Don Norman is old as hell and he’s not going to take it any more.
May 10, 2019 7:16 AM Subscribe
If you don't know the secret swipe pattern you're clearly not one of the cool kids, get an android.
posted by sammyo at 7:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 7:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I don't know if he was referring to Oxo Good Grips products when he says that products designed for older people are ugly, but I buy them because they look kind of science-fictiony in addition to being nicer to handle and clean.
He raises a good point about how a lot of what we might think of as design trends, like using touch screens instead of physical buttons, are often cost and component-cutting attempts. I hope we pull back from that trend after some kind of backlash, but no sign of it yet.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:34 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
He raises a good point about how a lot of what we might think of as design trends, like using touch screens instead of physical buttons, are often cost and component-cutting attempts. I hope we pull back from that trend after some kind of backlash, but no sign of it yet.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:34 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I could've done without the opening graphic, clearly chosen to evoke cane-shaking at those damn kids playing on your lawn.
posted by panglos at 7:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by panglos at 7:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Apple seems to be locked into design fetishes, as opposed to designing for people.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:36 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:36 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Meh. We old people are maybe 16 per cent of the population and will buy less stuff every year till we stop altogether. It is a mass market economy. Why should anyone care about us?
The part about tech products having little tiny print sure is apt, though. A whole lot of tech products are ideal mobility and memory prosthetics for older people but are made just about useless by tiny text. A lot of times it takes a while to figure out that your vision has deteriorated. It is easy to conclude in the interim that there is something eldritch and unfathomable about new phones or computers when the actual problem is that you can't read the instructions or the labels.
If you ever have to show an old person how to use new tech, showing us how to increase text size is likely to be the biggest single thing you can do.
posted by ckridge at 7:36 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
The part about tech products having little tiny print sure is apt, though. A whole lot of tech products are ideal mobility and memory prosthetics for older people but are made just about useless by tiny text. A lot of times it takes a while to figure out that your vision has deteriorated. It is easy to conclude in the interim that there is something eldritch and unfathomable about new phones or computers when the actual problem is that you can't read the instructions or the labels.
If you ever have to show an old person how to use new tech, showing us how to increase text size is likely to be the biggest single thing you can do.
posted by ckridge at 7:36 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
I could've done without the opening graphic, clearly chosen to evoke cane-shaking at those damn kids playing on your lawn.
Canes need to be better designed anyway, to be easier to shake yet more menacing when shaken.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:37 AM on May 10, 2019 [23 favorites]
Canes need to be better designed anyway, to be easier to shake yet more menacing when shaken.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:37 AM on May 10, 2019 [23 favorites]
The accessibility menu on an iOS device has so many great improvements to a user experience, but a lot of people who've spent their whole life thinking of themselves as not disabled will totally refuse to even see what's in there because they aren't disabled. It's Apple that is making the text too small.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:39 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 7:39 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
Meh. We old people are maybe 16 per cent of the population and will buy less stuff every year till we stop altogether. It is a mass market economy. Why should anyone care about us?
People age; people change physically and cognitively over time. Sooner or later, most of us will be part of the aged demographic. Designing for that eventuality makes life easier for everyone.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [22 favorites]
People age; people change physically and cognitively over time. Sooner or later, most of us will be part of the aged demographic. Designing for that eventuality makes life easier for everyone.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [22 favorites]
Canes need to be better designed anyway, to be easier to shake yet more menacing when shaken.
I like the Cane Masters hickory fighting cane. You can shake it upside their knee, and then totter away cackling as they hobble after you.
posted by ckridge at 7:42 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I like the Cane Masters hickory fighting cane. You can shake it upside their knee, and then totter away cackling as they hobble after you.
posted by ckridge at 7:42 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Containers with screw tops require more strength than my wife or I can muster.
Looking at you, Vitamin Water
posted by sageleaf at 7:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Looking at you, Vitamin Water
posted by sageleaf at 7:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's not just "old" people when it comes to sight, really. I'm 40, and have been looking at a computer screen for most of my life now. At my eye appointment last year, my doctor told me I basically have the eyes of a sixty year old, and she sees it all the time. We're far too hard on our eyes in the modern world, and soon a good percentage of our population will need better usability than these products provide.
I'm sure our hands and small motor skills aren't that much different, for those of us who sit at a desk and use a keyboard all day.
posted by backwards compatible at 7:45 AM on May 10, 2019 [16 favorites]
I'm sure our hands and small motor skills aren't that much different, for those of us who sit at a desk and use a keyboard all day.
posted by backwards compatible at 7:45 AM on May 10, 2019 [16 favorites]
I was glad he talked about how small text is on mobile devices. Reading the web for long on Android browsers is usually somewhere between painful and impossible*: sure, you can zoom in but then you have to scroll side-to-side to read each line. It's crazy. I'm lucky that Firefox has addons that more-or-less fix this by providing text reflow, but they're pretty clunky (too clunky for my grandparents to deal with) and the fact they're just addons has raised its own problems (like this week's fun times and the update to Quantum). What gets me is that reflow actually used to be a built-in experimental feature in FF, but then some 30 or 40 versions ago they apparently decided it wasn't important enough to keep working on and removed it altogether. Which is just really insane and makes me actually angry - accessibility needs to be a top priority, and it's not even close.
(*I'm not elderly, I just get eye strain)
posted by trig at 7:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
(*I'm not elderly, I just get eye strain)
posted by trig at 7:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
Regarding Apple and cellphones in general, it should be noted that the sheer number of things that used to be separate, physical tools that are now crammed into a glass slab with a single input mechanism is huge. Phone, camera, stereo, map, alarm clock, etc. etc. Each one of those things used to have a physical UI suited specifically to that device's needs. Now you have to interact with them all through tapping and swiping. The advantage is that you now have all those things in your pocket, but the disadvantage is... you now have all those things in your pocket.
posted by gwint at 7:50 AM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
posted by gwint at 7:50 AM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
Meh. We old people are maybe 16 per cent of the population and will buy less stuff every year till we stop altogether. It is a mass market economy. Why should anyone care about us?
Quite apart from the universal design premise that good design doesn’t have to be for just a small population (this came up a bunch in a recent-ish Oxo thread), Norman disputes and addresses this very point in TFA [emphasis added]: “The number of active, healthy oldsters is large–and increasing. And businesses should take note: We are good customers often with more free time and discretionary income than younger people.”
posted by miles per flower at 7:53 AM on May 10, 2019 [12 favorites]
Quite apart from the universal design premise that good design doesn’t have to be for just a small population (this came up a bunch in a recent-ish Oxo thread), Norman disputes and addresses this very point in TFA [emphasis added]: “The number of active, healthy oldsters is large–and increasing. And businesses should take note: We are good customers often with more free time and discretionary income than younger people.”
posted by miles per flower at 7:53 AM on May 10, 2019 [12 favorites]
Met Don Norman once a few decades ago. He insulted my text pager provided to me by work, a Motorola PageWriter, like called it a hip tumor or such. I wasn't particularly offended; I agreed completely with him.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
The other day, I was looking at the personal page of a social activist, someone whose entire career is built around advocating for diversity and inclusion.
Their website was nearly unreadable for anyone with poor vision.
Designers: please STOP using light-weight, low-contrast text! We can't read it.
posted by jb at 7:58 AM on May 10, 2019 [34 favorites]
Their website was nearly unreadable for anyone with poor vision.
Designers: please STOP using light-weight, low-contrast text! We can't read it.
posted by jb at 7:58 AM on May 10, 2019 [34 favorites]
Much of current design places priority on the shareholder over the user.
posted by bdc34 at 8:02 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by bdc34 at 8:02 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Accessibility is a key component of diversity and inclusion.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [24 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [24 favorites]
is it ironic that my inability to read the safety warnings on pill containers is what finally drove me to buying my first pair of reading glasses? Or just stupid?
posted by philip-random at 8:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 8:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
The designers at Apple apparently believe that text is ugly, so it should either be eliminated entirely or made as invisible as possible.
Well I don't get this. There's text all over the thing. Yes there is no back button but when there is one, it's text that tells you what you're going back to.
And while text can be small at times, one of the first things the phone does when you turn it on is ask how big you want the system text to be. The Accessibility menu has a ton of features to help with this, it even makes the phone highly usable to blind people.
I'll admit that the phone doesn't go out of its way to tell you every swipe you need to operate it - but then, most people know how to swipe and zoom these days. These phones have been in our lives for more than ten years. If you've never used one by now, you probably never will.
And don't give too many props to Android for its back and home buttons - those are going away now, being replaced by gestures that are pretty much completely stolen from iPhone X. (I don't have a problem with this theft, in fact if something works, you should steal it!)
posted by fungible at 8:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Well I don't get this. There's text all over the thing. Yes there is no back button but when there is one, it's text that tells you what you're going back to.
And while text can be small at times, one of the first things the phone does when you turn it on is ask how big you want the system text to be. The Accessibility menu has a ton of features to help with this, it even makes the phone highly usable to blind people.
I'll admit that the phone doesn't go out of its way to tell you every swipe you need to operate it - but then, most people know how to swipe and zoom these days. These phones have been in our lives for more than ten years. If you've never used one by now, you probably never will.
And don't give too many props to Android for its back and home buttons - those are going away now, being replaced by gestures that are pretty much completely stolen from iPhone X. (I don't have a problem with this theft, in fact if something works, you should steal it!)
posted by fungible at 8:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Some of my research as a postdoc has looked at differences between older and younger observers for a variety of usability-adjacent questions (I do basic science, so the goal isn't "how do we make this product work for everybody" it's "what don't we understand here, so someone else can go tweak the product"). This has included looking at text legibility when the text is degraded (older observers take a much greater hit much faster if text is either blurred or presented in visual noise), which means that we can visualize the perceptual experience that, say, a user in their 60s has for a designer in their 30s, which seems like it could be useful. I've also looked at highway sign typefaces and age (the US went back to using Federal Highway Gothic a few years ago, basically because it's government-owned, even though Clearview, which had been permitted on signs for about a decade, was easier for everyone... but cost money).
More recently, I haven't done as much legibility work, and do more on scene perception, road hazard detection and driving, and that's pretty interesting in terms of age effects: older drivers need longer views of road scenes to understand what's going on (and to extract whether or not there's a hazard). That's particularly critical in automated driving, because shiny new safety features like, say, automated driving modes, show up in more expensive vehicles first, which are bought by older drivers... and if they're built on the perceptual assumptions of young drivers, they'll make everyone less safe.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 8:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
More recently, I haven't done as much legibility work, and do more on scene perception, road hazard detection and driving, and that's pretty interesting in terms of age effects: older drivers need longer views of road scenes to understand what's going on (and to extract whether or not there's a hazard). That's particularly critical in automated driving, because shiny new safety features like, say, automated driving modes, show up in more expensive vehicles first, which are bought by older drivers... and if they're built on the perceptual assumptions of young drivers, they'll make everyone less safe.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 8:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
The designers at Apple apparently believe that text is ugly
I always thought it was because icons and symbols don't require translation, but text does.
posted by FJT at 8:13 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I always thought it was because icons and symbols don't require translation, but text does.
posted by FJT at 8:13 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
The designers at Apple apparently believe that text is ugly, so it should either be eliminated entirely or made as invisible as possible.
Maybe so, but I've never seen a 'connected elderly' with any device other than Apple (or 5 years ago, a Kindle, which may run on Android, but it's no more usable and not really the same thing).
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:18 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Maybe so, but I've never seen a 'connected elderly' with any device other than Apple (or 5 years ago, a Kindle, which may run on Android, but it's no more usable and not really the same thing).
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:18 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Honestly, if this stuff doesn't arrive via some kind of expanded Medicare, it won't matter. It will be beautiful and useful and extremely expensive and the vast bulk of elderly people will either do without or have terrible versions.
I mean, right now as I understand it most people have to pay out of pocket for hearing aids, which are absolutely essential for functioning, and there are lots of people who need them and don't get them - never mind some kind of high-design walker.
posted by Frowner at 8:20 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
I mean, right now as I understand it most people have to pay out of pocket for hearing aids, which are absolutely essential for functioning, and there are lots of people who need them and don't get them - never mind some kind of high-design walker.
posted by Frowner at 8:20 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
Meh. We old people are maybe 16 per cent of the population and will buy less stuff every year till we stop altogether. It is a mass market economy. Why should anyone care about us?
TFA makes a good point about how some design elements "for the elderly/disabled" also benefit people who are temporarily and situationally disabled:
* wider curb cuts for wheelchairs also come in handy for people pushing strollers or luggage carts.
* Containers that are easily opened with one hand also come in handy for people who've broken their hands.
* More seating on public transit is also helpful for people who are on their way home becuase they suddenly got sick or are pregnant or are just way wiped out after an unusually hard day at work or what have you.
Not everyone is 100% hale and hearty 100% of the time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 AM on May 10, 2019 [39 favorites]
TFA makes a good point about how some design elements "for the elderly/disabled" also benefit people who are temporarily and situationally disabled:
* wider curb cuts for wheelchairs also come in handy for people pushing strollers or luggage carts.
* Containers that are easily opened with one hand also come in handy for people who've broken their hands.
* More seating on public transit is also helpful for people who are on their way home becuase they suddenly got sick or are pregnant or are just way wiped out after an unusually hard day at work or what have you.
Not everyone is 100% hale and hearty 100% of the time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 AM on May 10, 2019 [39 favorites]
iOS has some great accessibility features (VoiceOver is amazing) but sometimes they miss things. My elderly relative with limited dexterity can swipe to unlock her iPad, but they removed that feature in a iOS update. She can't easily press the home button, or rest her finger over it, so she's just keeping her old iPad until it fails.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:45 AM on May 10, 2019
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:45 AM on May 10, 2019
* wider curb cuts for wheelchairs also come in handy for people pushing strollers or luggage carts.
The current standard for curb cuts has got narrower and worse in every way, I assume to make it (the braile bump thing) standardized and therefore cheaper.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:46 AM on May 10, 2019
The current standard for curb cuts has got narrower and worse in every way, I assume to make it (the braile bump thing) standardized and therefore cheaper.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:46 AM on May 10, 2019
I agree w/ almost everything Norman has to say, although it's sort of hilarious to me to find someone who formed a company with Jakob Nielsen* complaining that something is ugly.
*Edit to clarify: this refers to Nielsen's work, not the man himself.
posted by Fish Sauce at 8:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
*Edit to clarify: this refers to Nielsen's work, not the man himself.
posted by Fish Sauce at 8:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I haven't read the article yet because I get angry just thinking of Don Norman, (but I will give him a chance in 2 mins when I've fed the dog).
My mother is 80 and both legally blind and complicated, but she can actually read and enjoys it. She has an iPhone with the disability settings on, and an iPad, and she also has a laptop running something Microsoft (I forget what generation). She cannot use her computer, but she can use her iPad with help, and she loves her phone.
My sister works as a nurse caring for the elderly in a suburban municipality. They have given all the old people iPads, where they can access all their medical/care information and share it with healthcare workers. That way they can carry around the same data across sectors and avoid data-loss, which is a huge issue, even in a unified medical system. They can also use the iPads for entertainment and communication if they want. The municipality chose iPads over other devices because the security is better, which is important with old people without much internet experience. For instance in my mother's municipality, old people get everything on paper because they are considered computer illiterate, and with a cranky, blind old woman, things get lost all of the time.
Here I look like a big Apple defender, which I am not. It's just that user-friendly design can be many things for many people. Now I'll feed that dog.
posted by mumimor at 8:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
My mother is 80 and both legally blind and complicated, but she can actually read and enjoys it. She has an iPhone with the disability settings on, and an iPad, and she also has a laptop running something Microsoft (I forget what generation). She cannot use her computer, but she can use her iPad with help, and she loves her phone.
My sister works as a nurse caring for the elderly in a suburban municipality. They have given all the old people iPads, where they can access all their medical/care information and share it with healthcare workers. That way they can carry around the same data across sectors and avoid data-loss, which is a huge issue, even in a unified medical system. They can also use the iPads for entertainment and communication if they want. The municipality chose iPads over other devices because the security is better, which is important with old people without much internet experience. For instance in my mother's municipality, old people get everything on paper because they are considered computer illiterate, and with a cranky, blind old woman, things get lost all of the time.
Here I look like a big Apple defender, which I am not. It's just that user-friendly design can be many things for many people. Now I'll feed that dog.
posted by mumimor at 8:48 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
is it ironic that my inability to read the safety warnings on pill containers is what finally drove me to buying my first pair of reading glasses? Or just stupid?
Pill container design is generally stupid. The one exception to this was Target's well designed pill bottles, which solved a lot of usability issues, and which were discontinued when Target sold their pharmacy services to CVS a few years ago. Not sure if a replacement is in the works.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:49 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
Pill container design is generally stupid. The one exception to this was Target's well designed pill bottles, which solved a lot of usability issues, and which were discontinued when Target sold their pharmacy services to CVS a few years ago. Not sure if a replacement is in the works.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:49 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
"Now I'll feed that dog."
As long as you are able to get the bag open.
posted by bz at 8:50 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
As long as you are able to get the bag open.
posted by bz at 8:50 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
the US went back to using Federal Highway Gothic a few years ago
This was reversed in the 2018 budget. Clearview is back.
posted by Spacelegoman at 8:54 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
This was reversed in the 2018 budget. Clearview is back.
posted by Spacelegoman at 8:54 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Apple really seemed to be heading in an even worse direction, what I was calling, somewhat ironically, "peak flat". All text was being narrowed to just before the threshold of invisibility, all indentifying features and textures were being sanded off the interface, the phones themselves were hurtling toward an event horizon of zero thickness and zero buttons. The most recent iOS version actually improved the default readability of text, and the next generation of iPhones are going to be a hair thicker than the current ones. Maybe there's hope, I don't know. I still wish there was a pause / play button on my damn phone. You're going to pry my headphone-jack, TouchID, palm-size iPhone SE out of my cold dead, hands, though.
posted by wnissen at 8:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by wnissen at 8:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
The University of Washington publishes a lot of great materials about Universal Design, including this, which became very relevant when Firefox recently glitched and adblockers went down, e.g:
posted by Little Dawn at 9:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Avoiding flashing animations is necessary because animations that flash at frequencies between 2 and 55 hertz can trigger seizures in individuals who are susceptible. Flashing animations, however, additionally tend to annoy or distract users without seizure disorders.Some were annoyed, others had to be very, very careful when navigating the internet or otherwise keep to Metafilter and other user-friendly websites...
posted by Little Dawn at 9:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Apple seems to be locked into design fetishes, as opposed to designing for people.
Apple Park is a fascinating study in ignoring Norman's advice. The doors are all glass, and they only open one way. Unfortunately, instead of the push plate design Norman popularized, the doors are symmetrical. The fire extinguishers, first aid kits and defib devices are not visible, but rather tucked away in walls with virtually invisible cabinetry with a simple black logo marking their presence behind the wall. The toilet stalls -- the only non-glass doors in the building -- have floor to ceiling doors, and no obvious indication of occupancy or lock state. The sit-stand desks have hidden buttons on the underside to actually control them, but try not to accidentally wedge your armrest underneath the 'lower the desk' button, or you'll engage a positive feedback loop.
posted by pwnguin at 9:03 AM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
Apple Park is a fascinating study in ignoring Norman's advice. The doors are all glass, and they only open one way. Unfortunately, instead of the push plate design Norman popularized, the doors are symmetrical. The fire extinguishers, first aid kits and defib devices are not visible, but rather tucked away in walls with virtually invisible cabinetry with a simple black logo marking their presence behind the wall. The toilet stalls -- the only non-glass doors in the building -- have floor to ceiling doors, and no obvious indication of occupancy or lock state. The sit-stand desks have hidden buttons on the underside to actually control them, but try not to accidentally wedge your armrest underneath the 'lower the desk' button, or you'll engage a positive feedback loop.
posted by pwnguin at 9:03 AM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
I think design is getting worse as more women are becoming professional designers and their male bosses veto all of their good decisions out of pure spite, the result is a lot of very bad decisions everywhere. This has been my direct observation.
posted by bleep at 9:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
posted by bleep at 9:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
Containers with screw tops require more strength than my wife or I can muster.
I have several good workarounds for screw tops. Those "lift and peel" things, however, are impossible.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 9:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I have several good workarounds for screw tops. Those "lift and peel" things, however, are impossible.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 9:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm currently doing a lot of elder care. One aspect of my thinking that has changed big time of late is that I think we (as a culture) place way too much emphasis on people living independently, doing everything for themselves " ... for as long as possible".
A. I get it and agree, independence is great, the freedom and the ability to do things your way,
B. but the other shoe dropping here is that very many older people (or just younger people with particular needs) end up being alone for longer than they should, and detrimentally so as this can lead to immense levels of stress, despair even.
No, I'm not advocating for getting everybody into a care facility ASAP. Yes, I am suggesting that the sooner we can start easing assistance into our everyday, the less stressful that whole transition becomes. And if done right, it can keep a person in their home situation for longer, perhaps much longer. And in a way that is very much connected to their community ... as opposed to isolated, alone.
In the context of the discussion here, this might mean that an 88 year old woman who lost her husband five years ago and was never much into "gadgets" in the first place, doesn't suddenly need to pick up new skils (which gets harder and harder the older you get), but just knows that once or twice a day (or perhaps three times a week), somebody younger is going to drop by and take care of those gadget concerns for her, thus keeping her connected.
posted by philip-random at 9:06 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
A. I get it and agree, independence is great, the freedom and the ability to do things your way,
B. but the other shoe dropping here is that very many older people (or just younger people with particular needs) end up being alone for longer than they should, and detrimentally so as this can lead to immense levels of stress, despair even.
No, I'm not advocating for getting everybody into a care facility ASAP. Yes, I am suggesting that the sooner we can start easing assistance into our everyday, the less stressful that whole transition becomes. And if done right, it can keep a person in their home situation for longer, perhaps much longer. And in a way that is very much connected to their community ... as opposed to isolated, alone.
In the context of the discussion here, this might mean that an 88 year old woman who lost her husband five years ago and was never much into "gadgets" in the first place, doesn't suddenly need to pick up new skils (which gets harder and harder the older you get), but just knows that once or twice a day (or perhaps three times a week), somebody younger is going to drop by and take care of those gadget concerns for her, thus keeping her connected.
posted by philip-random at 9:06 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Spacelegoman, that's great to hear - we did the study in 2016 (paper came out in 2017) and I basically stopped doing legibility research in late 2016, so I hadn't stayed on top of things.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 9:06 AM on May 10, 2019
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 9:06 AM on May 10, 2019
Apple Park is a fascinating study in ignoring Norman's advice.
One long term effect of the passing of Steve Jobs: Jony Ive unchecked.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
One long term effect of the passing of Steve Jobs: Jony Ive unchecked.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
secret swipe pattern you're clearly not one of the cool kids, get an android
Android has secret swipe patterns - and frankly, it's native UX is a mess and pretty much every app invents it's own UX... Which still happens on iOS as well - or frankly every platform these days. Gone are the days when you could learn how a class of UI widget would work and it would work reliably.
My most recent example is a tree view of scrollable, checkboxable items. In the pre-historic era of standard OS-provided widgets, you could click a parent and the default children would check/uncheck... now, I have to check/uncheck hundreds of items manually, all while hoping that the scrollbar widget works reliably and keeps my position... Oh... and those have to be actual touches or mouseclicks, not say.... spacebar and up-down arrow for selecting and scrolling.
Frankly - these are not Android/iOS issues, I am fairly certain the specific app I am mentioning is "web-based", just exposed as a Windows app using Electron or something similar.
And yes - soooo many products are now sold in packages that require shears to open... (And even then can be pretty sharp) ... I am only in my late 40's, but even my giant phone phablet is hard to read/use. (I miss the Windows Phone textual "Modern/Metro" interface, even though... there were no apps)
Damn kids, get off my lawn.
posted by jkaczor at 9:21 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Android has secret swipe patterns - and frankly, it's native UX is a mess and pretty much every app invents it's own UX... Which still happens on iOS as well - or frankly every platform these days. Gone are the days when you could learn how a class of UI widget would work and it would work reliably.
My most recent example is a tree view of scrollable, checkboxable items. In the pre-historic era of standard OS-provided widgets, you could click a parent and the default children would check/uncheck... now, I have to check/uncheck hundreds of items manually, all while hoping that the scrollbar widget works reliably and keeps my position... Oh... and those have to be actual touches or mouseclicks, not say.... spacebar and up-down arrow for selecting and scrolling.
Frankly - these are not Android/iOS issues, I am fairly certain the specific app I am mentioning is "web-based", just exposed as a Windows app using Electron or something similar.
And yes - soooo many products are now sold in packages that require shears to open... (And even then can be pretty sharp) ... I am only in my late 40's, but even my giant phone phablet is hard to read/use. (I miss the Windows Phone textual "Modern/Metro" interface, even though... there were no apps)
Damn kids, get off my lawn.
posted by jkaczor at 9:21 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Modern Apple makes no sense to me. They have more money than ever before but they make mistakes that show a lack of care or understanding in the areas of accessibility, automation, software development, and design.
> Phone, camera, stereo, map, alarm clock, etc. etc. Each one of those things used to have a physical UI suited specifically to that device's needs.
Don Norman wrote about this thing too in his book The Invisible Computer (from 1998!). He agrees these should be broken up, yet they should retain their link to people's connected lives. Instead of an old fashioned alarm clock, or a newfangled app, a modern standalone alarm clock that knows your schedule is what he proposes.
posted by Monochrome at 9:24 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
> Phone, camera, stereo, map, alarm clock, etc. etc. Each one of those things used to have a physical UI suited specifically to that device's needs.
Don Norman wrote about this thing too in his book The Invisible Computer (from 1998!). He agrees these should be broken up, yet they should retain their link to people's connected lives. Instead of an old fashioned alarm clock, or a newfangled app, a modern standalone alarm clock that knows your schedule is what he proposes.
posted by Monochrome at 9:24 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't know if he was referring to Oxo Good Grips products
They may look nice and easy to use, but I found they fail and are "not fit for purpose"...
posted by jkaczor at 9:25 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
They may look nice and easy to use, but I found they fail and are "not fit for purpose"...
posted by jkaczor at 9:25 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Chickens cull their old, weak and sick by ganging up and pecking them to death. Making existence in society too tough to be worth the effort so we just stay hidden in our rooms is how we do it.
Chickens are more honest.
posted by zaixfeep at 9:26 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Chickens are more honest.
posted by zaixfeep at 9:26 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
My subconscious Onion headline generator gave me "Boomers demand world continue to be designed around them. Look, we have money!"
That said, I think he's right. There are a few too many people in design thinking how "pure" the experience is, without dealing with messy, messy humans.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 9:32 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
That said, I think he's right. There are a few too many people in design thinking how "pure" the experience is, without dealing with messy, messy humans.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 9:32 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hm. My snowbird in-laws just arrived back in town and the first thing they asked us to do, once connected to our WiFi, was to help them install all the phone and computer security updates they had ignored for the last 6 months. (apparently everything is bigger in Texas except access to free wifi?)
After installing the updates they were absolutely horrified that the UI had changed slightly - an Android update altered some icons and moved the default layout around a bit. My mother-in-law was quite adamant that she was never updating the device again, because her weather app was "wrong". It took me 10 minutes to figure out that she meant the default locations she had saved had been deleted, so she could no longer swipe left or right to see what the weather was like in the 3-4 cities they spend the most time in. Once figured out, it was a near instant fix to add them back in. She remains skeptical now though because the weather app is now 1/4" lower down the screen from where it used to be, so she can no longer open it by pressing her finger onto the left eye of her grandson in the wallpaper photo.
They're on Android because the phones were cheap, we're an Apple ecosystem. Just comparing the two it feels like the discoverability of accessibility features is easier on iOS. I was fairly frustrated by how hard it was to make their phones do the things that I know phones do, things I take for granted on iOS. Yes, it does them, but there were often so many extra steps involved. This is undoubtedly influenced by my familiarity with iOS in general, but really, the settings were all over the place on their devices.
I've been through every iOS update from the iPhone 3GS to present, I can't recall ever having settings like saved locations get deleted, and aside from screen shape changes the UI has been consistent - apps remain in the rows of 4 they have always had, with the same spacing. I really, really wish my in-laws could have managed to cough up the dough for an Apple device. The UI changes on Android seem arbitrary and weird to me. When your users are only slightly comfortable with the tech to begin with, you aren't doing anyone any favors by moving shit around unexpectedly or by dropping data without warning.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
After installing the updates they were absolutely horrified that the UI had changed slightly - an Android update altered some icons and moved the default layout around a bit. My mother-in-law was quite adamant that she was never updating the device again, because her weather app was "wrong". It took me 10 minutes to figure out that she meant the default locations she had saved had been deleted, so she could no longer swipe left or right to see what the weather was like in the 3-4 cities they spend the most time in. Once figured out, it was a near instant fix to add them back in. She remains skeptical now though because the weather app is now 1/4" lower down the screen from where it used to be, so she can no longer open it by pressing her finger onto the left eye of her grandson in the wallpaper photo.
They're on Android because the phones were cheap, we're an Apple ecosystem. Just comparing the two it feels like the discoverability of accessibility features is easier on iOS. I was fairly frustrated by how hard it was to make their phones do the things that I know phones do, things I take for granted on iOS. Yes, it does them, but there were often so many extra steps involved. This is undoubtedly influenced by my familiarity with iOS in general, but really, the settings were all over the place on their devices.
I've been through every iOS update from the iPhone 3GS to present, I can't recall ever having settings like saved locations get deleted, and aside from screen shape changes the UI has been consistent - apps remain in the rows of 4 they have always had, with the same spacing. I really, really wish my in-laws could have managed to cough up the dough for an Apple device. The UI changes on Android seem arbitrary and weird to me. When your users are only slightly comfortable with the tech to begin with, you aren't doing anyone any favors by moving shit around unexpectedly or by dropping data without warning.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
jb: Designers: please STOP using light-weight, low-contrast text! We can't read it.
WHY, WHY, WHY did this horrible design practice become so standard? What possible excuse could you have for intentionally making text difficult to read?
Also, making shampoo and conditioner bottles with the exact same design except for tiny, hard to find text actually telling you whether it's shampoo or conditioner. Wearing glasses in the shower is not an option.
posted by Jackson at 9:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
WHY, WHY, WHY did this horrible design practice become so standard? What possible excuse could you have for intentionally making text difficult to read?
Also, making shampoo and conditioner bottles with the exact same design except for tiny, hard to find text actually telling you whether it's shampoo or conditioner. Wearing glasses in the shower is not an option.
posted by Jackson at 9:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
> she can no longer open it by pressing her finger onto the left eye of her grandson in the wallpaper photo.
You can't arrange by penis.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
You can't arrange by penis.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
even a manual is not enough: all the arbitrary gestures that control tablets, phones, and computers have to be memorized. Everything has to be memorized.
And they're different, so that when you switch systems at work or borrow a friend's phone, you can't find anything, and it feels clunky - so you'll continue to buy the brand you're used to. I mean, if they all used whatever gestures were found to be most intuitive and easiest to use, people wouldn't be locked into one company's products!
(I hate the whole tablet/phone UI system. I hate working with icons, and the words are hard to see. I hate the "memorize this method of swiping, tapping, scrolling... oh, and it's different in this corner vs an eighth-inch to the left of this corner." I hate that I can't plug the thing into my computer and use a mouse to adjust the layout and settings, that I have to painstakingly drag things around with fingers that cover half the screen. Hate how badly the buttons are arranged. And so on. I dodged having a smartphone for years until I got assigned one at work, and eventually my iPhone 5S will die and ugh, I will need to figure out a next one.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:06 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
And they're different, so that when you switch systems at work or borrow a friend's phone, you can't find anything, and it feels clunky - so you'll continue to buy the brand you're used to. I mean, if they all used whatever gestures were found to be most intuitive and easiest to use, people wouldn't be locked into one company's products!
(I hate the whole tablet/phone UI system. I hate working with icons, and the words are hard to see. I hate the "memorize this method of swiping, tapping, scrolling... oh, and it's different in this corner vs an eighth-inch to the left of this corner." I hate that I can't plug the thing into my computer and use a mouse to adjust the layout and settings, that I have to painstakingly drag things around with fingers that cover half the screen. Hate how badly the buttons are arranged. And so on. I dodged having a smartphone for years until I got assigned one at work, and eventually my iPhone 5S will die and ugh, I will need to figure out a next one.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:06 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Back in the 80's at Apple, the User was God, the Human Interface Guidelines was the bible. Lots of time and effort was made to insure that things were correct - user testing, many design reviews, etc. And there was a well written book that came with the product that helped you learn what it could do. And by the way, Software QA was a whole department that did nothing but bang on the programs. All of these activities cost money. Lowered the margins. What's more important now are just the margins so most of the above seems to have gone away. Computers and software then was pretty simple. Now they are far more complex with lots more ways they can and do fail.
Computers and software now are meant to be things to explore. Trial and error. There is no manual to tell you what it can do and what you have to do to make it happen. Hopefully you have a forum like here where other people can share what they have discovered.
Back in the 80's at Apple, we used to joke about the time when computers would become commodities like toaster ovens. We said that was the time to get out of the business because then it would go bad. Well here we are. Except the computers are far less reliable than the toaster ovens.
posted by njohnson23 at 10:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Computers and software now are meant to be things to explore. Trial and error. There is no manual to tell you what it can do and what you have to do to make it happen. Hopefully you have a forum like here where other people can share what they have discovered.
Back in the 80's at Apple, we used to joke about the time when computers would become commodities like toaster ovens. We said that was the time to get out of the business because then it would go bad. Well here we are. Except the computers are far less reliable than the toaster ovens.
posted by njohnson23 at 10:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
Honestly I'm not sure why operating system updates should necessitate changes in UI. In theory functionality and presentation could be completely decoupled (I mean, I'm running Linux and (by choice) my UI is the same as it was 20 years ago). My guess is it's partly a marketing/branding thing?
I haven't played around a lot with Android launchers but if there are launchers that make it a point to keep up a stable interface across updates, that seems like a major selling point and something that would be especially useful for older users.
posted by trig at 10:13 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I haven't played around a lot with Android launchers but if there are launchers that make it a point to keep up a stable interface across updates, that seems like a major selling point and something that would be especially useful for older users.
posted by trig at 10:13 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
You can't arrange by penis.
Normally, I'm far too prissy for penis jokes, but I am happy I clicked that link because I laughed and laughed and I needed that.
Now I'm ready to try to explain why Don Norman makes me mad. The fast and easy answer is: guys, Norman suffers from engineer's disease big-time and he is ruining everything. Actually Fish Sauce had a lovely dry take on that just above my comment, I guess they were editing while I posted.
To extend a bit, I'm inspired by some of the comments, including Norman's own about typeset. I hate low-contrast as much as anyone, but I actually love small and light fonts. Because with my particular combination of eye-issues, that is what works for me.
I like a slightly cooler space because my skin problems are alleviated when the temperature is 20 degrees celcius or below. Most people I know want it at least a couple of degrees warmer and some are even quite agressive about it.
Many old people struggle with opening cans, but others have incredibly strong hands.
I strongly believe there has to be accessibility everywhere, and that creating that is a design opportunity, not a block. But I also believe that there have to be hundreds, maybe thousands of choices, adapted to context. I believe the design methodology needed to get to those many configurations is very, very different from what Norman propagates.
Design theory and design education are relatively young disciplines and they struggle with broader authority. Unfortunately, people like Norman have been allowed to set the stage (to some extent because people who are actually excellent designers have copped out of the discussion). They are blind to their own biases and their methodologies are deceptively simple.
He can't use his phone? Well my mum loves hers. Why shouldn't they have different phones? Why isn't he arguing for more choice instead of an option that fits him better?
BTW, part of my anger comes from the fact that because people like Norman are so narrow-minded, people like Jony Ive can get away with his narrow-mindedness.
posted by mumimor at 10:16 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
Normally, I'm far too prissy for penis jokes, but I am happy I clicked that link because I laughed and laughed and I needed that.
Now I'm ready to try to explain why Don Norman makes me mad. The fast and easy answer is: guys, Norman suffers from engineer's disease big-time and he is ruining everything. Actually Fish Sauce had a lovely dry take on that just above my comment, I guess they were editing while I posted.
To extend a bit, I'm inspired by some of the comments, including Norman's own about typeset. I hate low-contrast as much as anyone, but I actually love small and light fonts. Because with my particular combination of eye-issues, that is what works for me.
I like a slightly cooler space because my skin problems are alleviated when the temperature is 20 degrees celcius or below. Most people I know want it at least a couple of degrees warmer and some are even quite agressive about it.
Many old people struggle with opening cans, but others have incredibly strong hands.
I strongly believe there has to be accessibility everywhere, and that creating that is a design opportunity, not a block. But I also believe that there have to be hundreds, maybe thousands of choices, adapted to context. I believe the design methodology needed to get to those many configurations is very, very different from what Norman propagates.
Design theory and design education are relatively young disciplines and they struggle with broader authority. Unfortunately, people like Norman have been allowed to set the stage (to some extent because people who are actually excellent designers have copped out of the discussion). They are blind to their own biases and their methodologies are deceptively simple.
He can't use his phone? Well my mum loves hers. Why shouldn't they have different phones? Why isn't he arguing for more choice instead of an option that fits him better?
BTW, part of my anger comes from the fact that because people like Norman are so narrow-minded, people like Jony Ive can get away with his narrow-mindedness.
posted by mumimor at 10:16 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
Those "lift and peel" things, however, are impossible.
Nonsense. Just stab them forcefully with your pointy kitchen shears then shove your finger in there and rip the stuff out. This is the method I resort to every damn time after struggling to do it "right" for five minutes only to end up ripping the "lift" tab right off. By which time I am feeling very stabby indeed.
But seriously people, you all are making me feel so much better. I thought it was just me, feeling ever more clueless and clumsy and slow. I'm not that old.
posted by evilmomlady at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Nonsense. Just stab them forcefully with your pointy kitchen shears then shove your finger in there and rip the stuff out. This is the method I resort to every damn time after struggling to do it "right" for five minutes only to end up ripping the "lift" tab right off. By which time I am feeling very stabby indeed.
But seriously people, you all are making me feel so much better. I thought it was just me, feeling ever more clueless and clumsy and slow. I'm not that old.
posted by evilmomlady at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Me too. I do have strong hands, and in the past few years, I haven't been able to open a box without shredding the top, open a lift-and-peel without puncturing and tearing it, and bottle caps (Aquafina is where I first noticed this) seem to have increased their palm-shredding capacity by an order of magnitude. I thought it was just me!
posted by Autumnheart at 10:38 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Autumnheart at 10:38 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
she can no longer open it by pressing her finger onto the left eye of her grandson in the wallpaper photo.
My mother's profile picture in my phone contacts is actually a picture of her cat. The way it works out on the screen, I have to boop the kitty's nose to hang up when I'm talking to her.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
My mother's profile picture in my phone contacts is actually a picture of her cat. The way it works out on the screen, I have to boop the kitty's nose to hang up when I'm talking to her.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
I've stabbed, punctured and torn those "lift+peel" things, and still can't grab the loose end with my actual fingers enough to get it off the box or bottle. The best I can do is try to shove it inside the opening, which I do, but it irritates my sense of order.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
You can't arrange by penis.
I know exactly what this is, and it never gets old. Even if the rest of us do.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I know exactly what this is, and it never gets old. Even if the rest of us do.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
There's a lot of bad design out there, mixed in with pretty good design; you generally don't notice the good design, though, because your interactions with it are low-friction. So why would you? Good design does its job and gets out of the way.
The mortal sin of many modern designers is being seemingly unable to resist the temptation to change things just for the sake of changing them. Apple in particular is terrible about doing this; half the changes they make in each iteration of Mac OS seem to be just for the hell of it, and I guess to create the impression that things are different. Ugh.
Death to the "refresh" and whoever came up with it as idea. There is no need to "refresh" a UI, only to improve it.
I don't believe in castigating designers for trying new things; if they didn't, we'd be stuck and would never see new designs. But changing things just for some sort of forced, artificial sense of novelty is toxic. Every change should be balanced against the investment of time your users have already put into the current UI, and whether the improvement you're making is really worth their collective time in re-learning it.
It's also worse for older users. The churn in UIs is what seems to cause my older friends and relatives the most issues. It's not that they can't figure a UI out, but it takes somewhat longer, and if the churn/refresh cycle is too fast, you've barely figured out the last UI when suddenly it's been tossed out in favor of a new one.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
The mortal sin of many modern designers is being seemingly unable to resist the temptation to change things just for the sake of changing them. Apple in particular is terrible about doing this; half the changes they make in each iteration of Mac OS seem to be just for the hell of it, and I guess to create the impression that things are different. Ugh.
Death to the "refresh" and whoever came up with it as idea. There is no need to "refresh" a UI, only to improve it.
I don't believe in castigating designers for trying new things; if they didn't, we'd be stuck and would never see new designs. But changing things just for some sort of forced, artificial sense of novelty is toxic. Every change should be balanced against the investment of time your users have already put into the current UI, and whether the improvement you're making is really worth their collective time in re-learning it.
It's also worse for older users. The churn in UIs is what seems to cause my older friends and relatives the most issues. It's not that they can't figure a UI out, but it takes somewhat longer, and if the churn/refresh cycle is too fast, you've barely figured out the last UI when suddenly it's been tossed out in favor of a new one.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [18 favorites]
Nary a week goes by without me thinking "Donald Norman wouldn't like this at all".
posted by victotronics at 11:19 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by victotronics at 11:19 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
jb: Designers: please STOP using light-weight, low-contrast text! We can't read it.
WHY, WHY, WHY did this horrible design practice become so standard? What possible excuse could you have for intentionally making text difficult to read?
I often find myself interacting with a number of different academic and industry fields, and I've watched the fonts on presentation slides get skinnier and skinnier over the last few years as that style sweeps through various communities. This varies by discipline though: some branches of computer science and economics, for instance, stick with deliberately clunky bare-bones templates, but even there, they are clearly demonstrating their affiliations and knowledge of group practices by choosing their basic templates. A lot of this is pretty unconscious, I think, they just know what looks "professional" or sophisticated and try to emulate that, and that's not unreasonable: people judge and immense amount based on these subconscious stylistic features.
I imagine the same goes for buying phones. It's easy to tell people to buck the trend, but why take that cost on yourself if your competitors are getting that little bump? And if you try to talk people out of judging based on such things, (a) they will deny it happens, and then (b) when they do express a preference, it will be a jumble of rationalizations mostly. Just see what happens if you get into an argument about TV motion interpolation: the people who will admit they prefer traditional 24 fps only because they grew up with that style is a tiny fraction of the people who will muster dozens of different rationalizations for why 24 fps is better and the "soap opera effect" is terrible based on a congeries of supposedly objective grounds. Similarly, that subconscious flavor of "good" that skinny fonts currently have (which of course will be stodgy and then retro in a few years) is very difficult to counteract at the individual level.
posted by chortly at 12:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
WHY, WHY, WHY did this horrible design practice become so standard? What possible excuse could you have for intentionally making text difficult to read?
I often find myself interacting with a number of different academic and industry fields, and I've watched the fonts on presentation slides get skinnier and skinnier over the last few years as that style sweeps through various communities. This varies by discipline though: some branches of computer science and economics, for instance, stick with deliberately clunky bare-bones templates, but even there, they are clearly demonstrating their affiliations and knowledge of group practices by choosing their basic templates. A lot of this is pretty unconscious, I think, they just know what looks "professional" or sophisticated and try to emulate that, and that's not unreasonable: people judge and immense amount based on these subconscious stylistic features.
I imagine the same goes for buying phones. It's easy to tell people to buck the trend, but why take that cost on yourself if your competitors are getting that little bump? And if you try to talk people out of judging based on such things, (a) they will deny it happens, and then (b) when they do express a preference, it will be a jumble of rationalizations mostly. Just see what happens if you get into an argument about TV motion interpolation: the people who will admit they prefer traditional 24 fps only because they grew up with that style is a tiny fraction of the people who will muster dozens of different rationalizations for why 24 fps is better and the "soap opera effect" is terrible based on a congeries of supposedly objective grounds. Similarly, that subconscious flavor of "good" that skinny fonts currently have (which of course will be stodgy and then retro in a few years) is very difficult to counteract at the individual level.
posted by chortly at 12:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
That said, I think he's right. There are a few too many people in design thinking how "pure" the experience is, without dealing with messy, messy humans.
I'm not sure this is the way you intended for me to parse the sentence, but it occurs to me that part of the problem is the rise of design thinking, versus design.
I've linked an article by Lee Vinsel, a Virginia Tech STS professor, and it, along with it's follow-up is worth a read. He has a lot to say about design thinking, but this quote encapsulates best the point of the post:
Moran holds up the Swiffer — the sweeper-mop with disposable covers designed by an IDEO-clone design consultancy, Continuum — as a good example of what Design Thinking is all about. “It’s design as marketing,” he said. “It’s about looking for and exploiting a market niche. It’s not really about a new and better world. It’s about exquisitely calibrating a product to a market niche that is underexploited.” The Swiffer involves a slight change in old technologies, and it is wasteful. Others made this same connection between Design Thinking and marketing. One architect said that Design Thinking “really belongs in business schools, where they teach marketing and other forms of moral depravity.”
“That’s what’s most annoying,” Moran went on. “I fundamentally believe in this stuff as a model of education. But it’s business consultants who give TED Talks who are out there selling it. It’s all anti-intellectual. That’s the problem. Architecture and design are profoundly intellectual. But for these people, it’s not a form of critical thought; it’s a form of salesmanship.”
As I get older (and I am by no means old, having not yet reached middle age) I find myself increasingly frustrated by non-intuitive user interfaces, by change for the sake of novelty and commodification rather than usefulness. I share many of Don Norman's frustrations, and I'm nearly five decades younger than he is. I do have to wonder how much of it is driven by either risk culture (modern packaging) or marketing trying to sell the consumer things they don't need, and competing on novelty in order to maintain margins.
posted by mountainherder at 12:44 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
I'm not sure this is the way you intended for me to parse the sentence, but it occurs to me that part of the problem is the rise of design thinking, versus design.
I've linked an article by Lee Vinsel, a Virginia Tech STS professor, and it, along with it's follow-up is worth a read. He has a lot to say about design thinking, but this quote encapsulates best the point of the post:
Moran holds up the Swiffer — the sweeper-mop with disposable covers designed by an IDEO-clone design consultancy, Continuum — as a good example of what Design Thinking is all about. “It’s design as marketing,” he said. “It’s about looking for and exploiting a market niche. It’s not really about a new and better world. It’s about exquisitely calibrating a product to a market niche that is underexploited.” The Swiffer involves a slight change in old technologies, and it is wasteful. Others made this same connection between Design Thinking and marketing. One architect said that Design Thinking “really belongs in business schools, where they teach marketing and other forms of moral depravity.”
“That’s what’s most annoying,” Moran went on. “I fundamentally believe in this stuff as a model of education. But it’s business consultants who give TED Talks who are out there selling it. It’s all anti-intellectual. That’s the problem. Architecture and design are profoundly intellectual. But for these people, it’s not a form of critical thought; it’s a form of salesmanship.”
As I get older (and I am by no means old, having not yet reached middle age) I find myself increasingly frustrated by non-intuitive user interfaces, by change for the sake of novelty and commodification rather than usefulness. I share many of Don Norman's frustrations, and I'm nearly five decades younger than he is. I do have to wonder how much of it is driven by either risk culture (modern packaging) or marketing trying to sell the consumer things they don't need, and competing on novelty in order to maintain margins.
posted by mountainherder at 12:44 PM on May 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
I often find myself interacting with a number of different academic and industry fields, and I've watched the fonts on presentation slides get skinnier and skinnier over the last few years as that style sweeps through various communities. This varies by discipline though: some branches of computer science and economics, for instance, stick with deliberately clunky bare-bones templates, but even there, they are clearly demonstrating their affiliations and knowledge of group practices by choosing their basic templates. A lot of this is pretty unconscious, I think, they just know what looks "professional" or sophisticated and try to emulate that, and that's not unreasonable: people judge and immense amount based on these subconscious stylistic features.
In my most recent job, in academia, I had to design a few posters and documents. I more or less eschewed modern flat design and simply stuck with Massimo Vignelli's principles. For the document, I even committed the sin of using serif fonts for the body text. I think I blew people's minds.
Part of the problem, as you highlight, is that people judge based on popular stylistic features. In part though, that's because they've never been confronted with actual good design. Good design will recede into the background while making the document legible and useful.
posted by mountainherder at 12:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
In my most recent job, in academia, I had to design a few posters and documents. I more or less eschewed modern flat design and simply stuck with Massimo Vignelli's principles. For the document, I even committed the sin of using serif fonts for the body text. I think I blew people's minds.
Part of the problem, as you highlight, is that people judge based on popular stylistic features. In part though, that's because they've never been confronted with actual good design. Good design will recede into the background while making the document legible and useful.
posted by mountainherder at 12:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Pill container design is generally stupid. The one exception to this was Target's well designed pill bottles, which solved a lot of usability issues, and which were discontinued when Target sold their pharmacy services to CVS a few years ago. Not sure if a replacement is in the works.
It's funny you mention that. I'd never heard of those bottles until just last night, when I was forced to listen to a pharmacist rant for a solid fifteen minutes about how stupid those bottles were. Literally fifteen minutes of nonstop, vitriolic ranting. Though all of her arguments were about how expensive they were to design and how difficult they were for pharmacy staff to work with. CVS dumped them because it was more efficient to use the same bottles across all of their stores, so unless they do a company-wide revamp, I doubt they'll be coming back.
posted by dephlogisticated at 12:51 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
It's funny you mention that. I'd never heard of those bottles until just last night, when I was forced to listen to a pharmacist rant for a solid fifteen minutes about how stupid those bottles were. Literally fifteen minutes of nonstop, vitriolic ranting. Though all of her arguments were about how expensive they were to design and how difficult they were for pharmacy staff to work with. CVS dumped them because it was more efficient to use the same bottles across all of their stores, so unless they do a company-wide revamp, I doubt they'll be coming back.
posted by dephlogisticated at 12:51 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I guess the moral of the pharmacist rant is that accessibility and usability need to be addressed for those serving consumers, as well as the consumers themselves.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Norman's conclusion's a bit eye-rolley:
Designers and companies of the world, you are badly serving an ever-growing segment of your customer base, a segment that you too will one day inhabit. Isn’t it time to reform: to make things that are functional and stylish, useable and accessible? Every ailment that I described that impacts the elderly is also present in people of all ages. Designs that make it easier for elderly people often are of equal value for younger people. In fact, for everyone. Help the elderly, and the results will help many more, including yourself, someday.
This is the admission from someone who's had a long and influential career more or less admitting "Yeah, I'm sure there were lots of people talking about and putting into practice accessible and universal design, but I didn't bother to pay attention as an able-bodied person. But now that the inaccessible design of things is affecting me personally, it's starting to seem important."
The only real way to do this on any meaningful scale, though, is standards-based regulation. Relying on business to do it right maybe sometimes is to set things up for failure. Generally speaking, they won't bother with it unless a figurative gun is held to their head. Relying on businesses to say "Oh, look, customer base" doesn't fix anything in any systemic way, and demonstrates the Norman's intensely desperate ignorance about accessibility even though he's starting to realize it's important. Which is a start, I guess, even if it's wildly late in the game.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Designers and companies of the world, you are badly serving an ever-growing segment of your customer base, a segment that you too will one day inhabit. Isn’t it time to reform: to make things that are functional and stylish, useable and accessible? Every ailment that I described that impacts the elderly is also present in people of all ages. Designs that make it easier for elderly people often are of equal value for younger people. In fact, for everyone. Help the elderly, and the results will help many more, including yourself, someday.
This is the admission from someone who's had a long and influential career more or less admitting "Yeah, I'm sure there were lots of people talking about and putting into practice accessible and universal design, but I didn't bother to pay attention as an able-bodied person. But now that the inaccessible design of things is affecting me personally, it's starting to seem important."
The only real way to do this on any meaningful scale, though, is standards-based regulation. Relying on business to do it right maybe sometimes is to set things up for failure. Generally speaking, they won't bother with it unless a figurative gun is held to their head. Relying on businesses to say "Oh, look, customer base" doesn't fix anything in any systemic way, and demonstrates the Norman's intensely desperate ignorance about accessibility even though he's starting to realize it's important. Which is a start, I guess, even if it's wildly late in the game.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Accessibility design doesn't just help the elderly, the disabled, and the temporarily incapacitated; it helps everyone who has to interact with them. I had back and shoulder issues from all the terrible design that made it impossible to maneuver my mother's wheelchair from place to place, fold it up and unfold it, get it in and out of the car, and get her in and out of the car. Never mind the state of almost constant rage I was in (at her and at the world) because of how complicated technology was for her and how impossible it was to help her out.
And I was only able to get her into my house one time once she was wheelchair-bound; after that I just gave up.
I always had perfect eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, and balance, and figured I would stay that way, but something happened on the way to 67, and I'm in awesome shape - don't drink, smoke, or take any medications, I exercise a lot, and I eat healthy.
I need closed captioning to watch English television shows.
posted by Peach at 2:20 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
And I was only able to get her into my house one time once she was wheelchair-bound; after that I just gave up.
I always had perfect eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, and balance, and figured I would stay that way, but something happened on the way to 67, and I'm in awesome shape - don't drink, smoke, or take any medications, I exercise a lot, and I eat healthy.
I need closed captioning to watch English television shows.
posted by Peach at 2:20 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
I was sold on universal design when I had a baby who rode in a baby carriage - all of a sudden those automatic door buttons and those curb cuts that I had never really noticed before were a godsend.
posted by Daily Alice at 3:18 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 3:18 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
his section on canes gave me the idea to market "CANE NUTZ" to aging boomer males drowning in their own toxic masculinity
i apologize in advance for the horror i am about to release
posted by entropicamericana at 4:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
i apologize in advance for the horror i am about to release
posted by entropicamericana at 4:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I've been using Apple computers since the early 90s and always felt that the interface - menubars, order of menu choices, look and feel - was more consistent from app to app than it's ever been on Windows. I've noticed in the last few years that OS apps have been getting less consistent in all of these things and functions seem at least a little more complicated than they were originally. This is probably due to the huge number of application companies that don't adhere closely to what remains of the Apple design guidelines.
My pharmacy has lovely green pill bottles with caps that, once you open them the first time, can be flipped over and inserted into the pill bottle making them easy-peasy to open after that. Not childproof of course but that's not an issue for me.
posted by bendy at 6:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
My pharmacy has lovely green pill bottles with caps that, once you open them the first time, can be flipped over and inserted into the pill bottle making them easy-peasy to open after that. Not childproof of course but that's not an issue for me.
posted by bendy at 6:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
And they're different, so that when you switch systems at work or borrow a friend's phone, you can't find anything, and it feels clunky - so you'll continue to buy the brand you're used to. I mean, if they all used whatever gestures were found to be most intuitive and easiest to use, people wouldn't be locked into one company's products!
I did QA on mobile games for a minute. We had a cabinet full of phones and the newer they got, the less standardized & intuitive their gestures system became, to the point where I could never remember whether any given device was the one where you accessed active processes by holding down on negative space for two full seconds then swiping up, or the one where you spun around three times, dropped it on the floor, covered yourself in goat blood, did two hadoukens and a Lindy Bop, then gave up & handed it to your younger coworker who did the gestures for you.
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:09 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I did QA on mobile games for a minute. We had a cabinet full of phones and the newer they got, the less standardized & intuitive their gestures system became, to the point where I could never remember whether any given device was the one where you accessed active processes by holding down on negative space for two full seconds then swiping up, or the one where you spun around three times, dropped it on the floor, covered yourself in goat blood, did two hadoukens and a Lindy Bop, then gave up & handed it to your younger coworker who did the gestures for you.
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:09 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
"And they probably redesigned the whole sickbay, too! I know engineers. They love to change things."
– Leonard McCoy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The more middle-aged I get, the more I notice (and get cranky) when something has been changed for the sake of making a change. Someone needed to keep his job, so he changed a color here, added a bell here and a whistle there and called it "new and improved." That is surely the force behind new models of cars each year. Although there's less of that now that cars all look alike.
mountainherder's links are well worth reading. Design Thinking reminds me of the WONDERFUL! NEW! SHIT! a corporation and its human resources department I suffered under would trot out every so often. It has wormed its way into my state's public universities, doubtless setting the cause of society back half a century or more.
posted by bryon at 12:30 AM on May 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
– Leonard McCoy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The more middle-aged I get, the more I notice (and get cranky) when something has been changed for the sake of making a change. Someone needed to keep his job, so he changed a color here, added a bell here and a whistle there and called it "new and improved." That is surely the force behind new models of cars each year. Although there's less of that now that cars all look alike.
mountainherder's links are well worth reading. Design Thinking reminds me of the WONDERFUL! NEW! SHIT! a corporation and its human resources department I suffered under would trot out every so often. It has wormed its way into my state's public universities, doubtless setting the cause of society back half a century or more.
posted by bryon at 12:30 AM on May 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
Recently I installed snap chat. It infuriates me that the 'back' button is in the wrong place- I expect that button to be the 'forward' button.
posted by freethefeet at 5:55 AM on May 11, 2019
posted by freethefeet at 5:55 AM on May 11, 2019
mountainherder: not quite what I had in mind, but those are fantastic links. I have an extended rant on the dreaded innovation stored up, and those articles summarize better than I could. I would love to see a historical comparison of TRIZ from the Soviet era with where the US is at now.
I actually was imagining a type of scene from The World's Most Extraordinary Homes, where the hosts, really quite entertainingly, schmooze about different residences. In several concrete brutalist monstrosities, the architect Piers Taylor says things like "The design, it's just soooo... clean. It's almost like no one lives here at all... (rapturous sigh)" While I have no doubt he's playing it up for the camera, I've met these people!. Houses and art and spoons and walkers and websites and everything we make are for humans, dammit!
Okay, now I'm going to go back to my niche of vainly trying to convince programmers and scientists that visual interfaces matter. Good luck all!
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 11:43 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I actually was imagining a type of scene from The World's Most Extraordinary Homes, where the hosts, really quite entertainingly, schmooze about different residences. In several concrete brutalist monstrosities, the architect Piers Taylor says things like "The design, it's just soooo... clean. It's almost like no one lives here at all... (rapturous sigh)" While I have no doubt he's playing it up for the camera, I've met these people!. Houses and art and spoons and walkers and websites and everything we make are for humans, dammit!
Okay, now I'm going to go back to my niche of vainly trying to convince programmers and scientists that visual interfaces matter. Good luck all!
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 11:43 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
"TFA makes a good point about how some design elements "for the elderly/disabled" also benefit people who are temporarily and situationally disabled"
This is very true, and it's why I (early 50s) insisted on some universal design elements when we remodeled a few years back.
I'm a normally agile & active guy, but when I suddenly needed knee surgery last year, those came in really handy.
As my mom the geriatric nurse used to say, "You're probably going to be glad about [design feature X] sooner or later. If you're lucky, it'll be a half-century later. If your'e unlucky, it'll be a half-second slip in the shower later.".
posted by NumberSix at 11:46 AM on May 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is very true, and it's why I (early 50s) insisted on some universal design elements when we remodeled a few years back.
I'm a normally agile & active guy, but when I suddenly needed knee surgery last year, those came in really handy.
As my mom the geriatric nurse used to say, "You're probably going to be glad about [design feature X] sooner or later. If you're lucky, it'll be a half-century later. If your'e unlucky, it'll be a half-second slip in the shower later.".
posted by NumberSix at 11:46 AM on May 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm lucky that Firefox has addons that more-or-less fix this by providing text reflowI think design is getting worse as more women are becoming professional designers and their male bosses veto all of their good decisions out of pure spite, the result is a lot of very bad decisions everywhere. This has been my direct observation.I am far from a UI or UX or UV or whatever "expert," but even I remember that HTML was supposed to describe the content and the browser was supposed to lay it out according to the user's preferences. Like text size, color, and so on. The problem, as I see it, is that various "designers" think that they have a much better idea of how things should look, and fuck the user's and their human eyesight and things. I have a carefully-hacked-up bookmarklet on my IoS devices labeled "++", which basically crawls the whole page and jacks the fonts up to something readable. I use it constantly on both pad and phone. I wish I weren't an atheist so I could enjoy the idea of all UX/I/P/V/whatever stylists roasting eternally on a fire built of grey fonts.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 2:51 PM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Also, making shampoo and conditioner bottles with the exact same design except for tiny, hard to find text actually telling you whether it's shampoo or conditioner. Wearing glasses in the shower is not an option.
I went to the store to get replacement shampoo for my girlfriend. I had a pic of the old bottle on my phone. Compared it side by side with the new bottle. Read every bit of text about how it's rejuvenating and refreshing or whatever. Every detail is the exact same. Bring it home, all proud of myself for thinking ahead and bringing a picture. It's conditioner.
posted by starfishprime at 4:22 AM on May 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I went to the store to get replacement shampoo for my girlfriend. I had a pic of the old bottle on my phone. Compared it side by side with the new bottle. Read every bit of text about how it's rejuvenating and refreshing or whatever. Every detail is the exact same. Bring it home, all proud of myself for thinking ahead and bringing a picture. It's conditioner.
posted by starfishprime at 4:22 AM on May 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I have a carefully-hacked-up bookmarklet on my IoS devices labeled "++", which basically crawls the whole page and jacks the fonts up to something readable.
Meanwhile on my desktop, despite my middle-aged eyes, I am constantly having to hit Ctrl-minus repeatedly to bring the font size on web pages *down* to something readable. Browsing the modern web on a non-mobile browser feels like having all your books replaced with large-print editions. I really don't need the person two rows behind me to be able to read what's on my screen, thanks.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:14 AM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
Meanwhile on my desktop, despite my middle-aged eyes, I am constantly having to hit Ctrl-minus repeatedly to bring the font size on web pages *down* to something readable. Browsing the modern web on a non-mobile browser feels like having all your books replaced with large-print editions. I really don't need the person two rows behind me to be able to read what's on my screen, thanks.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:14 AM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
Meanwhile on my desktop, despite my middle-aged eyes, I am constantly having to hit Ctrl-minus repeatedly to bring the font size on web pages *down* to something readable.I have much less trouble on the desktop, because Firefox seems to remember what greatening/ungreatening has occurred on a specific site. I am on the ESR version, in case you want to try something less infuriating. Of course, you may be using exactly the same thing as me and it is something else that's making the difference.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:21 PM on May 14, 2019
Firefox seems to remember what greatening/ungreatening has occurred on a specific site.
Ah, sorry, it's not that I'm having to do it every time I visit the same site (e.g. Metafilter's been on 80% since forever, apparently, and the Guardian on 75%), it's that every new site I visit seems to require it. I'm obviously visiting too many new-to-me sites... I blame Metafilter.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:52 AM on May 15, 2019
Ah, sorry, it's not that I'm having to do it every time I visit the same site (e.g. Metafilter's been on 80% since forever, apparently, and the Guardian on 75%), it's that every new site I visit seems to require it. I'm obviously visiting too many new-to-me sites... I blame Metafilter.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:52 AM on May 15, 2019
Took me several lift and peel bottles to realize not to pull the flap in the same direction, as if you were completing the job somebody had started, but instead to grip the flap between thumb and forefinger and pull 90° from the the direction of the flap, so that the first part that comes away from the bottle is at one end of the line of attachment the flap makes as it crosses the bottle from side to side.
posted by jamjam at 12:37 AM on June 9, 2019
posted by jamjam at 12:37 AM on June 9, 2019
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OMG, so much this! Beyond affordability, that's one of the main reasons I gave up on Apple years ago.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [15 favorites]