got a Temp Job at a Law Firm as a Secretary. They had just installed this Wang System with a bunch of Terminals that nobody knew how to use. Secretaries were still needed during the transition.
She figured it out. She often doctored her transcripts of Stenotypes or Dictaphones, giving the Lawyers an air of erudition and insight, something that they often lack. She switched to Wang. She quickly became indispensable. And very well liked.
The Wang System was supposed to cut down costs by eliminating the Secretarial Pool. Mom was quickly made head of the Pool, with no extra pay, since she was a Temp. She Curated the Pool, with doses of Fowler's and Blackie's. (She didn't have much use for the Chicago Manual Of Style. Actually, she held it in contempt.)
Once the Lawyers got a hold of their Wangs, (Quiet in the Peanut Gallery!), and started typing out their own letters and briefs, it quickly became apparent that a Secretary was not a Toy. They call them Administrative Assistants now. Good ones are valued, and well paid.
Kelly Girls continued to pay her "Salary" for the next five years, but they were not responsible for, or even had any knowledge of, her Christmas Bonuses, made payable to an Account with the Bank of Ireland.
Her Retirement Part was a hoot. It was at this party that the Lead Partner, who had become a very good friend, announced that he was retiring too. Mom perhaps had made him look too good.
A few years later, I was visiting her in her new Cottage in Ireland. I had brought along a Powerbook. I had loaded it up with what I thought was really cool stuff, including an RTE compatible modem, and she wasn't the least bit interested.
There are a couple of Generations of people to whom a Computer is just a Tool. A not very interesting one at that.
Mom didn't have a Computer at her Irish Desk. She didn't have a Dictaphone machine or a Rolodex at her desk either. In fact, she didn't even have a desk.
She still wrote in her spare time in the kitchen, in spidery script on yellow Legal Pads. Scores of them. While in Wicklow, I picked one up, and she gently took it away, saying: "Not for you, boy, not for you." We both burst into laughter then, I was 40 years old.
About that Bank of Ireland account? A few years later, while sorting through the mess, I found that it was deep into six figures.
Punts, not dollars.
Mom never cared for that kind of thing. She had boxes of unopened financial statements, under the kitchen table, where she could rest her feet.
Someone got confused by Snapchat (he's not the only one) and sent a video to his entire contact list instead of just his girlfriend. Those should not have been easy to confuse.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Most user interfaces are murderous enough nowadays without having to blame it on upgrades.
This was the longest article that I read that said almost nothing. The TFS is basically "People have problems with modern interfaces, please provide a simple accessible interface." At any point in reading the article I was hoping for some salient details and examples, what does not work and what may be better solutions. But I was disappointing, no details, no analysis, nothing. This article is borderline useless, it is a half mute scream of "something needs to be done", but does not provide any guidance as to what and how.
car. The steering wheel is mandated, even though a stick would work. Etc.
the biggest problem is, it's very hard to do a good UI, as a good UI means something different to different people, what you might think to be a good UI for you, might be horrible for others..
Windows 8 is a good example, some people really like the spacious UI and think it's productive, but others think it's a waste of space and could show much more information which doesn't need you to scroll for seeing the same extra information.. Also the settings for instance are way less than what would be more productive for a more advanced user, yes it's enough for a 'dumb' user, but for others it's counterproductive as they need to find the advanced settings which show much more..
Good UI's are very difficult to do due to the many whishes and habbits of all the users.. Less visible is not always better...
Common User Access Standard.
Enough said. ...
The very first to start breaking the rules on a broad scale was - curiously enough - Apple with their we're-doing-everything-different-this-time iTunes programm. UI standards basically went steeply downhill from there on. We've moved so far away from standards that it can even take an expert weeks to get familiar with programms (s)he should be able to operate instantly. On top of that, the software manual has disappeared (I'm looking at you, Adobe)
Handling computers has gotten more difficult, no doubt.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I've had first-hand experience of this kind of problem, and it's both sad and painful. An elderly acquaintance who lives some distance from me called in desperation because they wanted to send an email and their local support person was not available in the next day. After half an hour of trying to coax an explanation from them about what they were trying to do and what they could see on the screen (and not just what they *thought* they could see), I concluded that they were using an outdated Flash plugin, their email web service used flash and the browser was blocking the outdated plugin for security purposes.
I naively tried to help them update – what an awful error. An hour and a half later I had to concede defeat and convinced them to wait for their support person the following day. They only understood just enough to make their email work, but had no concept that they were using a 'browser' (I couldn't even ascertain what they were using) and didn't know what icons, windows or menus meant. All they knew was a rote, "I click here and then type here and then click here and my message is sent". Try to visualise the pain of trying to get someone to download a Flash update (avoiding the crapware Adobe tries to slip in), finding and running it, and then getting back to their email.
They were genuinely distressed for a variety of reasons: arrangements they had made to meet that evening had changed and they didn't have any other means to communicate; they had already been trying and retrying the email for several hours hoping that maybe the familiar pattern would somehow emerge; they had to cope with my attempts to walk them through all kinds of things they had never seen nor heard of in their life; and on top of all that, they were just plain frail and tired. I could feel their distress and it was heartbreaking to have to say that I couldn't fix it in the end. In the rush to keep up with changing technology and fashion, we've neglected many vulnerable people. We need to do better.
... for decades, since the invention of the WIMP system. Most programmers either don't have the time (because the people who employ them don't care enough about interface design to pay them to work on improving interfaces) or don't care about user interfaces.
The most common complaints are about things which were changed for the sake of change - because some fool employed another fool to actually RUIN their already working and easy to use interface. A case in point: Microsoft with 'The Ribbon', and then 'Metro', two massive failures which should never have got off the drawing board. The problem is that companies like Microsoft pay a large number of people to CHANGE the interface, rather than to IMPROVE it, and since their jobs depend on changing things, that is exactly what they do. Even though most of the time it's for the worse.
Well over the last several years I've been watching with dismay as, after 'everyone else' has got used to using mice and GUI's - as the general trend still continues to 'dumb down' and change various interface elements, and then to say its an 'update' - this has been happening from almost every platform - and is often ignored by devs or dismissed as streamlining or some other such guff. I remember shaking my head at Ubuntu as they loudly trumpeted this one release as being focussed on ease of use .. which seemed to consist of overly large desktop icons (aka Fisher Price) because users are dumb, hidden menubars or something requiring an arcane keypress-with-mouse to enable (accessibility FAIL as new users rarely (if ever) know or use keystrokes in a GUI environment) and then expected these new users to start some software by typing in what looked like a bash shell on the desktop to start humble programs.
This hiding of features we all want and expect HAS TO STOP . Sure tighten up the code, but dont screw the UI and kill discoverability. Geez.
and don't get me started on filling the various OS up with crap and daemons / social networking crap by default .....
I have recent experience of this. My 71 year old father recently got his first ever computer. I've been around computers since the days of the ZX Spectrum, have used everything from DOS, most flavours of Windows, OS X and Linux, so it was a real eye opener to see how difficult it is for someone with absolutely no previous experience.
He's intelligent and willing to learn, but even basic concepts take a lot of time to get across. I'm lucky in that he lives reasonably close to me, so I can show him things. Trouble is, he's got a Windows 8.1 laptop, and even I find that frustrating and counter intuitive. I thought it might be easier for someone with no previous expectations - he's never used other versions, so the changes shouldn't bother him - but the mix of metro and desktop applications is just so counter intuitive. I had tried nudging him towards a macbook, but he couldn't justify the price difference. Perhaps a chrome book would have suited him better, but it might have been too limiting.
I dread Windows 10 and having to start again, I know that. User friendly is only user friendly if you're already familiar with computers, but I suppose it's a problem that will fix itself when the generation that never used them dies out.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
[T]he reason why older people don't use the technologies is because they suck, are intrusive, unreliable and fleeting.
This. I was born in the 1950s, when dirt was still relatively new, and this is exactly it. When one first sees new software and UI technologies as a young person, understanding them is an end in itself. After 50 years of watching them come and go, however, I am tired of the technology of the month, and instead find myself using something stable that will allow me to get my "real" work done -- that being the point of software, after all.
Learning to use a good software tool once is a useful and rewarding experience. Being condemned to a lifetime of re-learning to use the same tool every year just because some idiot changed the UI, not so much. (Sisyphus would understand.)
I sometimes ask these UI wizards what they think would happen if I moved the keys on their keyboards around with every software release, in response to the latest theories on typing speed and accuracy, and perhaps added and/or subtracted a few just, well, just because I thought it would be a good idea. If one is, say, ten years old and just learning to touch-type, perhaps the new keyboard layout indeed would be better. However, the installed base of zillions of users that are used to, and expected to see, the old keyboard arrangement would be totally hosed, and would need to retrain themselves just to get back to the productivity levels they had before I "helped" them. Do you really, really want to do this kind of thing to your customers? Repetitively?
I am always amused to find that the same programmers that gleefully shuffle, delete, and obfuscate menus and other UI features for their users strenuously object if you even suggest taking away their precious Dvorak, XP, or simple QWERTY keyboards -- let alone, say, reverse the order of the bottom row of keys, transpose the T and H keys, and move the "@" symbol so that it is now CTRL - ALT - ].
The trouble is, it's so hard to function now without web access. My father recently got his first computer at 71. His reason? So much information is now only available on the web, or using the internet saves you money. So without a computer he'd have been cut off from society in a way that wasn't true even ten years ago. So much is now internet only that your life is certainly much harder without it - maybe not "ruined", but certainly difficult.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
I have first hand experience with these sorts of issues. I set up a web email account for my mother and taught her how to use it. It wasn't long before icons and menus started moving around and she got confused.
Lately this particular email provider has completely changed how things worked so that even savvy users have problems with it.
However at the end of day my mother and I are not the customers, we are the product, and Marissa will of course of do what is in the best interests of the actual paying customers. It sucks, but I don't see it changing while advertising is the only workable business model of the internet (even porn is really just 'advertising of porn', which is why you get these endless pits of porn link farms (or so I've been told)).
Skype.
So, the letter "X" is supposed to stand for user "experience". But honestly, who would choose that letter to represent that word, or even that concept?
The problem begins at the very root. As long as people think the goal is to design some thing, and not to serve some one, then we will continue to disrespect the user by doing stupid things like throwing away a perfectly good interface and forcing everyone to change all at once.
I wish to dear heaven that everyone in my business would always provide a minimalist interface to everything as an option. It wouldn't be expensive, because you'd never have to change it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Looking at you, ribbon bar! :P
I write and maintain a web based facility management system. It does corrective work orders, pm work orders, space management, key management and a host of other things. I have been working on this product for 10 +years.
I have learned the following, set up a simple user interface and never ever change it. The times I have made a change to the interface it has always caused a riot among the users. I can disable functionality and the users will not get as upset. A user is a person who has a paid subscription to the system. In other words they pay for the privilege of using the system. Because of that I listen very carefully to the users.
The interface is a basic old time inverted "L". There is a module name, return to main page link and some status info across the top of the page. The left hand side occupies 15% of the screen has all the links for a module. There are no hidden menus, fly outs or pop ups on the left hand side. Navigation is simply click on the left, and the response appears on the right hand 85% of the screen. All links on the left hand side are always available all the time. This reduces the occurrence of the age old question, how did I get here?
The interface looks good on 600 x 800 px screens and larger. Yes I have customers who still use crappy monitors. This flexibility also means that I do not have to worry about variations in physical screen size either. If the screen is larger than 7" diagonal the interface works well.
I find when the system is demoed the sales guys here things like, it looks old. So the sales guys say, do you want to see everything you need or do you want to waste time hunting for what you need in a cool looking interface? You are going to be looking at this for a long time. The heads nod and you hear things like I never thought about that.
The overwhelming word I get from users is we like the inverted "L" do not change it. When asked users will routinely tell you that they hate fly outs and other features that change when you move you mouse over them. I have seen web sites that have so many on hover features that they look like a box of Mexican jumping beans. So much stuff is jumping, popping and changing color that you cannot read the page and see what is happening. Two particularly bad examples are http://www.nationalreview.com/ and http://www.wunderground.com
We all seem to live enslaved to the feature creature. We have to lean to stop adding stuff just because the stuff is cool.
My mom doesn't have one of those new-fangled computers and doesn't need it. Except for all the stuff I've ordered online for her, and the occasional account I've set up so she can get some discount or other.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
We all know that person, usually older, who only does actions on the computer via memorizing the exact steps. To understand how they're thinking and how hazy the rest of the UI to them is, recall the last time you had to give instructions to them on the phone without a computer in front of you to reference. Its hard as hell. This is how they're parsing steps, blind to anything outside the steps.
Sadly, this is commonly result of having a crutch available (you). They know they can just call you and not think. I try not to respond to my mom's and grandmother's requests for at least two to three hours, and they figure out 75% of them on their own this way. I also engage them when helping by pointing out the problem and asking them where they think they should go given their current situation. Its greatly reduced their reliance on me and increased their skill with using computers.
Isn't it obvious that most of the problem is when people learn GUI procedurally? Rather than learning the GUI concept and visual language? Yes, the visual language changes somewhat, but not dramatically (a little flatter, etc).
Accessibility is important, but it pertains to issues of icon size, readability. Sanity of UI matters too (whether normal workflow requires a lot of click-sequences). But the main issue here is that no one should ever use a computer procedurally. Letting them do so may seem effective, but none of our systems are appliance-like (in the sense of fixed-function/interface). Yes, if someone only ever uses a computer for one thing, it may seem pointless to explain the concept of GUIs, but it's also necessary.
This is a learning issue. People aren't learning HOW software works, just how to perform task y with software x. That's a recipe for disaster in any context, not just IT. To use computers, people need a basic understanding of HOW it works. That will allow them to figure things out when they get confused. Anything less will eventually cause problems.
There is a credible theory that Gore lost the presidential election because the printed ballot contest was split across pages in a confusing manner. Pat Buchanan the notorious anti-semite got a unusually large number of votes in Broward county despite a large elderly Jewish population. The election was then close enough to produce a legal challenge and the Federal Supreme Court over-ruled the Florida Court so Bush won.
Search any technology with "for seniors" after it and you'll find companies designing products with them in mind. Like this tablet, for instance:
http://www.techhive.com/articl...
The company that starts a branded line of electronic products and services with simple/familiar and definitely rarely updated interfaces is going to make a nice chunk of change.
A quick rant. One thing I'd like to see personally are beepers for seniors. Knew a senior (now passed) who lived well enough alone but was often unreachable because she would never use or charge her simple cellphone and would sometimes not hang up the house phone properly. I figure Get her a beeper! Runs for over a month on two AAAs! She can just leave it on in her purse and we could always beep her and have her call us. And she was a retired nurse, so she'd be familiar with the technology. But by the mid-2000s beepers had gone the way of the dodo.
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I am surprised that no one mentioned Windows specifically. From Win7 to Win8 was a huge change in the UI, and a disastrous one at that. Even between XP Pro SP2 ans XP Pro SP3 there were changes that were totally unnecessary. One example (of several): In SP2 it was easy to disable autoplay when a CD was inserted. In SP3 that function was hidden in a totally unexpected spot. With each new version of Windows, the UI is worse, with more hidden from the user.
Changing things just because you can is always bad! make things faster, make them work better, but leave the UI alone!
Use a proper IMAP client. Problem solved.
"ruin" is way too strong a word for my situation but phone service has declined to the point that I can not use it. I have a slight speech impediment. If you were to talk to me in person, you might have a slight difficulty but usually people do fine. In the 1980s, the real phones with real wires, people preferred talking on the phone to talking to me in person. The clarity was very good and the slight amplification that the system provided along with the added focus of being on a phone helped. But today, the voice quality is awful and no one seems to care. The concept of side tone is lost and gone thus causing people to scream into their phones. The concept of accurate microphones and speakers is lost. The idea of a phone that conforms to your head is lost. Now we have flat phones without side tone and extremely lossy connections. The other place is with all the voice activated stuff. Sure does look fun but it doesn't even vaguely begin to work with me. Again, I would never use the word "ruined" but it does leave me feeling left out.
Two words: google maps. 'nuff said. Used to work until someone decided to stick a popup thingy in the middle of the map - not even aligned with the left edge. It makes me crazy every time I use it and I can no longer go back.
Who ARE these cruel, heartless people? Hackers who aced CS classes and the Google interview but don't know any actual people? Sheesh.
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