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It's Official: Users Navigate Flat UI Designs 22 Percent Slower (theregister.co.uk)
Reader Zorro writes: The mania for "flat" user interfaces is costing publishers and e-commerce sites billions in lost revenue. A "flat" design removes the distinction between navigation controls and content. Historically, navigation controls such as buttons were shaded, or given 3D relief, to distinguish them from the application or web page's content. The mania is credited to Microsoft with its minimalistic Zune player, an iPod clone, which was developed into the Windows Phone Series UX, which in turn became the design for Windows from Windows 8 in 2012 onwards. But Steve Jobs is also to blame. The typography-besotted Apple founder was fascinated by WP's "magazine-style" Metro design, and it was posthumously incorporated into iOS7 in 2013. Once blessed by Apple, flat designs spread to electronic programme guides on telly, games consoles and even car interfaces. The consequence is that users find navigation harder, and so spend more time on a page. Now research by the Nielsen Norman Group has measured by how much. The company wired up 71 users, and gave them nine sites to use, tracking their eye movement and recording the time spent on content. On average participants spent 22 per cent more time (i.e. slower task performance) looking at the pages with weak signifiers," the firm notes. Why would that be? Users were looking for clues how to navigate. "The average number of fixations was significantly higher on the weak-signifier versions than the strong-signifier versions. On average, people had 25 per cent more fixations on the pages with weak signifiers."
So can we finally go back to the amazing shiny bubbles of the 90's? Please!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Settings->General->Accessibility->Button Shapes
&
Settings->General->Accessibility->Bold Text
I've showed these two changes to many many friends, all of whom are so grateful. This doesnt fix everything, but at least you can see the OS level navigation properly. Maybe this flat design stuff will start to decline with this report...
Forgot this one setting. This gives back some contrast to the redicoulous color scheme in iOS post v6. These 3 settings are what made iOS usable for me after v6 :)
Settings->General->Accessibility->Increase Contrast
It takes five minutes for the balance page to update.
That is not a UI issue. It is a DB issue. They are waiting for confirmation that the transaction has been replicated. Replication is often done in batches with a minute or more of granularity.
One of the victims of the philosophy of 'automated test only', which is the management perversion of automated testing. Usability is not a test that can be automated, therefore it's not worth doing.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Because UI developers are more interested in being 'artistic' than functional. Lightweight airy fonts with plenty of open area and avoiding 'harsh' contrasts appeals to artistic sensibilities, but is much harder to use.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This conflicts with the marketer's view of the world. The marketer wants to control the message, and that includes the look of the message. If they want to attract a given "cohort" (demographic), they want to be able to shape and style the content that way to attract that demographic, and sometimes ONLY that demographic to weed out alleged riff-raff and/or not waste ad fees on unlikely buyers.
And how can you get a jump on the latest style if you cannot convey the latest style? Purple denim's the latest craze? Okay, Marketing Joe wants the page show a purple denim font. If the UI dev doesn't deliver, he/she is fired.
Vulcan vs. Ferengi culture conflict.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah, I could have told you this back when Windows 8 came out... oh wait, I did.
Titlebars that don't highlight when the window has focus, monochromatic icons, CAPS MENUS... 30 years of UX research thrown into the toilet when Microsoft decided to turn our desktops into mobile "screens" and now with three 4k displays, I can't even figure out what window has focus and find myself always searching a sea of visually similar icons for the tool I want.
If only they would go to the trouble of having an OS-wide setting for user interface: 3D or Flat.
#DeleteFacebook
Except a flat GUI combines all the undiscoverability and steep learning curve of a CLI with all the slow command rate and inflexibility of a GUI... Not really seeing the benefit...
It's a reaction to the hideous skeuomorphic crap we had for years, aka "maybe if I click on the cheese plant" UI design.
And then before that we had "OMG I've got 2MB of video RAM I must fill it with low quality textures and photoshopped rounded icons."
Similar thing with contrast. In the 70s and 80s we understood that too much contrast is bad, and so is too little. Then it went insanely high contrast as hardware improved, now insanely low because amateur graphic designers...
Flat can be okay when it's done well, but it's too easy to screw up. The old 80s style may look dated, but it's hard to get wrong.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC