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Been writing up some super basic notes on using “intuitive” tech for an octogenarian who has never used a touchscreen before and let me tell you, so many things people consider “intuitive” are absolutely not when you try to explain them from first principles. I think we’ve got worse at building truly intuitive interfaces in the last 20 years because no-one involved has known a time before many of these assumed behaviours existed

Old intuitive interface design was rooted in the concept of “affordance”, in that things did what they looked like they did, or felt they did when you touched them. Buttons were raised and went down, knobs turned, sliders only went back and forth. Now, nothing looks or feels like what it does; everything assumes a meta knowledge, something that is completely the opposite of intuition

@sinbad This is very much the case. Dwindling use of affordances along with rising use of “modes” (the same action does very different things depending on context) is what has ruined UIs. We learned this like 25 years ago and somehow forgot. amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Di

www.amazon.comAmazon.com

@jonikorpi I think it’s worse, I think designers deliberately threw this away because they prioritise things looking pretty & “modern” over being intuitive

Markus Latvala

@sinbad @jonikorpi Maybe organizations have simply fired the actual UX designers because "anyone can do it".

@markuslatvala @jonikorpi I've known some good visual designers, and some good UX designers, and it's absolutely not the same skill. Sadly web & phone app design has completely elevated the former at the expense of the latter. It goes all the way to the top too, e.g. Jony Ive making some terrible design decisions in the pursuit of the clean lines and thinness that undermined usability badly

@sinbad @jonikorpi It's not the same skill because it's not even the same field. HCI is engineering, visual design is art.

Heck, even the car manufacturers have now taken the looks over usability route. I really hate those new VWs and whatnots with their haptic feedback buttons and poorly designed operating systems.