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Author Topic:   Felger Sounds Off on Internet Insanity
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 91 of 96 (782323)
04-22-2016 9:43 AM


David Pogue
David Pogue does entertaining TV shows on technology, was the techology columnist for the New York Times, and is currently a columnist for Yahoo and Scientific American. In his Technofiles column titled Dumb Design (sorry if that link doesn't work, sometimes Scientific American locks their stuff up pretty tight) of the April Issue of Scientific American Pogue summarizes a few of his complaints. Here are some excerpts with my comments.
Have you ever tried to cancel a service on a company's Web page? You look everywhere, but you just can't find the Cancel option. It's almost as though the company has hidden it on purpose.
Pogue is much more forgiving than me. While I accept that much bad design is not on purpose, the hiding of the "Cancel" option is not one of them. Amazon Prime used to hide it really well, not sure if that's still true. If you sign up for New York Times Premiere using their webpage, do you know where the "Cancel" option is? It doesn't exist. You have to call them, go through their voice menu system, wait on hold for a while, then explain that you'd like to cancel your Premiere subscription. "Can I ask why, sir?" Hey, my time is worth nothing, waste as much of it as you like.
To their credit, Netflix makes it really easy to cancel. And their user interface is excellent! Amazon should be ashamed.
A common way to get burned on the Internet is to sign up for a free offer with no charge as long as you cancel before the free period ends. Some companies are wonderful, sending you a nice email that the free period is about to end, along with a "Cancel" link. Other companies are not so good, so now before signing up for free offers I make sure I can find the "Cancel" option first.
The last free offer I signed up for was Apple Music. It was bad when it was called Apple Beats, and it's still bad, so I'll cancel soon. There's a reminder in my calendar, including a note to myself about where the "Cancel" option is.
Apple Music reminds me that I should comment about Pandora. I use Pandora when I'm working, but I had to spend time on other issues for the past month and hadn't listened to Pandora in a while until yesterday. Maybe they've made an improvement, or maybe they changed an algorithm, but the channels now seem to be playing a more accurate *and* larger selection of music. Nice!
The mobile era makes the challenge even greater; it's especially difficult to cram a lot of features into limited screen space.
Very true. I like a big screen and a normal keyboard, so I wait until I get home before checking stuff online. I don't feel the need to be constantly interconnected.
At the moment, millions of people, stymied by terrible software design, blame themselves. I must just be a dummy, they might mutter. I guess I'm some kind of Luddite.
Pogue is describing exactly the attitude I opened this thread to combat. People, it is not your fault! These apps (or whatever) suck!
In fact, though, if a control doesn't work the way it should, or it isn't sitting where it ought to be, it may well be the designers' fault, not yours.
Ya think?
But in other casesmany, many other casesit seems clear that the creators of bad interface design just weren't thinking.
Sometimes designers *can* be blamed for bad designs, but we can't ignore that bad design is often not the fault of designers. Too often design projects are given too little time and too few resources. Over the years designers eventually become habituated to having only enough time and resources to do a bad job.
It makes sense when you think about how often apps are updated. Constant change to keep up with incessantly changing demand is necessary and important and has to be done fast under great time and money constraints. Most software goes out the door with designers and coders crossing their fingers that all the stuff they know is bad or wrong or broken doesn't cause too many problems.
Of course many companies have a ready solution for all the problems in their software: they make it near impossible to contact them and complain.
Pogue makes four specific suggestions for how design could be improved, but I found them either wishy-washy, too general, or vague, so I won't describe them.
But I do see a disturbing trend, and that's the emergence of some user interface standardization. Standardization is great, very welcome, makes it easier to use a new app or website, but some standardization is as bad as the QUERTY keyboard. I'd hate to see some examples of poor interface design become standard.
By the way, this standardization isn't happening because of the good graces of the high-tech industry, at least in my opinion. It's happening because underneath the surface they're standardizing on software libraries like AngularJS and Bootstrap and others. User interfaces implemented using the same software libraries will tend to have a certain sameness of structure and behavior.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 92 by jar, posted 04-22-2016 9:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 93 by Percy, posted 05-07-2016 9:38 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 92 of 96 (782325)
04-22-2016 9:56 AM
Reply to: Message 91 by Percy
04-22-2016 9:43 AM


Re: David Pogue
One of my favorite examples of good design becoming embedded and now a bad design is the touchtone phone keypad. The layout is different than the normal calculator (adding machine) keypad by design. That was because folk used to using adding machines (that's all they did back then) made too many mistakes when transitioning to keyed phones from dial phones. By reversing the layout users were forced to slow down, change orientation, think when punching.
Letters on the dialing system were there only to aid in the transition from named exchanges "dial VALley or PLAza or SOUthland or RIChmond xxxx".
Now so many interfaces from Remote Controls to Cell Phones try to use the Phone Layout as a keyboard; and it sucks.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by Percy, posted 04-22-2016 9:43 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 93 of 96 (783625)
05-07-2016 9:38 AM
Reply to: Message 91 by Percy
04-22-2016 9:43 AM


Re: David Pogue
My previous post mentioned that I had tried Apple Music, didn't like it, and was planning to cancel as the end of the free trial period approached. Well, I "cancelled" Apple Music, and it wasn't easy. What should have taken at most five minutes took an hour. Here's what happened. Things I think are buggy or wrong or absurd are in bold red.
  • Open the email from Apple welcoming me to Apple Music. This email contained a link for cancelling. I clicked on the link to cancel, here it is:
    quote:
    To cancel auto-renewal or manage your subscriptions, click below and sign in.
    View Account Information
  • In Chrome (my default browser) the wrong webpage opened. I got the Apple download webpage:
  • I navigated from the download page to my account page, but there was nothing about subscriptions. I poked determinedly at this for a while, looking everywhere at the Apple website I could think of that might be related to managing a subscription.
  • I contacted Apple using their chat app. It took a while before the Apple person was convinced that I was accurately describing what had happened, and then another while for her to exhaust her ideas.
  • I suggested trying a different browser, she agreed, so I tried Firefox. It worked. Instead of taking me to the Apple download page it transferred control to iTunes, which opened its account page. The Apple Music subscription was listed there and I was able to turn it off.
Why didn't it work in Chrome? Who knows. Was it the popup blocker? The ad blocker? A bug? I don't know, I've wasted too much time on this already to afford the time to investigate, but here are my specific complaints:
  1. That "View Account Information" link Apple provided should work in all popular browsers no matter what common extensions they've added.
  2. The Apple account information for iTunes should be available through their webpages. It's nice that it's available through iTunes, but all subscriptions for all Apple apps should be available through their webpages.
The impetus for this post is that it was just announced at Tech Times that "Changes on Apple Music will include a major design overhaul." Geez, like it wasn't obvious that was needed back when Apple Music was called Apple Beats. In fact, this was just a marketing ploy. Apple Music was just Apple Beats with a few superficial changes. The article continues:
quote:
According to The Information founder Jessica Lessin and New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac, the planned revamp for Apple Music is very much needed so that the music streaming service can continue to thrive.
If Apple Music is thriving then that is very hard to figure, though I will say it has one very nice feature: You can play any random song any time you like, and you can also build playlists (I assume of any length) from all songs from their library and your own. You can't do that with Pandora, I don't know about Spotify. The article goes on:
quote:
Lessin believes that Apple Music could be better integrated with iTunes, and Isaac thinks that Apple should focus on creating a feature that will differentiate Apple Music from rivals such as Spotify.
My own opinion is that Apple should first focus on making Apple Music as good and bug-free as Pandora and Spotify. My music app use only takes advantage of the "station" feature. Apple Music stations will just go dead (refuse to play), stations can be seeded with only a single song or group, there's no up/down voting to hone your station, stations cannot be renamed, stations cannot be sorted by name or other criteria, and stations cannot be deleted (they just go to the end of the list). In short Apple Music reflects woefully insufficient attention to design and quality.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by Percy, posted 04-22-2016 9:43 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 94 by Rrhain, posted 05-08-2016 6:37 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


(2)
Message 94 of 96 (783732)
05-08-2016 6:37 AM
Reply to: Message 93 by Percy
05-07-2016 9:38 AM


There's a more important reason to get rid of Apple Music:
You lose ownership of your library.
Apple Music scans your hard drive and uploads it to the cloud. It then scans the music and if it finds a match with the music it has ownership of, it replaces your copy with theirs. That means if your actual track is "close enough" to the track they have, your track is dumped in favor of the one they have. After all, they don't want to have everybody's individual copy of the Beatle's White Album. Only one track served to everyone makes their storage needs easier.
Any music that is original to you is then kept on the cloud.
And that music is then deleted from your hard drive.
Are you a composer that had your own works on your computer? It's gone and on Apple's servers. And they will not be helpful in letting you have it back. You'll have to do each song individually.
And it will be in mp3 or aac format, not the format it was originally in.
And you can't sue them because the terms of use agreement you signed to use Apple Music directly states that they can do this.
As the author of this article points out, Apple has become that Orwellian, 1984-like entity it was supposedly rebelling against with the introduction of the Mac.
Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 93 by Percy, posted 05-07-2016 9:38 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by caffeine, posted 05-08-2016 3:25 PM Rrhain has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 95 of 96 (783771)
05-08-2016 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by Rrhain
05-08-2016 6:37 AM


Much as I've mocked Percy's Ludditism in the past, I do agree with these complaints to an extent. One thing I hate about modern technology firms is the desire to bring everything together under one system (and then be incapable of successfully delivering the services involved).
I just bought a new e-reader, and chose the cheapest on the local market. This isn't just because I'm tight, but because it was actually the one I liked the most. Partly this was because I did not want a touchscreen, but also because I chose a device from a Ukrainian company (Pocketbook) that only makes e-readers. That's their business, and that is their only business. They produce devices onto which I can upload pdfs, epubs and similar files and display them on an e-ink background. They are not trying to sell me proprietary formats or connect my e-reading experience to my internet browsing or social media use, and I couldn't be happier with the device (it replaces one I broke from the same brand).
By contrast, consider Skype. I appear to be no longer able to login to Skype on any device except one tablet where I happen to be still logged in. This is because I've forgotten my password (as I regularly do for every password I have). When I inform Skype of this, however, it redirects me to a site from which I can reset my 'Microsoft' password - because now all is one and all my accounts are linked. Except they aren't. All I've succeeded in doing is resetting the password to my hotmail (sorry - 'Outlook.com') account, which is not linked to Skype since both date from the days before either was owned by Microsoft. If there's a way back in to my Skype, I can't find it.
I don't want one account for everything. I don't want one company to own everything. I want a bunch of different devices and programmes produced by companies specialising in doing one thing well - like Pocketbook with their e-readers.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by Rrhain, posted 05-08-2016 6:37 AM Rrhain has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 96 of 96 (784214)
05-14-2016 11:49 AM


Bad Design at Facebook
On your PC, go to your Facebook homepage. In the lower right is the chat box. Any dynamic menus that come up display *behind* the chat box. For example, click on your name to go your own info page. Hovering your mouse over "More " will raise a dynamic drop-down. Size your browser window so that "More " is just above the chat box and when you hover over it the dynamic drop-down will be behind the chat box.
You can click on the top bar of the chat box to make it collapse into a little box at the bottom of the browser window, but this only makes it less likely the problem will affect you. The chat box cannot be made to completely disappear.
This happens because z-index for the chat box is set to 300, while for dynamic menus it is not set (which means "auto"), leaving it at the default level, the same as static content. As a positioned element it will always be displayed above static content, but below any layer with a defined z-index, including 0 (giving a layer no z-index is not the same as giving it a z-index of 0).
Good design requires z-index values with good separation. When unspecified with no defined value to inherit z-index will be displayed just above static content, so values for higher layers should be 10, 20, 30 or 100, 200, 300 and so forth.
A z-index of "auto" for dynamic content is bad design because it makes it impossible to position new objects like the chat-box above some layers but below others. What Facebook really wants is for the chatbox to be above the static content but below dynamic drop-down menus.
This many years along fixing the initial bad design may not be easy. Glancing at their dynamic menu HTML I see they have many layers of HTML and many CSS classes. Figuring out where to make the CSS change for the dynammic menu's z-index could take some time.
Of course, Facebook can afford to fix it, so why don't they? I have no idea. A quick Google reveals that Facebook has been having z-index issues for years.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Correct directions in first paragraph.

  
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