"I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me." (moving, grandmother)

[Aredhel]

Originally Posted by engineman

The real problem is that decisions are made by people that do not have to live with them.

Nailed it in one!

[ansible90]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

I've done UI (user interface) usability testing for a bunch of SV companies: PayPal, eBay and a handful of others no longer in business.

User interfaces are designed by twenty-somethings. They want theirs to look hip and don't care if that tiny button on the screen is hard for anyone to mouse to or if the text is barely indistinguishable from the background. There's a big push to eliminate text completely and replace it with ambiguous symbols.

Some of the people I shared my concerns with just laughed at me. Others, like PayPal, took me more seriously.

Thank you for speaking up about these things. At least 1 actually listened to you.

[ansible90]

Originally Posted by FiveLoaves

You are preaching to the choir on this issue.

I have seen so many horrible interface designs lately.....it's like the designer never tested his deliverable in the real world. Between the tiny text and small buttons, that design should have never left the conference room. I would have loved to have been in the design team conference when some of these things were pitched -- "If we make these buttons a little smaller we can fit another useless feature on the interface !"

A Classic Case is found in the newer Cell Phones. They are not ergonomically thought out, and the most important functions are buried 3-deep in a push-button sequence.
For Example -- Your phone's GPS function should be muted with a single button. When you're driving, you don't want to be key-stroking away.

Or how about the Web "Designers" who go crazy with colors ? Did anybody tell these guys that Red lettering on a Purple background is difficult to read ? And who uses light Grey lettering on a White screen ?? Are you saving a bundle on Electronic Ink ??

how about the disappearing scroll bars and buttons. You know the ones, they don't show up until you accidentally mouse over them. I could go on, but you and Fluffy hit the main points.

[fluffythewondercat]

The option to have scroll bars always in MacOs is in System Preferences > General

...until they decide we don't need a choice in a future OS rev.

[Trekker99]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

Or the thermostat just died. One of the two in our CA house did that recently. They're about 25 years old, nearly as old as you. Nothing lasts forever.

She probably just needs practice using the new one. I sometimes have trouble with hotel thermostats. Some interfaces are intuitive and others...just aren't.

Odd comment.

An easy to use thermostat should not need practice to know how to use it, which goes back to your OP.

As a former engineer, well designed UI's *AND* Documentation take work, but can be done. Sadly, most tech and UIs are anything but intuitive. And the documentation/instructions are worse.

[jrkliny]

The article just seemed to be a bunch of silly complaints from an old grouch. If you cannot see or cannot hear, it is time to do something about the medical issue rather than expect the whole world to change. Personally it seems to me that a great deal of thought goes into design and extremely complex devices are typically pretty easy to use.

[Aredhel]

Originally Posted by Trekker99

An easy to use thermostat should not need practice to know how to use it, which goes back to your OP.

Exactly. In the case of Serious Conversation's grandmother, the problem sounds like "feature creep."

Originally Posted by Serious Conversation

The thermostat she had before the heat pumps was replaced had a manual slider for temperature and another for "heat," "cool," and "off." The new one has features for emergency/auxiliary heat, fan settings, etc. It's definitely more complicated and all digital.

The lady just needs a very basic thermostat (preferably with analog controls, since those are what she's used to). While some people do need one that's programmable, can control different heating/cooling zones, can turn on a source of emergency heat, etc., not everyone needs that. And the extra, unneeded features come with a price: added complexity of operation.

TV remotes are of course the classic example of this problem. Two or three dozen buttons, of which perhaps five are used with any regularity. All the rest are to support "features" that almost no one ever actually uses. (I actually had to unplug and do a hard reboot of my TV once because I accidentally hit one of those buttons on my remote - I don't know which one I accidentally pressed - and couldn't figure out any other way to get the TV back to the original setting. That's absurd!)

[biscuitmom]

This is nothing new.

My late stepfather worked in the service dept. of a Cadillac dealer. Every spring and fall they had elderly customers who brought their cars in to have them change over the thermostat controls from heat to AC and vice versa.

This was in the late 1970s-1980s when things were still analog. Even then old people and technology didn't always play well together.

[NYgal1542]

I moved into a newly built apartment complex in 2011. Everything was new.
The thermostat was ridiculous. My eyesight is sometimes not the best, seems to be getting worse as I age. But then I have glaucoma and another problem in my right eye.

But the thermostat!! Very small print on the actual device. There was no pamphlet to go with it to explain things that were not obvious. I wrote to the manufacturer explaining my frustration. This is a low-income for people over 55. Mostly the residents are in late 70s/early 80s.

They wrote back and said, sorry. We'll take that into consideration with our next model.

[jrkliny]

People with vision problems that cannot be corrected by eyeglasses could get an inexpensive magnifying glass for reading fine print, threading a needle, pulling a splinter, etc. If that does not work, no amount of "design" is going to help.