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Comment by wcummings | Hacker News Reader

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to see timestamps in iMessage on my phone.

I came from android (and am going back tomorrow) and I can't count the number of things that I couldn't figure out on my iPhone or its apps. I won't get into the apps, as thats an app developer thing mostly, but man, it took me googling after 2 months of frustration to find out to ignore a phone call (make it stop ringing so I can continue listening to spotify in my car) I had to hit the power button. On my Android I just swiped "ignore" or whatever it says.

Or the time you sit in front of a dialog thinking it's installing the software only to realize there's a flat button you didn't think you have to press first when a flat button always just means "disabled". We're using designers that want to create art pieces when we need designers who should create usable interfaces. I don't want to hang the GUI on the wall to look at, I need to interact with it with as little guesswork as possible.

Many of iOS' "flat" design choices have taken me an embarrassingly long time to figure out. Timestamps in iMessage are definitely one of them.

I really don't think that has anything to do with flat design whatever that means.

Apple is all about hiding non-essential information and functionality. Always has been. This is a consistent pattern you will be able to find in all their software if you pay a little attention. Basically, if Apple thinks something is a power user feature most users will not need then they have no qualms about not making it discoverable. They tend to even go a step further: they may outright hide it, making it impossible for users to ever be confused by it.

I don't think that's a bad design pattern (depending on context and circumstances, obviously, as always), you just have to make the right judgement calls about what's important and has to be discoverable and what's not. This allows the software to be simple to most users while also having some depth for more advanced users. Like always in design it's all about making the right trade offs, though. The devil is in the details.

How about putting the advanced options into a menu or make them somehow discoverable? I hate it when after years I found out that something was possible but I didn't know that I had to press option+shift+ctrl while standing on one foot. It's OK to make advanced features less prominent but don't hide them.

On mobile apps it's even worse. Swipe up, left or right? Nobody knows.

When did you figure it out? The feature was only introduced in iOS7 two years ago almost do the day.

But once you know how to do it (it's swiping from right to left in a chat screen, by the way) it's a genius use of touch movement, right?

I'm torn about this - it's annoying that it's hard to discover, but I also hate when an app gets all up in my face about how to use its features - I usually open an app (especially a utility app like iMessage) with a specific intent and having the app interrupt that intent to tell me about itself is annoying.

I also have the perspective of being an engineer who builds interfaces. I think these are just hard problems and these kinds of pain points are inevitable as we continue exploring interfaces. I mean, the door is an interface that has been around since at least Egyptian times, and people still screw up affordance with it (how many times have you pulled a handle on a push door?)

>But once you know how to do it (it's swiping from right to left in a chat screen, by the way) it's a genius use of touch movement, right?

Why not always show the time, like WhatsApp does?

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