Humane by Design

I taught community college for a spell, computers 101. When you go back to the very beginning and have to explain desktops and folders and files and file types to the same people who have little to no familiarity with moving a mouse... it’s profound how un-intuitive all of computing is... from the very beginning.

I think of this when I switch between Windows machines and Macs and their scrolling directions are opposite of each other.

That said, I’ve never taught my son how to type and I’ve never explained computers to him. He’s the kind of kid who figured out iPads and iPhones on his own, at a young age. And he is definitely a fast touch typist, all on his own.

Maybe “intuitive UI” metaphors aren’t helpful here. Computers are lived experiences, like homes and hotel rooms and cars. Think of the car you drive now, and how familiar it is, and think of the car you had 10 or 20 years ago. Get in that older car and it won’t be familiar right out the gate.

We have hundreds of interfaces that we live with... kitchens, rooms, appliances, spaces we navigate in the dark, cars, office layouts, TV interfaces, etc.

Most are shockingly poor interface experiences, and the brands/models that have them usually don’t maintain them. And we switch those pretty regularly with little thought to the next relative to the last. Because it would be maddening to be held to those things as we try and move along in our lives.

Example: I used to have a Volkswagen CC. Two things I loved about it: the auto-hold button (keeps brakes engaged and you can lift your foot off during stop-and-go traffic). and a “Jump” button on radio that could be programmed to go to any preset in memory. So, if you program your satellite radio stations in order of preference, you could hit Jump and go back to the first preset. Lovely feature.

That no subsequent VW or Audi I test drove afterwards kept those features has puzzled me ever since.

Live and long... for old interfaces, better interfaces, etc.

> There's no reason to allow companies to push their ridiculous branding styles down our throats.

Understandable, but on the contrary, you can imagine complaints on the opposite end of the spectrum. "Man, their site is ugly!"

Designers do their best to understand and create experiences that are crafted to their target audience; to, well, varying degrees of efficacy.

I think you'll be happy to learn about prefers-color-scheme: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...

Chrome hasn't implemented it yet (Firefox and Safari did), but there's some activity here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=889087

As far as I understand it, a website would have two stylesheets (dark and light) and your browser would pick which one should be used. Websites would still have two themes, but the activation process would get automated. This would allow the browsers to finally implement a "I prefer dark themes" setting.

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