pastille

Fag of the Year

I'm horrifically obsessed with Weezer.
I also like messing with decade-old mobile devices.
PFP is by @Bellie.


my tumblr that i dont use
meriamoryy.tumblr.com/

doodlemancy
@doodlemancy

"people always complain about UI changes at first and then they get used to it" i'm going to break into your house and put all your important stuff you use every day in random drawers and see how you like it. i'm gonna hide your phone in the towel cupboard. i'll put all your spoons in the fridge. all writing utensils are now stored under a floorboard that i've drawn a pencil on (in very light pencil so you can't actually see it)

if you want your software to be a part of users' everyday lives then it has to be reliable and predictable. you can't just change the entire shape of it on a whim no matter how much better you think it is. make small changes slowly or leave it the fuck alone. a UI overhaul is rarely a good idea because even if it really is "better" you are straining the fragile trust of your userbase by throwing them unexpectedly into HEY LEARN A NEW THING when it is fucking thursday or whatever and they are busy or maybe have an urgent message to send to someone. it's disrespectful. it's a breach of common decency. you shouldn't overhaul your entire UI on a whim any more than you should "deliver" a package by hucking it through an open window at the recipient's head. take the time to knock, or at least don't complain when they yell at you and throw stuff back.


natescape
@natescape

And basically the only thing that matters is WHERE SOMETHING IS. Nice icon? Barely registers (it does impact how users report usability, but doesn't actually affect usability/performance). Having a label? Yeah, you should probably have one, I guess - when you move shit around that's what users are going to look for next.

Consistent location? Turns out "knowing, spatially, where to click" is like 90% of the game. When users learn an interface, it's the thing that they learn.

You SHOULD NOT be fucking with that idly, and the thing that should backstop that decision - building trust with your users - exists outside of the scope of quarterly momentum, and therefore does not functionally exist for many design teams to target.


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in reply to @doodlemancy's post:

I think a lot of the time it's not because developers or even the company think their new version is better, it's because they need to justify keeping large staffs of programmers and UX designers on the payroll and show their shareholders that they're "doing something."

there are so many versions of it and i don't even know how many it's been but i miss when i could swipe in two different directions from my home screen and have Left Apps and Right Apps. i had a whole system! swipe right for boring things and maintenance, swipe left for the Good Apps! and they destroyed it for absolutely no reason lol

…this is because they wanted to reserve swiping left for the google app, isn't it? I've only ever had screens to the right of my default screen so I didn't realize they'd removed the ability to add screens to the left at all, instead of just putting the google app crap left of the leftmost screen

now now i have had so many fucking google engineers yell at me that this was entirely justified despite it transparently being solely because they put a fucking notch and couldn't do anything better :|

"what are you gonna do bitch, make a comparably-featured version of our software/website and convince everyone to leave the one they know and that everyone else is using? good luck idiot"

in reply to @natescape's post:

this is making me think about the most important piece of driving advice I've ever heard: "Do not worry about driving SAFELY or POLITELY. Focus on driving PREDICTABLY." Because the most dangerous thing a driver can do, even if they were trying to be nice, is to suddenly slow down or lane-change to make room for the person they were trying to be nice to.

I feel the same way about UI changes. If it's established where it's at, and the majority of your userbase knows where to find it, leave it where the hell it is because changing it is going to wreck the majority of your users' work flows and use cases! Your UX Specialist might think they're doing a favor to new users by putting the Bold New Feature in a prominent place (At the expense of another more useful feature), but well... 😒

On a positive note, this was the first thing I noticed about Cobalt Core. It's a roguelike deckbuilder, a genre that was codified by Slay the Spire, and Cobalt Core puts everything where your StS muscle memory says it should be. Draw pile on the left, discards on the right, artifacts in the top left, press Y to pass turn, its all there. Why can't more devs be like that?!