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Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

The custom buttons without labels are a pet peeve of mine actually. I can never guess what the buttons do when they only have pictures and each app use their own icon set.

There are some apps that use standard buttons that I recognize but far too many want to be fancy and roll their own making the app practically unusable unless you guess correct or press all buttons to see what they do.

But you are correct in that if everyone followed the guidelines, used the standard UI elements and images etc it would be much better. I could even forgo button labels if that happens :)

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But if you consider the app in the example, the ‘Globe’ carrier app, you’ll almost immediately see that the problem is that it is a confusing navigational spaghetti that is designed to force users to explore an app littered with ‘promotional offers’.

Why else would you need a special ‘discover these precious diamonds’ button in the toolbar, with the useful paths hidden in the hamburger menu and then patched over with parallel navigation from the ‘quick action’ buttons on the ‘dashboard’ (of which half is dedicated to ‘Offers & Promos’ and ‘Lifestyle’)

It’s almost as if the app has a fixed position ad that floats over half the screen and the article is complaining the useful information is so hard to see because they didn’t test on small iPhones.

The main problem here isn’t that apps/services don’t follow the guidelines per-se but that more and more software is designed not to solve a particular problem efficiently and get paid honest money for that effort but to waste as much of the user’s time as possible showing them “offers”. The industry calls this “engagement” and a large chunk of people’s salaries and careers (including mine at the beginning) is based on that.

This is kind of kicking an open door but the guideline explicitly is to design your app ‘to solve a particular problem efficiently’

Problem: our customers don’t get exposed to our special offers often enough but they do spend time checking their bills.

Let’s stop sending paper bills because ads on there are too easy to ignore and make a labyrinthine app where the bill can be eventually accessed if users know the menu cheat code which will change regularly.

Did the guidelines mean you should solve a problem of the users or the company?

The problem is why is that company in the business of "special offers"? The job of the telecoms company should be to provide reliable phone/internet service and otherwise disappear in the shadows. There should be no reason to "engage" with them other than paying your bill or changing some settings, just like there's no reason to "engage" with your power, water company or trash collection company.

For software that you only occasionally use custom icons with no labeling is a real productivity killer.

It's so much worse on mobile without tooltips as well, maybe we need to standardise a long press giving a description or something similar

Android already has that standard. Long press almost always brings up a tooltip.

I guess much like aria attributes it varies based on the quality of the product/motivation of the business.

I just tried one of my banking apps and a Reddit client and found neither provided tooltips - perhaps they thought those particular icons are too self explanatory or perhaps they didn't bother/used a cross platform tech that didn't make it easy.

Actually even on Google maps I don't seem to get tooltips for the fab icons for center map / directions.

I do remember this being a thing but it feels like it's fallen out of fashion.

Pixel 3a / android 11

You say "even Google Maps", and something surprised me when I explored their SDK. So I don't know about Android, but the Google Maps SDK on iOS does not use the iOS widgets. They draw everything themselves. Integrating Google Maps is a pain, because standard layout techniques don't work (for example for labels on markers). The whole thing felt really ancient.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that it didn't work as expected.

Writing a map view is like writing a game, you have no choice but to draw everything yourself if you want decent performance.

Six years ago, I would have taken that as gospel. I wonder if that is still the case, however.

On Android, by convention you can long-press icon-only toolbar buttons and the label will show as a tooltip. Non-native apps (fuzzy definition) lack this far too often, but it’s always worth trying. Not sure if iOS has something like this.

Yeah I used to be on android, I had less issues there. This is my first iPhone (version 11) and I'm not sure if I will keep with apple. The tracking of google is bothering me big time though so I might just accept a worse user experience to avoid that.

What is the advantage of this? If you can long press a toolbar button to get a label that states what the button is for, it’s easier to just tap the button and see what it is for.

What if you're not sure if you want to trigger the effect of the button?

Unless I’m missing something we’re talking about a tab bar? The worst thing that can happen is that you switch to that tab. Switching tabs should never be destructive.

Toolbar, not tab bar. You will regularly get mutating actions there, though any mutating actions should either prompt or be undoable.

I have to pile on the rant - OK, maybe the screen real estate is precious and you don't have space for buttons - but allow me to somehow discover what they do!

In desktop applications, you can over over a toolbar button and you get the label underneath. Why can't I long press a button in a mobile app and get a toast that says what it does? (I see the sibling says this should work, but I don't remember the last time I wasn't disappointed by trying this and failing.) You're making me miss the useless-90%-of-the-time question mark button at the top of every window in Windows!

Hover is quick and natural on desktop, but why would you want to long press a tab bar button on mobile? That's long and unnatural. Just press it (quick and natural) and see what it does!

“Just press it (quick and natural) and see what it does!”

And if it deletes something you wanted to keep you have learned a valuable and lasting lesson :)

Hmm I wonder if this button sells all my shares at a steep loss, guess there's only one way to find out

If a button does that kind of critical action, it better have a better and much more visible explanation + confirmation than just a hidden hover tooltip

At least it’s supposed to be red

Some Android Material Design guidelines (which are often not followed..) specifies that you should be able to press-hold a button and have a popup label shows up to describe its function.

I don't remember exactly where I've seen it, but for example in Android you can press-hold some buttons without labels and you see a toaster-style popup indicating its function.

Ob Android, long holding a button usually tells you what it does

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