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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."
... and you've got difficult to read and difficult to navigate, some good reasons why the current UIs are less than usable. So... why were these productivity reductions made in the first place?
Never underestimate the tendency of human beings to blindly follow other human beings.
The example in the article is hardly a connection to "flat" UI designs. It looks more like spot the damn difference which is what I would be doing if presented with that test.
But really it's hard to judge those flat UI changes because flatness was only one very small part of the shift. We also lost meaning and context, were introduced to new symbols which seem to be made up by people who were blinded at birth (3 horizontal lines for menu? or was it dots?, WTF is wrong with writing menu), was combined with a massive reduction of colour and contrast, a reduction in font size, an increase in the use of white space...
Really out of all the UI changes in recent years "flatness" is the one that impacts me the least.
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.
...UI designers are replaced with graphics designers.
One of the reasons why Windows 95 was so successful in the corporate workplace was the icon set and look-and-feel. Remember, at that time there were still competitive offerings like OS/2 and UNIX X-windows with CDE, and even Apple's MacOS. Windows 95 took some faux-3d experiments from Windows 3.1/3.11 and ran whole-hog with them to the point that it was almost weird when a legacy application still used flat icons or 2d windows.
Microsoft has regressed with its UI so severely that it's embarassing. They're basically back to 2d icons and a program-manager interface, and from my view it's change solely for the sake of change, not because it actually improved anything. Worse since they've fragmented into pre-metro and metro elements, there are essentially two control panels to take care of the OS where neither method contains access to all of the settings and where there's no clear division of functions between the two.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm glad that they did a study, because clearly somebody needed a study, but this seems really predictable. How could MS and Apple and these other subpar UI designers not predict that making it harder to tell what is a UI element would make it harder to navigate?
Hopefully next they'll figure out that increasing the number of clicks or keys and hiding the options (aka hamburger menu) also makes navigation harder and slower.
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...
That's what I've been saying to the stubborn fad-sniffers. NOW I have evidence to use against them so that they can't merely dismiss me as an old fogie. (I am an old fogie, but a correct fogie!) Thank You, Dear Slashdotter!
One can't easily tell what are buttons, input boxes, etc. in the flat look. It's all a bunch of flat rectangles of different colors. If you don't know the rectangle color coding scheme of a given site, you have to guess. The 70's called, and they want the Partridge Family bus UI back.
Table-ized A.I.
If something is clickable, make it look clickable. If some items are clickable and some are not, they should look different.
But hey, we've only known this for 17 years. Maybe not everyone has caught up yet.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com...
(Scroll down to the "etrade" example.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
In all seriousness, you can add "really bad looking" to those.
o Design evolution stopped
o Low contrast text fad makes things difficult to read
o Flat UI is difficult to navigate
o Flat UI is really bad looking
Recently, I had occasion to bring up an OS X 10.6.8 virtual machine. The first thing that struck me about the desktop was the dock, which is decidedly 3D and had some very distinctive icons on it right out of the box was "this is really very good looking." Then I looked back at the dock on the 10.12.6 OS X (MacOS) host... ugh. All that flat crap looks terrible by comparison.
My S7 phone used to be the same. Flat as a pancake. Ugly. But for it, I found Nova Launcher, and now at least the desktop looks better with 3D folders (and my phone's desktop is all folders, so that's something, anyway. There are still a few 3D app icons, too.)
I really do wish this mania for flat would go the hell away. Flat is not better. At all. This merde was never more than "change for the sake of change."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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
Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the web was that the server would transmit the relevant info (pictures and text) to your browser, and your browser would format it in the manner which was most readable on your device.
Graphic designers and page layout artists went nuts over this because it basically put them out of work. Unfortunately most web designers started off as graphic designers and page layout artists. Their first salvo against reader-control of content formatting was the Flash website. The entire page and navigation was in Flash so the user wasn't able to change, resize, or reformat any of it. They fought for and won the inclusion of immutable formatting tools in the HTML standard. So now we're stuck with idiotic designs like Slashdot's homepage where the "supplemental" sidebar on the right actually has formatting priority over the useful text on the left. If you try to shrink your browser horizontally (like viewing on a phone in portrait mode), the text becomes unreadable in order to preserve the full width of the sidebar.
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.
may i just register my frustration with "invisible or hidden UI", the ones that you DON'T EVEN SEE until you happen to roll over the correct area of the screen? with no visual affordance, there's no way to visually discover that there's something to click on. i am dismayed and discouraged that Apple threw out their own very good "Human Interface Guidelines" to foist this insane UI design on us, and then, like Lemmings, the industry has picked it up and run with it, as if apple made some brilliant decision that they must now all mimic, to the suffering of actual users?
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.
Apple removed skeuomorphism because it was "Scott Forstall approved" and Jony Ive had to put his own flat-looking-hardware-design into the UI itself.
That's the kind of crap that happens when you put an industrial designer in charge of software user interfaces. By the same Apple logic, my day job is foreman on a construction site so I should be able to design prettier birthday cakes than a pastry chef, right?
#DeleteFacebook
or a case of designers who haven't figured out yet how to make the new design styles functional.
The other day someone showed me an Android app that was confusing them. It had a "like" button that appeared disabled. In Material Design the widget would be called a "Toggle button with an icon", and here's the thing about it that particular widget: it only has two states: on or off; there is no "disabled" state. The visual cue for "not focused" looks to any ordinary mortal like the visual cue that other widgets with a disabled state (like the humble checkbox) use for "disabled".
I'm retired now, but having designed apps and user interfaces for decades, I can follow the designer's logic here: I only need two states: like/not liked. A flat icon button look sooo much cleaner than a frumpy old checkbox, and if I need to disable the thing I'll just make it invisible. But the thing is users haven't read the MD design guidelines; they have infer what's going on from the conflicting cues MD gives them.
Now the MD guidelines do kinda sorta steer you toward using toggle buttons in situations where they're unlikely to cause confusion, but design still takes judgment. And reading the MD guidelines, it strikes me that most people who need to produce an Android UI are presented with many subtle judgments to make when choosing between alternatives, and where there are a lot of choices there are a lot of opportunities to make bad choices.
I think UI glitches happen for the same reason that security glitches do: not enough developer training and schedule pressure. MD makes it easy to create a UI that looks modern and clean, but your job isn't done when a UI looks good; it has to minimize the cognitive load on the user as well. To do that there's no substitute for closely observing an untrained user struggling with your app. Find every little bump that trips him up and file it flat, even if you have to use a dumpy old checkbox.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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."
If you're someone who subsists on ad revenue, this is a good result. Users look at ads on your website longer than your competitors. They look hard at your ads too, because they have to look hard at everything to find what's active. They probably click on ads more often too, in a desperate attempt to find the page controls.
This reminds me of the early days of television, when shows were effectively produced by the advertisers, and their characters would seamlessly start talking about how great their sponsor's product was in the middle of the show. There were inevitably scandals, which eventually led to regulations separating commercials and the programs. But that hasn't happened on the web yet, so designers are perfectly free to be as confusing as possible about what's a website control and what's an ad.
The worst thing from Apple, still to this day, is the smooth plastic connectors to connect anything. Other companies have texturized plastic or even rubberized connectors, making them easier to handle and to pull.
#DeleteFacebook
Itâ(TM)s almost like that flat, minimalistic design impeded your ability to quickly and effectively understand the content.
Thirty four characters live here.
Apple also started the trend of making the back of your phone as slippery as possible so that you can't place it on a surface with any incline or hold on to it without a death-grip.
Taken from the link you cited:
"Industrial design focuses principally on aesthetic and user-interface aspects of products" (emphasis mine)
So, yeah, his failure to do decent UI means he's not good at industrial design either.
Why do people always seem to forget that the "or never" side of this equation was once mere months away from tossing Apple onto the Adam Osborne junk heap.
Furthermore, the "function" you are discussing is the belated arrival of a working virtual memory subsystem where one could realistically run two piggish programs at the same time.
On the one side you've got the cult of the cast iron pan: everything I ever cooked, I cooked in this one pan (and it's the only pan I owned).
Obviously, high in usability.
On the other side of this, you've got a working commercial kitchen.
Obviously, low in usability.
In A Day at elBulli they document that a single service for 50 customers generates "2500 pieces of crockery, cutlery, and pans"—that being just the large or delicate excess over what already went into the commercial dishwashers.
I actually spent a bit of time studying spaced repetition (Anki is much loved by the LessWrong crowd). When measured, it seems to work, but then you get personal testimony that runs against the grain:
A vote against spaced repetition — 10 March 2014
Eventually I realized what was going on. SR is testing your memory recall in a strictly single file measurement regime (ah, the glory of owning just one pan).
I keep most of my notes in a wiki. Just the other day I rolled over 200,000 pages views in my own wiki. That's a lot of randomly spaced repetition of my own notes and ideas.
It's surely not as effective when measured against carefully titrated SR in a single-file recall regime.
But then I realized that every time I visit a page on my wiki, I'm recalling the context of the page and its contents on six dimensions simultaneously: why did I create this page, what have I forgotten, what I have remembered, does the structure read easily in a single glance, where can I amend a link for next time, what associations does it invoke against the grain of my present quest?
There's no way SR would activate my brain as usefully when measuring in the eight-dimensional space I occupy by habit and preference. But there's also no way one could ever contrive a test environment to track progress in this messy "every burner at once" cognitive world.
People who multitask in a distracted way might even benefit from Jobs' horrible legacy of raked rock-garden fixity.
People who multitask in a deeply engaged way have no use for this single-file shit.
Finally, the guy who said that the CLI is the "flattest" interface ever is full of it. Text remains the deepest representation humanity has yet achieved. Carefully supplemented with media (this is harder than it looks), it's but half a step shy of the mythical Vulcan mind meld.
xkcd excels because Randall is really good at capturing the essential cliche of the idea.
All those cliches originated in the One Interface to Rule Them All: also known as human language (a lifetime of practice required, do sign up now).