In all the time I've been developing software, there was one blog post that opened my eyes, turned the lights on, and changed everything. It was ju...
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I have to admit I fell for the link. I was actually upset and thought "Wow this guy really screwed up, why use a link for nothing?" But then I returned and read on, and was taken by joyful surprise at how well the example worked. Used experience is certainly a difficult task! Finding issues is one thing, but coming up with a better solution is where people tend to struggle the most.
I agree - as a developer I've learned that if you point out how bad code is, it's complaining. If you figure out what you would do differently, it's not only constructive but a learning experience.
When it comes to UX in particular I've encouraged coworkers to share anything like this that looks wrong along with a how it could be improved. It promotes awareness of UX. I wrote a whole blog post on it but noticed yesterday that half of it had disappeared so I deleted it. (An article about UX with half the article missing - not good.)
Awesome post. I was hooked after the link example. Really tactile way of telling the story.
I'm not a designer, but I guess I could call myself "user performance enthusiast" - it matters to me how long it takes for me to accomplish what I want to do. If there's no reason to, it should take a minimum amount of keypresses, clicks, and other actions to accomplish exactly what I want to do. Search bars being hidden, "would you like to subscribe to our newsletter" popups when I'm trying to browse a page, etc. generally just make me think the page is not worth my time and going to another one instead to find what I was looking for.
Most people can't begin to imagine how often I'm annoyed at things that people decided to reinvent the wheel in, break the conventions etc., just because they had an artistic need to do it, or e.g. just didn't think of trying out how things work in other places. The people who can imagine often don't understand why I'm so annoyed at these things.
Good example from OSes: I'm super happy that at least since Windows 7 I can launch pretty much anything by hitting the left Windows -key and just typing in a search term and hitting enter. Most Linux desktop environments have Ctrl+F2 or similar for that, and even then you usually can just type in the exact command line to run, that's awful. Why do I need to spread my fingers wide to open a "quick launch" and then to type on
google-chromeinstead ofch<enter>? I guess the designers think "well at least it's not Ctrl+F12" and are happy with their results. I believe on OSX people generally use something bound to Ctrl+Space, which is a lot better, but not quite one key.Not saying Windows is perfect at it either, to find
Adobe Lightroomit's not enough to type inroom, and the search box decides to just bug out on some of my machines never finding anything recently installed.Oh and just as a small note, whoever came up with that damn idiotic standard of allowing websites to offer push notifications by actually opening a dialog for you to click when you visit them for the first time: Shame on you. It's like an even worse cookie popup, with a twist that there's a significant penalty for clicking the wrong thing: now you get spam for some random website. This stuff is wasting so much of my time that I'm willing to waste more of my time to complain about it in every forum I can imagine.
In the book, 'Don't Make Me Think', Steve Grugg talks about two type of users of web.
I don't remember if Steve Grugg mention about the position of the search box, but he does mention about providing a way to search and some recommendations of designing one.
In Steve Grugg's own words.
Great post. I hadn't clicked the link yet but I had planned too a little later. So thanks for telling me not too. ;).
To be fair though: I did attempt to search on zdnet.com when it was brought up and didn't find anything different than what my mind already felt would be happening. After reading your examples I actually could not recreate them. The search box made sense to me, tapping the search icon did what I thought it would, and did not experience the delay you mentioned. So maybe they fixed it already or it's actually just a browser compatibility thing (tested in Chrome on Android, on a high end Android device) or just bad code and not a UX thing.
Though your points are true for many pages and apps I've seen and a great post.
Similarly, I find the fact that in the Spotify app you have to tap the search icon, then tap again on the search box. Tapping the search icon should take me to the search screen with the box already active and the keyboard popped up. Drives me crazy. Also the fact that you have to go to "My Library" to get to settings is bonkers. Inconsistent and weird UX.
I did not click until read further, and then I was interested what will happen...
Unfortunately, there are so many bad designed web sites as well as apps. The search bar is just one of hundreds of examples...
Sweet what does my search box say?
I read the entire article, then went back to the top to check the article that opened your eyes hoping that it might turn some light on. but Dude 😅 Awesome one.