adam
11cec92e5a
18 KiB
ux manifesto
[ted talk stage] Let me share with you my UX design manifesto. ready? Are you all prepared to take notes? Get out of the user's fucking way. Thank you for attending my ted talk.
There is, or could be, technology that exists to be a means to an end. Instead, software in Current Year is entirely an exercise in being an obstacle.
windows
[//TODO: screenshots, or mockup, or cut this paragraph] You know what finally tipped me over the edge to give up on windows, even if that meant PC gaming went with it? I was playing warframe, and then windows 10 popped up a full screen ad - on a monitor I couldn't see at the time - that told me "you said you'd sign up for a trial of our cloud bullshit now." I couldn't figure out why the game had ostensibly frozen until I walked around my apartment to sit back at my desk and read this ad, and as ever communicate one of the microsoft-sanctioned responses of "yes I would love to right now" or "yes I would love to but not right now". No flavor of linux has ever pulled a stunt like that.
there's a joke about how microsoft shoved windows 11 (and also 10) down everyone's throats, then popped up a window in their way to ask if they would recommend windows to a friend? the joke for socially well-adjusted normal people is: "I need you to understand that people don't recommend each other operating systems." That applies, for them. But for nerds who are currently staring at several screens running several different flavors of linux... People do. But the people who do... understand how terrible windows is, and the myriad of ways it's only getting worse. [note] Speaking of, don't worry, I don't (presently) have plans to evangelize for my favorite operating system.
obligatory mention of AI
have you heard the tale of Clippy? [bit where palpatine is saying "have you heard the tale of darth plageus"] Way back, in the before times, some cutting-edge psychological research was done that demonstrated people anthropomorphize their computers. So some cufflink-wearing motherfucker said "great, people will emotionally attach to their computer more if we anthropomorphize them." [https://web.archive.org/web/20180313075429/https://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/95/950106Arc5423.html or https://archive.org/details/g4tv.com-video4080 ?] But then the great mistake was made, which was: well if people react to computers as though they're people, we have to put the faces of people on computers. Which in my opinion is exactly the incorrect reaction. If people are going to react to computers as though they're humans, the one thing you don't have to do is anthropomorphize them, because they're already using that part of the brain. Clippy was a program based on the research that Nass and Reeves did, and it was a tragic misinterpretation of their work." So now you start up your word processor and it jumps in the way to say hi and chat about how it can interfere. Fortunately, clippy was killed off pretty quickly. As long as people are projecting a personality onto their computer, we hated clippy as intensely as we'd hate any other pest. And of course there are some people who felt the opposite, I'll leave a link in the show notes to an erotic fan fiction starring clippy that you can actually buy. [https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Leonard-Delaney-ebook/dp/B00UJ01WBW]
Microsoft eventually came to their senses and euthanized clippy. Then a few years later, they bought Halo. Once that story concluded, some idiot at microsoft figured they could make clippy happen, as Cortana. The arms race between users trying to disable cortana and microsoft "accidentally" reenabling her could be its own video. years pass. I hope you're watching this video far enough in the future that I have to remind you about how the most glorified markov chain in the world, chatGPT, conquered society. Cortana is dead. Now, microsoft will make you love Copilot. Remember how they tripped over their own dick right out of the gate by starting at step 1 with a feature that automatically screenshots your credit card details and passwords? hah, good times.
at the risk of just complaining about AI all video... let me indulge in one last tangent. openweathermap.org has a chatbot. FUCKING WHY? so that I can look past the weather forecast and ask it to tell me? ...let's try it. [ulla] "i don't provide the weather, only help with the documentation" THE PERFUNCTORY CHATBOT ON THE WEATHER SITE DOESN'T EVEN TELL YOU THE GOD. DAMNED. WEATHER. [filthy frank] It's time to stop!
phones
as bad as desktop interfaces are, phones are the worst. 100% of interactions with phones are miserable and infuriating. And I don't mean interactions with people on social media, I mean the hardware and the apps. [some on screen reference to What Apple Hath Wrought] But let's not retread who and why, let's focus on the what it is about phones that makes you wish for a real computer.
keyboard
typing on a phone, need I say more?
[have the following in a text bubble conversation]
[other] keyboards are obsolete, just talk.
Yeah? Spell this regex:
[in text bubble, but not for the VO] /bb|[^b]{2}/.
[other] people are bad at regexes, so regexes are bad.
I think you mean chatGPT is bad at regexes. If you apply some effort to understand them, they're great. [on screen: show text "regex", and get the Project Beefhaving Great Thing stamp]
[other] duck off [other] you piece or spit
[get flashbanged by laptop] but don't worry, it's not just phones. my laptop, much like every single other laptop I have ever seen within the last 15 years, is the least-bad design I could find. Laptop keyboards are universally moronic. looking at mine, the place where too many years of muscle memory have trained me to hit the ctrl key, there’s an "fn" key instead, and the ctrl key is moved over to where the windows key is. fn + s is screenshot. apparently, if you design a laptop keyboard, a prerequisite is some kind of brain damage that makes you think people want all kinds bullshit instead of the keys on a keyboard. often, device manuals advertise that the f-keys don’t do the f-key function. Fortunately, mine was able to be set once to let the keys do what they’re supposed to. However, on my black keyboard illuminated by my mostly black screen with a couple of points of extremely bright LEDs, I can see the unnecessary functions' white labels, and the actual f key labels have a dark blue one. I get the impression including the real labels was a begrudging concession.
GPS
GPS. you know why people put up with google's tracking? because for as much dumb bullshit as waze is laden with, for as wrong as apple is, and for as much as google maps is a thinly veiled excuse for google to catalog your gps position down to the meter and second... those 3 are the only apps that offer driving directions and understand the concept of a road. [Osmand+ doing its thing]
notifications
the vast majority of apps do not need to give notifications. Honestly the vast majority of mobile apps don't need to exist at all, but I can only argue that case-by-case. //TODO: examples. obviously I get rid of apps that pull this shit, stat.
automation
question: how do you automate your phone? if you try and do some research online, both sides of the walled gardens have a plethora of stupid ways to decrease your productivity of automating other stuff from your phone. But since your phone is the nexus of your security and identity, you aren't allowed to let anything go poking around in it. So there is almost no concept of "automating a phone". And therefore you'll have to pull up DAVx and hit refresh, manually. [//TODO: footage] You're begrudgingly allowed to install apps without google's blessing through 3rd party app stores, but you may not automatically update them. [//TODO: screenshot of update from fdroid] Worst of all: companies have fully embraced the trend that while they aren't capable of crafting a concise UI with the benefit of a full size screen... surely they'll get it right this time in a harder environment? So companies tend to unapologetically introduce or update features only for their mobile interfaces. [//TODO: examples]
debugging
Debugging. I mentioned my DAVx problem a second ago. Clearly something is wrong with my installation. What, though? fuck knows. [note] Yes, I have exempted it from battery optimization. Apple says phones "just work", so the world keeps the faith. When something doesn't work, if there are logs, good luck finding them. On a real computer, if the whole thing is completely fucked, you can reformat and start from scratch. You can "declare emacs bankruptcy". But if your phone appears to be haunted? Throw it in the trash and buy a new one. [footage of latest iPhone pricing]
files
there's a joke that millenials (and gen-z-ers) have to teach boomers how to open a PDF. But apple-loyalty is most rampant among them - I dare you to try this exercise. Bring up your preferred communications-with-strangers app (e.g., X). [xkcd about how apps tell you about their updates] Dismiss the patch notes. Find an image you'd like to interact with later. Maybe you want to draw on it. maybe you just want to send it as is. Download it.
where is it? fuck knows. For the sake of lip-service to the concept of security, much work has been done to ensure apps aren't allowed to share files. [show an old-timey balance scale, put the downsides on one side] In exchange for the twin downsides of "virtually every app is pointless" and "a truly useful app is prevented from existing", we have accomplished nothing in the way of privacy. [pitch meeting] "oh, whoops!" "whoopsie!"
Ogg Vorbis continues to be superior to mp3. More fidelity. More efficient compression. But apple says mp3 is fine, so, rest in peace OGG. you were the OG. ...G. Don't worry, there's a million billion music player apps. The only problem is that none of them matter. You know what would be great? if you could download an audio codec on the play store, and whatever music player app you like could use it. [pronounce "modern" with nausea] But that would require apps to work on the old paradigm - where they read and write files, and interact with each other. The modern strategy is not to let the user control their files. that way when the platform owner decides they want to sell your data, they already got it from you.
web
you know why people put up with google dictating your experience to maximize your diet of ads? because here's the alternative. Firefox on the desktop is the last web browser that was a Great Thing. largely, for the most part, they're trying to preserve at least some of that. Firefox on mobile is absolutely not making any such attempt. It does what all the other mobile apps are doing: once a day it abuses its notification privileges to advertise to you; "hey come back and run the app again". It frequently updates its UI (to feed its progress addiction), it collects user data. Worst of all, they had and then removed plugin support. If an adblocker is necessary to browse the web, it's even more necessary to browse the web on mobile. We should all think less of the mozilla foundation for the 2020 change. [there was drama on the internet about the change they made, show some of that] (fortunately they were sufficiently pressured to walk back their mistake.) [I think in 2023 they said "ff mobile is getting plugin support". it might be google's antisolution version?]
F.A.B.'s are S.O.B.'s
[volume rising, "O, Fortuna"] The worst UX antipattern emerged a while ago. [layer diagram. bottom up: software, what you're doing, your attention] It picks a permitted subset of functionality, moves it away from anywhere it could interoperate with other systems, entitles itself to priority over what you're trying to look at, so it can be in front of your eyeballs. It's everything people hate about popup ads, but so commonly done that it gets enshrined in UI libraries. The pinnacle of getting in the way. the Floating. Action. Button. [O, Fortuna reaches crescendo and full volume] [footage of youtube mobile's "play something" FAB] [O, Fortuna subtle fade-out] it's a software screen notch.
popups
because no one likes ads, if you're a professional Marketer, you market yourself on the grounds that you can make a stronger impression. Which means making your ads more intrusive. Everyone hates ads. Everyone hates pop-up ads much more, because they pop-up. [note] I thought this was obvious both experientially and tautologically, and yet... No one has ever googled something, read a random blog's page, and signed up for its newsletter. No one has ever opened their phone's music player or GPS app and read the patch notes - and I say that as someone who did read the patch notes for skullgirls, and always reads EULAs. It's almost funny that they're audacious enough to jump in the way and ask to to read two thousand words about the changes they're very proud of getting 2/3rds of the way done before release, that 2/3rds of their users don't want and 2/3rds don't understand. you're trying to do something, if there was ever a time you would read their patch notes, it's not at startup.
where we went wrong
These apps don't think they're a means to an end. They think they're an ℯ𝓍𝓅ℯ𝓇𝒾ℯ𝓃𝒸ℯ. [crash different video: you're taking part in the apple experience, etc] They want to increase the time spent in an app. I assume this is favorable for ad revenue metrics. For those of us who actually do things, an app is a tool, and a tool is better when it decreases the time it takes to get shit done.
take for example, Discord. They've given themselves loads of work to produce features other than real time chat, to justify asking you for money. Meanwhile it only exists in the first place because skype was bloated full of junk, and it only persists because their userbase refuses to use Matrix.
Notice how every search company realizes that every website is overladen with trash, so they offer an "ai summary". If the accuracy ever gets good (it won't), that would be a great way to pull information out of a website without being told to sign in with google so that I can waive my privacy protections for their absolutely unnecessary cookies to then decline to sign up for their newsletter and then tell their chatbot to go find somewhere else to be useless.
The entire world of technology is mislabeled. the definition of technology is about applying knowledge to achieve practical goals. It's far more profitable to hide the fact that your only actual goal is extracting value from the people who ostensibly should be your customers. That's why the only practical goal to achieve at the moment is adversarial APIs. We don't need yet another skin on your phone's built in music player, we need the ability for your phone to install new audio codecs. we don't need yet another social network to give our images to, we need to be allowed to use FTP.
how to do better
Accursed Farms has inspiration on how to build better UIs. [Accursed Farms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA something about "imagine a butler"]
let's learn the lesson that clippy's project managers didn't: we already anthropomorphize our technology, computers don't need to pretend to be human. But to make the language easier, let's still compare your computer to a human assistant. how would we change our bad assistant into a good one?
autonomy
ai investors might tell us that an assistant that can make use of autonomy is better than one that can't. In a vacuum, that's true. But no chatbot is useful, yet. What we have instead, is an assistant that insists on being in charge of tasks that it isn't capable of. [note] I guess that means management is the one job AI has made obsolete. [//TODO: example] A recurring problem is that as a user, i haven't gained functionality, but I have lost options. Given a human assistant, I would expect it to be able to admit when it isn't capable of something. (that might also be asking too much, but let's stick to technology.) Taking the initiative doesn't count if you screw up. Imagine you had a coworker, and when you try to do something, it gets in your way and does it (badly). now you have to spend twice as long because you also have to clean up after your predecesor.
Don't attempt to take on tasks you can't handle.
transparency
Above, I complained about DAVx failing mysteriously. I complained about how a file is downloaded to some mysterious location.
customizability
There's a comment on that accursed farms video from before... [alt va] coming back to this now that windows 11 is out... imagine being able to move the taskbar. we had no idea how good we had it back then. Why can't you move the taskbar in windows 11? because now it looks like OSX. What is the only rationalization that apple investors have been giving for apple's success? That apple has good taste in interface design. Apple insists that their UX is good because of the decisions they've made for it. [steve jobs] we're trying to make great products for people! And when apple says something dumb, the rest of the technology world agrees. so customization options are viewed as less and less important. not to mention, if you're stopped from modding in some armor for your horse, now it's something that can be sold to you instead. [show: horse armor from Oblivion] Companies love to dumb everything down, and in response to criticism, blame it on a hypothetical group of lowest-common-denominator people. But the whole premise that customization is unimportant is bad. Just ask the air force. [https://medium.com/continuousdelivery/no-one-size-fits-all-d7ad0a8cbe7b -> https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages/article_e3231734-e5da-5bf5-9496-a34e52d60bd9.html] the quote is very long
when the user tries to customize, let them.
interoperability
Don't try to enclose data that isn't yours.
sphere to square
no one wants to sign up for your newsletter and you fucking know it no one wants to chat with your chatbot