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Hidden interface controls that affect usability

(interactions.acm.org)
559 points cxr | 4 comments | 05 Jul 25 23:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.825s | source
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fiddlerwoaroof ◴[06 Jul 25 00:26 UTC] No.44476694[source]▶
I sort of disagree with this: once I’ve internalized the gestures, I really appreciate the lack of UI for them. It’s like vim and emacs: the sparse ui creates a steeper learning curve but becomes a feature once you’ve learned the tool
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bbarn ◴[06 Jul 25 02:23 UTC] No.44477295[source]▶
That was the point of the article. Users with knowledge of how it works can do it fine, but new users can't.

Your average dev who's never used vim or vi will start frustrated by default.

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1. fiddlerwoaroof ◴[06 Jul 25 02:29 UTC] No.44477337[source]▶
My point is that no one is a new user forever and so I think we need to come up with a better solution than UI taking up screen space for things people end up doing via shortcuts. Menus and command palettes are great for this because they are mostly invisible.

The other important thing is learning to fit into the conventions of the platform: for example, Cocoa apps on Mac all inherit a bunch of consistent behaviors.

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2. netsharc ◴[06 Jul 25 02:54 UTC] No.44477450[source]▶
The default should be a clutter for new users, and the customization option should be make the UI customizable by hiding things you won't ever touch because you use shortcut keys.

The other way around is yeah, hostile. But of course it looks sleek and minimalistic!

On the early iPhones, they had to figure out how to move icons around. Their answer was, hold one of the icons down until they all start wiggling, that means you've entered the "rearrange icons" mode... Geezus christ, how intuitive. Having a button on screen, which when pressed offers a description of the mode you've entered would be user-friendly, but I get the lack of appeal, for me it would feel so clunky and like it's UI design from the 80's.

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3. chrismorgan ◴[06 Jul 25 03:31 UTC] No.44477599[source]▶
I started out with gVim with menu and toolbars. I quickly removed toolbars and after a while longer menus, as I didn't need them any more, they had taught me—though I seem to recall temporarily setting guioptions+=m from time to time for a while longer, when I couldn’t remember a thing. I think I had also added some custom menu items.

Being a modal editor probably makes removing all persistent chrome more feasible.

4. gjvc ◴[06 Jul 25 09:22 UTC] No.44479114[source]▶
Jef Raskin said it best:

"Another example is the absurd application of icons. An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages."

source https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=941396