organising stuff is a burden. You shouldn’t put your users through it unless they really, really, really need it. And even then, think twice if it’s possible to avoid it.
In the case above I wanted to add a place to the bookmarks so it’ll be easier to find. But instead of just marking it with a small heart icon, app asks me if I want to create a new collection. I don’t want to, in fact, I’m actively against it, but there seems to be no way around it.
So I roll with it and now I have to invent a name! What name should I choose? “Places I’m about to go to?” “Places I want to find quickly on a map?” “Places I want to see Heart icon next to?” It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no meaningful name to what I’m trying to do here. I didn’t wanted that collection in the first place! Don’t make me responsible.
It’s not all that bad though. There were times when they asked you to create an account before you can create any marks. Think four more steps in between—ridiculous!
In the case above I wanted to add a place to the bookmarks so it’ll be easier to find. But instead of just marking it with a small heart icon, app asks me if I want to create a new collection. I don’t want to, in fact, I’m actively against it, but there seems to be no way around it.
So I roll with it and now I have to invent a name! What name should I choose? “Places I’m about to go to?” “Places I want to find quickly on a map?” “Places I want to see Heart icon next to?” It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no meaningful name to what I’m trying to do here. I didn’t wanted that collection in the first place! Don’t make me responsible.
It’s not all that bad though. There were times when they asked you to create an account before you can create any marks. Think four more steps in between—ridiculous!
twitter showing same tweet with the same transparent PNG on a dark background in popup but on a white background in the feed is the stupidest thing ever. Second place stupid is probably using dark background for transparent images at all
Прямо сейчас стримлю программирование grumpy.website на Clojure https://www.youtube.com/c/NikitaProkopov/live
Browser notifications. A web platform feature that was useless from the very moment of its inception, annoyed the hell out of everyone, never been used by anyone except maybe by accident, never worked, and now it receives a configuration option to disable it for good. Nice try
I might be the only person out there who don’t understand why quickly accessible control centres on mobile phones have WiFi switch that is simple toggle on/off instead of having some quick way to choose a specific WiFi network. Of course, if I’m at home or at the office or at friends’ house, the phone would remember their WiFi and join automatically. In all the other places, though (cafe, airports, malls, anywhere abroad) where I need WiFi I have to go to deeply buried settings, then find WiFi there and finally being able to choose a network.
I wonder how OS manufacturers expect us to use it? Don’t use WiFi? Don’t visit new places? What use would On/Off toggle have anyways? If I already joined a WiFi why would I want to get off it? (I mean, I can imagine couple of reasons, but none of them are as ubiquitous or as important as to put it to Quick Controls dashboard).
Only the very latest Android 8 fixed it, and it only took them 10 years or so. What am I missing?
I wonder how OS manufacturers expect us to use it? Don’t use WiFi? Don’t visit new places? What use would On/Off toggle have anyways? If I already joined a WiFi why would I want to get off it? (I mean, I can imagine couple of reasons, but none of them are as ubiquitous or as important as to put it to Quick Controls dashboard).
Only the very latest Android 8 fixed it, and it only took them 10 years or so. What am I missing?
Windows Phone 10 decided to group its settings into categories (right). Android did the same in 8.0 (left). Before/after picture for Android: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Android-8.0-Settings-DS.png
The goal is clear—they want to keep Settings screen short and tidy. That worked, but at the cost of making it almost impossible to use.
You see, if I need to restart Bluetooth, I’m not thinking “Which category does Bluetooth belongs to?” I’m just scanning the list for the word Bluetooth. At no point in my head I visualise the words “Connected devices” or even just “Devices”. I want to restart Bluetooth. My goal is to find Bluetooth. I don’t care about devices, to be frank.
Even worse, those categories make no sense. Just look at it: Location in Security? Vibration in Sound? Sleep in Display? Font size in Display? Keyboard in Time and Language? Find my phone in Update & Security? Seriously?
The grouping only works one way. Given the items, it’s totally possible to group them and make up categories. But given specific item, you have no way to figure out what category those ill minds invented for it.
The goal is clear—they want to keep Settings screen short and tidy. That worked, but at the cost of making it almost impossible to use.
You see, if I need to restart Bluetooth, I’m not thinking “Which category does Bluetooth belongs to?” I’m just scanning the list for the word Bluetooth. At no point in my head I visualise the words “Connected devices” or even just “Devices”. I want to restart Bluetooth. My goal is to find Bluetooth. I don’t care about devices, to be frank.
Even worse, those categories make no sense. Just look at it: Location in Security? Vibration in Sound? Sleep in Display? Font size in Display? Keyboard in Time and Language? Find my phone in Update & Security? Seriously?
The grouping only works one way. Given the items, it’s totally possible to group them and make up categories. But given specific item, you have no way to figure out what category those ill minds invented for it.
Don’t get me wrong—I used to love Windows Phone 8. Beautiful, strong, fresh design, good usability. But with Windows Phone 10 Microsoft is returning to its roots.
Somebody at Microsoft decided that alarms need names. But asking people to name each individual alarm would be too much even for Microsoft, so they decided to auto-generate those names. Good old “New Folder (7)” times, all over again.
Not everything has a name. Some things naturally do. Some don’t. Books have names. Pictures have not. Pictures are equal to themselves, there’s no _natural_ textual summary for them. Any attempt to force such name would end up with something useless like “IMG_20171103_221313.jpg”. Movies have titles. TV episodes are trickier. Text documents have names sometimes, sometimes they don’t. And no, “Untitled Document” is not a good default value. It’s better (and more natural) to not have name for a text at all.
Alarms, for certain, are in a category of things that are just that, things. They don’t need names, they don’t have to be “managed”. They are just what they are. 9am alarm is just an alarm that will go off at 9am. Nothing more
Somebody at Microsoft decided that alarms need names. But asking people to name each individual alarm would be too much even for Microsoft, so they decided to auto-generate those names. Good old “New Folder (7)” times, all over again.
Not everything has a name. Some things naturally do. Some don’t. Books have names. Pictures have not. Pictures are equal to themselves, there’s no _natural_ textual summary for them. Any attempt to force such name would end up with something useless like “IMG_20171103_221313.jpg”. Movies have titles. TV episodes are trickier. Text documents have names sometimes, sometimes they don’t. And no, “Untitled Document” is not a good default value. It’s better (and more natural) to not have name for a text at all.
Alarms, for certain, are in a category of things that are just that, things. They don’t need names, they don’t have to be “managed”. They are just what they are. 9am alarm is just an alarm that will go off at 9am. Nothing more
someone somewhere told designers that grey text looks “lighter” than the black one, and that the fonts also have light variants (Regular font weight is 400, Light is 300). Sure the page looks fresh and clean with grey font and light font, with the only downside that nobody can read a word. Only use font-weight: 300 on headers huge enough they could actually be read, never for copy text. And don’t be afraid of black text: the more text/background contrast your letters have, the easier it is to read. And no, nobody sees black text as something heavyweight or pessimistic. It’s alright, it looks bold and it’s a pleasure to read
I love that symbol. It’s basically saying “we want people to scroll down, the main content is down there. But we also will design the landing screen so that it’ll totally look like there’s nothing down there, but we still want people to scroll, but we also are going to confuse them with the landing, so let’s add this tiny icon so that maybe somebody will accidentally notice it and maybe will figure out what we tried to say and will have a chance to actually see the stuff that we want them to see in the first place, so we put it down there, and designed the landing to hide that fact”. Ah. Non-verbal communication at its best
Hangouts is, no doubt, a very unique piece of software. Here I am, just reset my phone, and Hangouts decided that it’s about time to show me notifications from 1 year ago (about the time I last used it). Those are not unread notifications or anything, it’s just happened a year back then and it decided that I probably need to know. What a motto: “a chat/call software that have no idea when and how to notify you about stuff that you use it for”
Isn’t it ironic that in the era of UIs that are perfectly usable on 320px screens Google Docs is unable to render a short Material Design menu in a 960px wide window? Also puzzled why so much space is reserved for vertical dots (may I remind you that vertical dots icon was invented as a means to save space on small screens)