Developer Defends His "Interesting" iPhone App UI | Hacker News Reader

Developer Defends His "Interesting" iPhone App UI

flickr.com

51 pointsbdotdub34 comments

I feel for Steve Pratt. Full disclosure: I've met him, in passing, at various handheld events over the years, but he wouldn't know me from Adam.

What I've found, and what he's caught in, is that data-entry applications for very specific problems, tend to get ugly. And that's ok, because the users are very, very savvy. If you look at the software his company builds, you'll find that 90% of it is for savvy, specialized users.

I spent hours agonizing over how 'ugly' an early iteration of a handheld app was after the users came back and said to make certain buttons and text bigger. Multisize buttons!? Different font sizes on the screen!? Crazy! And BAD!

But Fitts Law says (paraphrased) that big buttons are easier to hit. So make that button that everyone needs to hit 20 times an hour BIG. Even if it is ugly.

Some text you want to be able to see from a device lying on your desk. Some you don't care about until you need to squint at it. So size it differently.

I've come to believe that's all good.

What isn't defensible is the parts of this app that are just plain sloppy. The size of buttons not being the same, but being off by a few pixels. Spacing being wonky. Fonts for the sake of fonts.

"Make something people want"

not

"Make something that looks nice"

Seems like he thought pretty carefuly about the use cases of customers, and tried to make things as simple as possible. Sometimes making things simple leads to a more cluttered UI I guess.

For something you use every day you don't really want more than a couple of screens. You want everything there... ready to be used.

When you can do both that's called elegance. And a lot of people appreciate elegant and thoughtful design.

This is really a misunderstanding of "looking nice" and usability. This app doesn't look nice, but if it was an incredibly usable app with an ugly background color and ugly custom buttons, that would be somewhat understandable (I say somewhat only because Apple gives you beautiful looking graphics for free).

The problem is that this design is not usable. Design isn't how something looks, it is fundamentally how it works. The developer complains that these are really hard UI problems, and while I agree that UI is always difficult, Apple has already solved most of these issues in much more intuitive ways.

For example, the frequent trips section is redundant and confusing. If this app is really supposed to be "top down design" than this doesn't fit, because I've already been asked to enter mileage details and destination, but the frequent trips section already has all this information! Plus, the same screen shouldn't be used for inputting and editing this kind of information. One is something you do frequently, the other rarely -- they don't deserve the same placement in the UI. The Maps application on the phone uses bookmarks as data entry mechanisms, which is far more intuitive and lets you have a separate screen for managing them.

I agree it doesn't look nice, but it looks usable to me. I don't think it's really useful for people to laugh and point on a website about it.

It sounds like they have people using it, so they should listen to those users, and their suggestions, instead of people like you and me who haven't actually used the app.

Really? I deduct some of my miles, so I guess I'm in the target market, and until he explained what that app did I had no clue by looking at it.

I can't imagine paying for it.

I don't think deducting some miles is the target market. It looks like the average user would be using it every day, a few times maybe.

I get your point though, you have to appeal to potential users as well, can't only rely on word of mouth etc.

Waiting for Godwin's law to take its inevitable course in this train wreck.

Flickr comments aren't much better than YouTube's for constructive criticism, it so happens - put up a classic, award-winning photo with your name attached to it and prosumer asswipes will tell you how the lighting and focus are all off.

He handles it surprisingly well. A good lesson for all of us that have crap hurled our way.

He handles it incredibly poorly. All of his comments throughout the thread are, "I'm right, you're wrong, this is a good UI." Sure, he admits there may be room for improvement, but he also blatantly disregards useful advice from potential customers (and recognized experts in the field), and in many cases directly insults them.

I agree. Some of the people who commented have very valid points, yet he disregards them. Seems very prideful and stubborn.

To be honest I didn't see that many valid points. Plenty of "lol wut?" but no real criticism apart from the colour of the background.

Having said that, like a lot of those people I'm also 100% sure I can build a trip counter with a much better UI than that. Easily. Probably before the App Store opens. And like them, if I didn't have so much internetting to do I'd get on it straight away.

I wish I remember where I read that every good customer service relationship has two roles: The Complainer, and the Apologist. The secret to happiness is this: If your customer assumes one role, you must assume the other.

If your customer calls in anger and yells at you about Problem X, he's the Complainer. The proper response is to become the Apologist: "Gosh, I'm so sorry about X. I am filled with shame. It's entirely our fault that our product is filled with bugs; we should have embraced testing sooner and hired a better design team. I wish my parents had raised me better. Please don't hit me. We'll struggle to do better in the future, despite our haplessness. Here, have a free upgrade and a free support call."

If your customer calls and meekly reports that, oh, the software is great, and it's a real bargain, and he hates to even mention it, but Feature X really doesn't work... he's adopting the Apologist role. So you must become the Complainer: "WHAT? Feature X doesn't work! That is terrible! I can't believe we shipped a product with such an awful flaw! I'm going to fire the entire testing staff! Here, have a free upgrade and a free support call while I go shout at whomever is responsible for this travesty."

When people don't understand this rule, the situation often turns grim. Two Apologists risk descending into apathy: "Oh, this isn't really a problem, but..." "Well, yeah, that's not correct, but if it isn't really a problem..." "Gosh, though, it sure would be nice if you would fix it." "Well, okay, maybe... next week, sometime? Or maybe next month?"

A pair of Complainers risks an escalating argument that starts with insults and ends with lawsuits and violence.

(For a fun illustration of this, consider Monty Python's "dirty fork" sketch, in which the workers at a restaurant keep switching roles, from Apologist to Complainer to Extreme Apologist to Extreme Complainer to Suicidal Apologist to Homicidal Complainer, in dramatic and hilarious fashion, and the customer is completely confused. The sketch works because you get the sense, along with the customer, that the whole situation is somehow the customer's fault -- if he could just figure out which role to play, and adopt it, the situation would defuse. But the game is rigged: every time the customer picks a role the restaurant staff perversely adopts the same role and the situation escalates.)

Apologist usually refers to somebody who makes apologia, not apologies.

Upmodded.

I throw myself before the mercy of the court. The mistake is entirely mine. I am unworthy to live. Please accept a free s/apologist/apologizer/ and I'll try to do better in the future.

(Seriously, I had "apologizer" in there, but then my brain threw out "apologist" and it looked and sounded so much better. Pity about the meaning, though.)

UPDATE: From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:

Apologizer, n. One who makes an apology; an apologist.

Apologist, n. [Cf. F. apologiste.] One who makes an apology; one who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a cause, or an institution; especially, one who argues in defense of Christianity.

I'll squint at that pair of definitions and say: I regret my choice of words, but not enough to go back and fix it.

I throw myself before the mercy of the court. The mistake is entirely mine. I am unworthy to live.

WHAT? That is terrible! I'm really sorry and we'll fix that word-swapping bug first thing tomorrow. Here, have a free upgrade and a free support call.

"but he also blatantly disregards useful advice from potential customers (and recognized experts in the field), and in many cases directly insults them"

I think he's possibly does worse than making an ass of himself. As "some random guy" who lurked into this flickr thread, he has successfully introduced me to an interesting type of product that I'd never heard of and successfully convinced me that he's not the guy to buy it from.

As a consumer, I can deal with a less-than-perfect UI, but someone who responds to criticism by hurling insults? No thanks.

I read the flicker thread and don't remember any hurled insults... did I miss something?

After I read through his tirades I think he came out poorer for the wear. Much of his explanations are simply: blah blah we've done this for a long time blah blah. It's also clear he's opting for what he thinks is experience over Apple iPhone HIG.

The most glaring mistake he made was the background color. I mean seriously did everybody in the room while looking at this say "yeah, 33FFFF is the way to go!"

It's interesting to see how much a primary color (cyan in this case) affects people's initial reaction to things. I think if the UI looked more like this when they first saw it, no one would have really given it much thought:

http://screencast.com/t/NpgW6YeM

It just shows that a little bad color can go a long way. We have this a lot with our startup, too-- some people simply can't stand the color scheme we chose for our first beta. It's pretty bad, but memorable. We're working on making things "nice-looking but memorable" instead.

If that image was the UI, people might not have objected as much. There's no horrible color coordinating that was placed in the real UI, which is a major complaint.

Also, might just be me, but those colors look much better inverted though. Short of the red button label. But that's a lot smaller of a problem then the entire UI having bad color coordination.

Bad UX design can't hide behind a good color scheme. The fundamental flaws are still there.

How would you handle all of these people cracking jokes about your app? There's some thoughtful criticism in there, but mostly it's just one "UI Expert" posting up a screenshot of the app for other people to make fun of it.

If you're not interested in the criticism offered, a good strategy is to politely thank everyone for their comments, possibly briefly explaining why you made the decisions you did.

An even better strategy is to completely ignore them. Especially if the complainers aren't and never will be your users.

+1 for that.

The proper strategy, referencing my own post above, is to adopt the role of Apologist. Say that you're sorry that people reacted poorly to this beta of your app. Say that you'll take the criticism to heart. Make some joke about how you should have shown the app to your art-school friend before launching it.

Then, shut up. Don't escalate. Don't feed the mob.

Then, make some fairly basic changes in the graphics. Change the color and the fonts and fix the alignments. It'll take an hour at most, it'll probably make the app look better, and it will suggest that you're trying to listen to your customers and do the right thing.

Obviously, if you want to win over a guy like Gruber (a design fanatic who spent several months agonizing over the font and color choices for his website) you'll have to do more extensive design work. But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric.

But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric.

That makes a lot of sense and is really helpful. Hostile and egocentric (or at least defensive) are pretty much how he did come across. Plus incongruent (saying how amused he was when he obviously wasn't, and so on).

There's a huge culture gap between the supercilious Apple snobs, whose haughtiness is a composite of everything bad ever said about Mac users, and the earnest outsider trying to justify himself and not realizing that he's only making things worse. For example, he mentions his years of experience and how many people use his data-entry apps, things that carry credibility in his culture but are just the sort of uncool things that are disdained in theirs. The whole thread is full of these crossed signals.

He definitely could have handled it much better. Such as:

"We put a lot of thought into it, and while it looks busy, we wanted real time data to be available for blah and blah reasons. But since you guys seem to not like it, let's make this fun and why don't you start proposing some new layouts. If I see one I like better, I will send the clever person a $100 gift certificate to blah blah"

Then the group will either back down, or rise to the occasion and they can all start being harsh on each others design. At that point he is the hero.

Always be the hero, even when being torn apart.

"... It does, however, have the advantage for iPhone owners that starting July 11, they'll be able to use it to record their deductible (or reimbursable) trip mileage. ..."

Go ugly, fast.

You might not win any design awards but you might be in business long enough to correct the problems. I'd seen this on flickr this week. Mac zealots tend to be a pretty mean bunch. Wonder how they go with this tone of criticism?

In a debate, as soon as you offer your resume, you lose.

Though he attempts to say otherwise, I think this is the same as appealing to authority.

I'm not saying this to brag, or to "pull rank" on anyone. I'm saying it to point out that maybe, just maybe, we know SOMEthing about software design and development after 20 years in the business, including 10 years of designing for a handheld platform.

OK, fair. He probably does know a thing or two, but he could just stick to the point. Appeals to authority always show an emotional side the argument simply doesn't need and is probably hindered by.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

What's particularly foolish is that he's appealing to an authority that most iPhone fans find completely ridiculous: The app design standards of existing handheld platforms.

Most iPhone fanatics love their phone because it's branded as a completely new approach to the design of a handheld platform: A real browser, an intelligent approach to voicemail, a first-class music and video player, etc. Whether or not each and every one of these things is truly unique and revolutionary is beside the point: That's the brand, that's the message. In that environment, appealing to your ten years of handheld experience is like advertising your COBOL skills.

I concur. The road along which all Apple developers travel is littered with the corpses of great programs with bad interface design. This is due to a windows or pc mentality of "if it's just functional enough people won't care what it looks like." There's nothing wrong with this mentality, in and of itself. However most Apple users, by definition, have already discounted that this statement could apply to them by choosing Apple as their preferred method of computing.

Don't whine, fix it.

By that I mean, propose specific suggestions for improvement. There's not a single constructive comment offered by the author.

Well done, Steve Pratt.

Sad to see the way the discussion around software is moving into Gawker-like territory of empty cynicism and juvenile cliques. It seems owning a Mac now qualifies a person as a UI expert and if you know what's a URL you're a certified geek.

Screw that. Software is not "art" in the pretentious-hipster version and not about cheap "opinions". It's about building stuff. Can we have Bubble 2.0 burst already, please?

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