iPhones and action discoverability
alexanderell.is
alexanderell.is
Probably the single most useful skill I've had to learn in my life is, whenever you wonder something, just Google it. If you don't think your software does X... don't just assume it. Look it up.
I've been astonished at how often a feature was added 3 years ago to a program I've used for 8 years, or there's a secret swipe that avoids a bunch of menus, or an unofficial command-line flag.
And it really leaves me feeling deeply conflicted. Because on the one hand, I still believe in the virtue of learning your tools inside and out. I would read the manual and be proud I knew exactly what every program/language could and couldn't do. But on the other hand, is that really just a waste of time? Programs have so many features now, that instead of learning all the things via discoverability or a manual, we just learn them by... querying how to do things when we need them.
I don't really like the idea of so fundamentally relying on Google and forums and tutorials and Reddit and YouTube videos as the main way of learning how to use software. But at the same time, software does so much now and adds new things so quickly that it appears to be the only reasonable way.
Games are patched live, browser in constant update etc etc
The problem with this is that you don’t learn any new features that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own.
I loved reading the well-written manuals and “on-line” (integrated into the software) help of the 90s (and 80s) that explained all the concepts and features of the particular software. You’d learn a ton of new ideas and possibilities. It was really fun and exciting, and it gave you the perception of a well-designed and well thought-out whole. You built up a consistent mental model of the software, and you thus ended up with the feeling of mastery and control over the software.
Nowadays it feels more like poking the software with a stick in an attempt to build a mental model and discover its capabilities by trial and error, often remaining in doubt about the actual intent of how exactly things are supposed to work.
For “consumer” software I usually don’t need manuals, I can find what I need via poking; this often includes power user features (when I use something sufficiently often).
Is it possible that what you’re feeling is nostalgia? Have you actually read the manual for your phone?
I have, and it’s abysmal, because it doesn’t make any attempt at explaining anything on a conceptual level, or even explaining basic UI elements. It doesn’t teach you how to interpret what you see on the screen. It does the bare minimum of enumerating the steps to activate a given feature, presuming that you are able to match those descriptions to what you see on the screen (there are barely any screenshots) and that you know why you would want to use that feature in the first place. It also doesn’t address any failure modes, and doesn’t discuss relevant considerations regarding the use of the given feature.
Then again, today’s smartphone operating systems are as popular as home appliances in the 90s.
Maybe if we took something modern that is as niche as software in the 90s then it might come with a manual with a mental model too.
But of course, there’s a phone app you can download and give the company a bunch of personal information to connect your washer to your home network so you can get notification when it’s done with its cycle.
Now they're developing products for themselves. No customer ever asked for a TV that plastered the screen with ads every time they adjusted the volume, or a lightbulb you need some shitty app to turn on and off, but now it seems everything comes with some kind of hidden monkey paw style gotcha attached to it.
- 2020s appliances (throw away manuals) are like 90s hardware toolbox (throw away manuals)
- 2020s smartphones (easy to understand manuals) are like 90s appliances (easy to understand manuals)
- 2020s specialized tools (manuals with mental models) are like 90s computers (manuals with mental models)
https://www.oreilly.com/search/?query=missing+manual&formats...
It does get a bit ridiculous though. There's entire sites and content creators focused solely on VS Code tips. At what point are we gonna end up with engineers working on adding a feature to VS Code that they didn't know already existed?
I don't think those have ever come up at the right time, usually only when I'm halwfway in the middle of an action, and not in the headspace for a tutorial or tip.
And that tiny little tooltip, that offers no screenshot or example gif isn't going to get me to learn.
If anyone knows how to invoke this feature, I’d love to know. Just not enough to try to find out from checking more than about three search results. Anyway, ahhh discoverability. I remember you…
This make some sense for Web Product development where you want to find a market fit, VC and media were all over it. But it doesn't work as well for Desktop and other type of Apps. Or in System Programming.
And it is funny we start seeing push back against it 10 - 15 years later.
Except we’re really not. Tools like container registries, software dependencies on remote repos, and cheap infrastructure have brought the fast half-baked iteration to systems programming, desktop apps, etc.
† Typed these on mobile, of course. Android, in case you're wondering.
If you enable that, each key on the keyboard now shows an additional symbol you can get to by long press, for example, 'a' now also allows you to type '@'. If you try and long press for 'a' you'll suddenly see that accented versions of 'a' are also available. And that's the story of how I "naturally" discovered that same feature.
https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/welcome-to-live/
Wish more software companies were this thorough.
It's hard to Google things you don't know exist. And it's hard to Google things that changed. If you've ever had a problem on macos, Googling is only useful if the problem is new; if it's been an issue in older versions, you're going to find all those questions and maybe some answers but they likely don't apply because Apple broke it differently now. Other vendors are not immune to this either, of course. I understand Apple actually does have manuals, they just don't print them and if they reference them, many people (including me) never noticed.
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/The_Macintosh/Newton_Easter_Egg...
Note that iPhones have a manual too, it’s easy to navigate and quite comprehensive. E.g. here’s a page that describes the “trackpad” action: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph3c50f96e/16.... .
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph3afc3b3fc/16...
The manual is also available as an 843-page ebook [2], and is accessible via the Tips app, which is preinstalled on the home screen.
It's not quite like the days when a paper manual would be right in the box, but it's close. And I think most people would be unhappy if their sleek new phone came with an 843-page tome (not to mention how much paper that would waste).
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/welcome/ios
I didn't know that. I thought Tips was an app that gave you a couple of dozens of tips, and nothing else.
Would naming it "User Manual" be any better?
That’s why they’ve never read the manual.
I tried to find the answer to a problem I had and it's not there. I inherited an iphone where the side ringer mute toggle bounces back after setting, it's a mechanical error. There is no software "unmute" override - unless you use assistive touch. It took quote a while of wading through google results and well-intentioned-but-clueless advice from people before I found someone who revealed this. The manual just says assistive touch can help adjust volume so it is technically true I guess but the keyword "mute" is not there.
I did learn about the triple-click shortcut from than online manual just now, so I should thank it for that (even though it neglects to mention it needs to be enabled first).
Today, they can find the equivalent information for free without leaving the device where the software is running.
Especially in coding I see this as the major difference between a good and great engineer - google things at the right time to find the best solutions. You don’t have to build it all yourself.
That does NOT solve the original discoverability problem.
>>I've been astonished at how often a feature was added 3 years ago to a program I've used for 8 years, or there's a secret swipe that avoids a bunch of menus, or an unofficial command-line flag.
THAT is the problem right there. You're a likely typical example of someone who is smart, knowledgeable, experienced, and motivated, probably beyond what used to be called a "power user". Yet great swaths of features, and the work of scores of designers, developers, & testers for years, simply escapes our notice.
The result is that vast amounts of productivity go squandered until we discover by chance accident or encounter with some "You didn't know this!" post.
I've occasionally seen some introduction wizards be somewhat helpful, but they are never in any kind of depth. It's like they are afraid to show you what the software can really do — but the real case is some marketing dude thinks (likely sometimes correctly) that if the intro is too long, people will think it's complicated and won't use it. If that's the case, we're again being dragged down by the lowest (of most ordinary) common denominator.
Solutions? How about the Quick Tour, and even the outline/TOC of a full manual, so we can at least skim it and see if some feature exists and then Google/DDG it...?
I think the modern software does not come with the manuals because it simply has severly reduced functionality compared to the old days. For example, when was the last time you had used a navigation software with "avoid area" and "add custom road" features?
There was always a tradeoff between "more features thus more UX complexity" (power user approach) vs "cut features to keep UX simpler" (UX designer approach). Sadly, the designers won.
No, the article is completely accurate about the lack of discoverability of those features. It highlights them because they are a direct contrast to nearly every other interface feature on iOS. That's what makes them interesting to interface designers.
> I think the modern software does not come with the manuals because it simply has severly reduced functionality compared to the old days.
Oh?
> For example, when was the last time you had used a navigation software with "avoid area" and "add custom road" features?
Did those navigation applications offer traffic overlaying satellite imagery? Public transit directions with real time vehicle tracking? Were you able to just type an address as we parse them or did you need to enter it in some weird little-endian order? Density of people at any given location, how many people are on a bus, or how busy Home Depot is? Up-to-date business hours? Alternate routes on regional rail and airlines? Up-to-date road closures even for temporal events? 3D photographic street-level POV navigation? Terrain maps? Cycling instructions? Weather? Descriptions of area attractions with an array of photographs for each? Wildfire maps? Hail you a ride share?
The number of gained features dwarfs the number of lost features by an order of magnitude in software lasting that long.
> There was always a tradeoff between "more features thus more UX complexity" (power user approach) vs "cut features to keep UX simpler" (UX designer approach).
You're wrong. Our software today does vastly more than software of yesteryear. Most of it feels so natural-- like those maps features-- that you don't notice it coming into existence. It just sort of fits right into the ecosystem-- and that's the whole point.
FOSS is a perfect example of what happens when software interfaces are assembled by developers rather than designed. I've been a developer, mostly towards the back of the stack, for a good 11 years. I also have art school education in interface design. Most developers have no idea how little they know about the way people use interfaces. To us, a GUI is a visual wrapper that facilitates interacting with the underlying software, like an API. Obfuscating functionality when it's not likely useful seems wasteful to someone used to reasoning about complex software. The problems arise when they take their personal usage preferences, assume they're representative of all users, and treat them as broadly applicable maxims in all of the software they create.
Most users don't have the mental models in place to reason about the software functioning behind the interface-- to them, the interface is the software. An interface that doesn't consider what users need to and almost as importantly, don't need to see at any given point is confusing. Confusing is bad, so to them, the software is bad. To a developer, a confusing interface is something to be overcome by reading a manual.
For example, you'll regularly catch professional photographers kvetching about the cost of adobe products... they have almost all tried Gimp but nearly none of them use it. There's little photographers (vs. say, graphic designers) can do in Photoshop that they can't do in Gimp... so why don't more photographers use it? Because it was designed by developers, for users who already have a mental model of the way software works with little regard for everyone else. Literally the only people you see advocating for Gimp are more FOSS fans than artists. Ask photographers why they don't use it and they'll mention the same things every time-- the interface sucks. It's confusing. Things are in unexpected places and function in unexpected ways. Affinity Photo, on the other hand, is starting to get a following.
Photoshop is far from simple, but both the new user experience and the overall capability vastly surpass Gimp. That's why Adobe's userbase grows by millions of users every year despite direct competitors and people having complained about the price since they released v1. Software with expert users will either accommodate expert workflows or they'll no longer have expert users. Software with new users will accommodate beginners or nobody will adopt the software, if there's competition.
Inkscape, on the other hand, enjoys a decent-ish reputation among professional vector graphics artists and unlike Gimp, is sometimes considered a viable tool of the trade. Illustrator and other tools do a hell of a lot more, but people don't roll their eyes when someone brings it up as a FOSS alternative.
Design vs functionality is a false dichotomy. The fact that so many developers assume complexity in interface == good functionality is the reason open source alternatives are alternative rather than the standard.
> Sadly, the designers won.
Your misplaced blame betrays your lack of understanding of what interface designers actually do. Only managers controlling the purse strings want software to do less. Designers are perfectly happy doing the hard work of figuring out the best ways to communicate software's functionality by what is shown, and what is not shown, on any given screen.
Could you imagine people with different domain expertise, like health insurance claims, designed the interfaces around people with their level of familiarity with the underlying systems? What would you say when they scoffed at your lack of sophistication when you refused to crack open a 400 page manual to file a simple claim? After all, it's right there on page 288 in the manual! How do you find it? Just look for 'adjustments, claims' in the index! How would you know to look for that term? "Hhhhhhhh... you don't deserve to have that claim filled!"
Hyperbolic? Sure. But you shouldn't need an existing mental model of the underlying insurance claim machine to file an insurance claim, and that flavor of contempt for users not already understanding "how software works" is endemic in software development, and exactly what designers mitigate.
Hahaha, really? That's a laughable claim. Tell us how to remove a city from the Weather app then.
> There's little photographers (vs. say, graphic designers) can do in Photoshop that they can't do in Gimp
> Photoshop is far from simple, but both the new user experience and the overall capability vastly surpass Gimp.
I agree with the second you.
1) Capability != Experience. Gimp is capable of doing about what Photoshop can do for photographers but with a much, much worse experience.
2) Photographers aren't the only Photoshop users and Gimp's shortcomings are much more consequential for, say, Graphic Designers. Comparing Gimp's typesetting tools to Photoshop's is like comparing a screwdriver to a fully-stocked workshop. Since those features generally aren't on photographers radars, let alone in their regular workflow, I didn't include them.
Conversely, with iOS, the problem isn't just that all those techniques are undiscoverable - it's that the tricks you learn for one app will rarely work in another. Well, that, and the fact that they regularly change basic UX, too, like removing the physical home button.
OK, that's my #2 blocker. My #1 blocker is that I am no longer 15 and have things to do other than just poke about until I master a new text editor.
We have other capabilities now, nobody is forced to work on the CLI anymore - I also refuse to spend weeks to „master“ my editor
I agree with all of that, but from the vim side of things. Although these are not my main concerns with organizing a development process, I find it troublesome to set up and tune a modern IDE into a useful state either, and refuse to do that unless it’s a workplace requirement.
Typing code is literally the least bad thing slowing me down when creating software.
Typing code in vim-insert or emacs is the same as in any other editor. You press keys, they show up on the screen. Press F1 and type a command. Press a shortcut to enter files pane and select a file to edit. Press C-K C-9 to expand all user folds. Install a plugin, map some keys and now you can set and cycle through bookmarks easily.
I strongly believes the “Think about it” -> “Express it” -> “See it done” is much better the whole ballet your hand would be doing with the mouse and keyboard.
100% this. Once upon the time my attitude would have been a bratty "you just don't want to do the work to master your tools!" My response to that now is "no the fuck I do NOT, I want problem number 8131 solved yesterday so I can move on to problem number 8132 which btw requires entirely different tooling."
I was lucky enough to have first encountered LaTeX and LilyPond while still in high school.
Then there is the problem of authors using product- and version-specific jargon that I haven't mastered yet, precisely because one can usually pick up the basic operations without reading a manual - "1. From the customization agent..."
UI design takes time and thought; that's true. But why does a company with Apple's resources not bring the necessary effort to bear on it? It's not as if they can't afford it. Sure, there are time constraints, but if you're going to fold to those and trowel out shitty UI, then don't presume to publish "human interface guidelines" or other such bibles.
And it's high time to stop tolerating smug douchebags who denigrate any complaint about missing functionality and declare, "Well, you simply long-press Option-Shift-Command-Q to bring up the configuration menu."
So, I'd say, google can be wrong, the ideal case is modify your existing tools as needed to maximize discoverability and minimize friction to actual documentation
This looks suspiciously similar to lifecycle of a social media, especially how they grow new features and eventually dies when users migrate.
Maybe it's a viable strategy for a social media, mobile OS, MMORPG, anything aaS to not explain features or educate users, but to grow as users consume added mechanics, until it becomes impossible for new users to catch up and old users to keep up?
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-tap-iphaa57e7885...
I think Apple does a decent job telling people about iOS features across the User Guide, Tips.app, and the Apple Support YouTube channel.
The "undiscoverable" features in the article are all there.
Delete the last digit: If you make a mistake when you enter a number, swipe left or right on the display at the top.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/calculator-iph1ac0b5c...
Turn the onscreen keyboard into a trackpad.
1. Touch and hold the Space bar with one finger until the keyboard turns light gray.
2. Move the insertion point by dragging around the keyboard.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
To access other open tabs, you can swipe left or right on the tab bar.
A tap on the back looks like a very brief acceleration on the axis coming out of the screen. Like a reverse free-fall.
Anyone know how to go down doing this? Left, right, and up are all good, but I can’t figure out how to go down consistently. The 1.5mm below the space bar is really fiddly.
You can whip it upwards to the top of the screen which then gives you the entire screen to scroll down (precisely).
(Hint: the amount the cursor moves does not only depend on the dragged distance on the trackpad.)
Now do the same thing for the on-screen virtual trackpad.
I’m assuming you mean swiping your finger quickly across the pad to the top and then moving slowly down again, as yes, that’s working.
It worked fine for years, and now suddenly it takes five tries to invoke the "select all", "paste", or whatever menu. And moving the insertion point? Cumbersome shitshow.
The PlainText app would show cursor keys in its customer keyboard but that’s long gone from the app store so I’ll lose it at my overdue upgrade.
P.S. Restore the 3.5mm TRRS headset jack.
But the stupid excuses for removing the jack are insulting to consumers and make Apple look like assholes.
I wonder what motivates the on-going degradation of UI that was sorted properly for years. The insertion-point and keyboard failures mentioned here are examples, and then there's the (widely scorned) new notification UI on Mac. Half the time you can't even dismiss a notification because the peek-a-boo X disappears when you roll ONTO the dialog. And the "snooze," etc. options are often missing. And if you have more than one notification, they're shown as a stack and the only dismissal option is "dismiss all." There's no way to just dismiss the top one and see what the next one in the stack is.
Oh yeah, and while we're on this, how about the suddenly asinine Groups functionality in your iOS contacts? You used to go into Groups, pick the type of contacts you wanted to see, then go back to the list. For example, let's say you have a group called Doctors. You'd go in there, press Doctors, and boom you're browsing your doctors.
Now when you go into groups, you have to manually scroll through them and hunt down and un-check whatever group(s) you're currently viewing, and then select the one you want to view. Who the hell manages categories like that? It's especially stupid when you consider that you can put people into more than one group at a time.
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=You%27re%20H...
Is this true? I was under the impression that iPhones (and most modern high end devices) had dedicated hardware to monitor these sort of features, and triggers a system event in the OS (the same way you don’t need a daemon to check for a keyboard or power button).
This sounds like bullshit to anyone that knows how interrupts work.
810 -[AXPhoenixClassifier _handleAccelerometerData:withTimestamp:]
563 -[MLModel predictionFromFeatures:error:]
561 -[MLNeuralNetworkEngine predictionFromFeatures:options:error:]
542 _dispatch_lane_barrier_sync_invoke_and_complete
542 _dispatch_client_callout
541 __62-[MLNeuralNetworkEngine predictionFromFeatures:options:error:]_block_invoke
521 -[MLNeuralNetworkEngine evaluateInputs:options:error:]
519 -[MLNeuralNetworkEngine evaluateInputs:options:verifyInputs:error:]
491 _dispatch_lane_barrier_sync_invoke_and_complete
491 _dispatch_client_callout
491 __67-[MLNeuralNetworkEngine evaluateInputs:options:verifyInputs:error:]_block_invoke.195
491 -[MLNeuralNetworkEngine evaluateInputs:bufferIndex:options:error:]
363 -[MLNeuralNetworkEngine executePlan:error:]
359 espresso_plan_execute_sync
358 EspressoLight::espresso_plan::execute_sync()
351 EspressoLight::espresso_plan::dispatch_task_on_compute_batch(std::__1::shared_ptr<Espresso::abstract_batch> const&, std::__1::shared_ptr<EspressoLight::plan_task_t> const&)
296 Espresso::net::__forward(std::__1::shared_ptr<Espresso::abstract_batch> const&, int, int)
294 Espresso::net_compiler_segment_based::__forward(std::__1::shared_ptr<Espresso::abstract_batch> const&)
290 Espresso::ANERuntimeEngine::compiler::__forward_segment(std::__1::shared_ptr<Espresso::abstract_batch> const&, int, Espresso::net_compiler_segment_based::segment_t const&)
254 -[_ANEClient doEvaluateDirectWithModel:options:request:qos:error:]
247 -[_ANEProgramForEvaluation processRequest:model:qos:qIndex:modelStringID:options:error:]
221 H11ANEProgramProcessRequestDirect
214 H11ANE::H11ANEFrameReceiver::ProgramProcessRequest(H11ANE::H11ANEFrameReceiverRequest&, H11ANESharedEventsStruct*, bool)
201 H11ANE::H11ANEDevice::ANE_ProgramSendRequest(H11ANEProgramRequestArgsStruct*, unsigned int, bool, H11ANEReqCallbackDataStruct*)
200 IOConnectCallAsyncMethod
200 io_connect_async_method
199 mach_msg2_internal
199 mach_msg2_trapThis would make for a really good blog post if you can measure the impact. "Enabling back tap in iOS reduces battery life by half an hour"
I have a nit-pick with the article, because all of the listed features are features where an obvious, more intuitive interface exists, but may be clunkier.
Eg. Calculator: the way “real” IRL calculators change the number you type is with the “clear” button. IPhones support that. Personally, i didn’t know about the swipe, and I think they should add a backspace button because swiping is confusing and younger people may not understand clear either. But you don’t need to swipe to use the calculator.
Keyboard cursor: This feature was demo’ed live when it was released, and it added a more dexterous way to position the typing cursor besides just touching the text where you want (old way, still works). Touching the screen where you want to type is pretty discoverable, and has been a stable feature for a while. It matches how mice and word processors on desktops would work, and seems intuitive to just tap on screen where you want to type anyways.
Safari Tab Change: You can just go to the safari tab page, available by touching a permanent on-screen button. Also, the swipe to change tab feature mimics the operating system’s swipe to change app experience, where the URL bar is indicative of the system’s handlebar. (Also demo’ed live when the feature was launched).
The screen recording of the calculator app seems to just have "C", which I would assume deletes the whole number, not one digit. That's not the same action.
The Android calculator has a backspace button, that removes a single digit. It's clearly recognizable as a backspace, just like on any other on-screen keyboard input.
Correct. That’s how “irl” calculators work. You can retype the number easy enough, its not going to be more than a few characters long, but technically yes its a different action. To my point, you can still achieve your goal, through more discoverable means, but it may be more clunky. They should also have a regular backspace here imo.
The idea of holding a computer calculator app to exactly the limits of a historical four function calculator is skeuomorphism at some of its worst.
- seeing notifications requires swiping down specifically from the top left
- turning on the flashlight requires swiping down specifically from the top right. Swiping down from top left also gets you a flashlight button, but it is not actionable. The flashlight button on the home screen is also not actionable.
- universal search requires swiping to the left of the app pages. Swiping past the right end of the app pages also gets you a search bar, but it will only show you apps
- Seeing your open apps requires swiping up slowly from the bottom of the page.
- turning the phone off requires holding two unrelated buttons
Mobile UX generally is heavily-dependent on gestures, which inherently creates discoverability challenges, but it seems like Apple goes out of its way to hide every basic function behind a very specific swipe. It makes me wonder if they intentionally design their products to be exclusively usable by tech-savvy people.
Another possible explanation is that design requires users to develop muscle memory over time that will improve experience in the long run and makes competitors feel unnatural.
The button is actionable, it just takes a long press to avoid accidental activation.
The search discoverability nfw2 brings up is fair but has been entirely fixed in iOS 16- a prominent search button was added to the Home Screen (thankfully can be disabled if you prefer the old way)
...like no other button ever does.
This only makes it worse.
Something like a progress bar going around the button in a circle, I could give them a pass for - at least you get the indication of beginning and end, and a suggestion that letting it fill would make something happen.
But growing a button?
Amazing.
I've seen this sort of long-press safety feature a couple of times, and elsewhere it's been accompanied by a helpful message which appears if I try to short-press the button.
Why does the flashlight button need the safety feature anyway? It's not a self-destruct button, if I turn it on I can turn it off again with no ill effects. That was a rhetorical question, nobody knows why.
Apple's design approach has been totally _un_intuitive to me for at least 20 years, and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
You’d be surprised.
> and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works.
The information is out there. When you first run, when you upgrade, there are numerous prompts to show you “what’s new”. Many ‘power users’ (I really dislike that name) arrogantly dismiss these. Then there are the online guides, the offline guides (book in the books app, Tips app). If the user pays attention, there are affordances everywhere — the safari tabs example in the article being a perfect example.
> and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
This is testament to the point I’m making. Sure some of it isn’t completely obvious, but this ain't one of them, and discoverability isn’t about obviousness. If that were the case, we’d still be hunter-gatherers.
1. unlocking my phone
2. swiping down from the top
3. clicking on a small button in the bottom corner
not so much
But, personally, I’d rather a UI that’s convenient to use rather than discoverable. Discovering a feature happens once, using happens forever.
Some of the other stuff you mentioned is discoverable in my opinion. Swiping down from home gives you a search bar. Notifications being accessible by swiping down from the left is admittedly not as good as swiping down from the top bar in the older iPhones, but I think still more discoverable than the Windows notification system that requires you to click a button.
When I go through open apps, it is usually to get back to something I was doing, rather than to clear it. Finding what you were just looking at 2 seconds ago shouldn't be considered a power user feature.
I’m not sure what you mean by the flashlight not being actionable. Notification shade/Lock Screen buttons are long press actions to prevent accidental activation.
On iOS 16 there’s now a button on the launcher to invoke search in case people want to avoid swiping
You say they design their products to be used by tech savvy people but gestural design is designed to become intuitive after the first tutorial. Indeed the only people I know who struggle with it are tech savvy people who skip the on-boarding. In much the same way that people who think they’re handy disregard ikea instructions etc
Here’s a talk on the thought process behind a lot of their “fluid” design https://developer.apple.com/wwdc18/803
Many very usable actions are left to intuition and discovered as such or by on-boarding.
Pinch to zoom is a classic example.
The swipe to dismiss gesture is very usable once it’s discovered. iOS does a very good job at training people that actions from the edge of their device do things. It’s fundamental to the design of the OS and has been so since day one.
I also feel like comparing navigating an app with its own unique idiosyncrasies that you do so sporadically to navigating an OS daily are very different orders of magnitude on developing muscle memory.
Anyway I think you’re arguing very different aspect of UX design
And herein lies the problem, and it’s not exclusive to iOS. No matter how much hand holding there is, if the user doesn’t engage, then it’s a lost cause. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Discoverability is as much about trying something that you know works elsewhere as it is showing direct affordances.
Swipes, and especially swipes from behind the edge were definitely not "fundamental" in the first version of iOS. I don't even recall them being fundamental in the first iPad.
It is consistent.
It’ll probably change in a few years again. Except it won’t for some devices.
Some are saying they see a pattern of “if it has a home button you swipe up, otherwise down” but both of these iThings have a home button.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Japan, when you buy a phone in a mobile carrier shop, they set it up for you, which means any on-boarding that exists on the phone OS is skipped entirely.
If they’re skipping that for users then they’re breaking the entire flow for transferring data , setting up payment and authentication etc…
I don't endorse it however. I think pop-up menus (even the much maligned hamburger) are at least a way to make many more features discoverable. I dislike "gestures".
Was it really more discoverable to have the icon always on screen but embedded among so many other useless icons?
Not really, swiping from anywhere on the top (except top-right) works. This is consistent with the other gestures: swipe up from the lock screen to unlock it (just like you would open a roller shutter); swipe down to lock it again -- and see the notifications. You can also simply hit the side button.
> - turning on the flashlight requires swiping down specifically from the top right
You can turn it on from the lock screen, as others have pointed out.
> - turning the phone off requires holding two unrelated buttons
Yes, so that you don’t turn it off by mistake. Smartphones are not devices you turn on and off; outside of OS updates they stay on forever.
> It makes me wonder if they intentionally design their products to be exclusively usable by tech-savvy people.
I would say the opposite. When I think of tech-savy people, I think about mouse and keyboard; when I think of non-tech-savy ones, I think about tactile displays and gestures (and voice).
My 92-yo grandfather barely knows how to make his printer work but has no trouble remembering the most common swipe gestures: it’s hard to forget about pinch to zoom or swipe down to 'close' the phone and swipe up to 'open' it again.
I kinda secretly judge UX people that enjoy iOS. And somehow almost all of them are Mac/iPhone users. I think that is a bit responsible for the uptick in form over function lately.
I agree, the share sheet is just too confusing. Favorites management, my password manager, air drop, texting, find on page, and the kitchen sink are all in there and are quite undiscoverable if you don’t know to look for them.
To add some confusion on top of that, some features and extensions go in the similarly un-discoverable “aA” button in the URL bar, so it’s not even like everything goes in the share sheet. That button is really tough to remember even exists since it goes away when you scroll.
in Safari, things constantly switch between the Share icon, and the "Aa" menu in the URL bar!
The Shortcuts App is the way to access some deep and very unobvious functionality.
For example, in SFSafariViewController there is no “add to home screen” button, but in actual safari there is. Despite them both being web view experiences controlled entirely by Apple.
(And you can’t detect SFSafariViewController vs Safari as a web app, so good luck onboarding users for your PWA.)
Photos have an option to mark photos as hidden, so they won't show up in random places.
Its meant to be for more sensitive photos.
If you want to mark a picture as hidden, yep, its under the share icon.
Not to say this is good or bad, just an observation mostly.
Anyway I'm ride or die for the three dots and am pretty worried they'll kill off the option to bring them back.
Plus, lets not be pathetic with wasting life on phone, real life happens outside screens. Its good to keep reminding oneself this little truth regardless how shiny new gimmicks manufacturers bring to keep us glued to their products and ad-based services.
The iPhone innovated finger-touch-based on-screen keyboards while everyone else was still typing with a stylus on a tiny keyboard, but since then, they seem to stagnate. iOS 16 just got haptic feedback on its keyboard in 2022(!), and I am still making more typing errors compared to Android with Gboard.
What multi-finger text editing gestures am I missing out on?
Undo the last edit: Swipe left with three fingers, then tap Undo at the top of the screen.
Redo the last edit: Swipe right with three fingers, then tap Redo at the top of the screen.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
Wow thanks for letting me know. I finally have haptics again after switching to an iPhone 6 years ago.
I totally agree with iOS having a worse typing experience. On Android with Gboard I could swipe/type extremely quickly with few errors. On iOS I make a mistake every few works, and the swipe accuracy is significantly worse.
I know that there is Gboard with iOS, but I've had a lot of trouble with custom keyboards on iOS, so I've given up.
Digressing: An AI noticing that someone has moved the cursor several time without ever typing anything could pop up a "Want me to show you other ways to move the cursor?" dialog, and teach the 'hard to discover' technique. I await the day ...
It would be a really weird place for a backspace button and you would always tap on it by mistake.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
(The calculator backspace seems to be an exception, which is why I also dislike it.)
Now they also search a bunch of other apps and I think Siri does something with your searches, possible even looking for web results. All I really want is for the app results to show up first and not have them bogged down by all the other stuff being searched
Edit: Seems I'm not the only one.[0][1] Also what I was talking about was called "Spotlight search" now its in "Siri & Search". Doesn't seem like there's a real solution
[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7887520
[1] https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1483913
Although it’s true what they say in your [1] link with the speed.
Like I just swipe to that screen which is my second screen and enter the first letter and it’s done. Same amount of swipes just right instead of down!
Doesn’t help if you have pages of apps and have to swipe five or six times to get to the App Library but I hide them all in two folders, one for Apple apps and one for installed apps so searching is key. (this was before the option to add to App Library only, indeed before App Library existed I’d basically created my own!)
There’s another hidden feature: swiping on the row of dots near the bottom of the screen lets you scroll through the pages at speed.
Om iOS 16, you have to turn off the search field on the home page, since it replaces the dots. Fortunately, you can still swipe down to reveal the old search field.
This is a great example of how discovery works. Before replying, I just tried swiping and it worked.
Edit: normal swiping between screens switches the search field to dots. This got me to thinking, how much of this is a discovery problem (which I’m increasingly finding harder to believe) to one of users not paying attention.
Edit: The feedback is unimportant if all you want is to swipe to one end, if course; which is what prompted this subthread.
Every single one of those esoteric morsels of forbidden knowledge is in the Tips app, which I read from top to bottom when it was first released.
Here are the instructions on how to delete a number in the calculator, the first arcane incantation the author discovered through his or her intense study of the dark arts: https://imgur.com/a/3BgTg1K
Something which I've known for years, because I RTFM.
I'm willing to bet, but not bothered enough to check, that every single "TOP TEN FEATURES APPLE IS HIDING FROM YOU" is thoroughly documented, with full-color illustrations where warranted, in Tips.app.
It has been a long time but I believe that Tips.app comes preinstalled and there are some nag-notifications for you to read it.
I am sure many people smarter than I instantly deleted Tips.app the second they set up their phone to which I can only say "Careful, Icarus".
And yeah, I read the manuals that come with my all of my products, usually while on the toilet. Who doesn't want to know the amperage a NES Mini draws from its AC adapter?
I grew up in the technology era where if you didn't read the manual you were screwed, and my Apple IIgs Toolbox book, which I read from cover to cover to learn how to program my IIgs is still on my shelf surrounded by hundreds of other reference books.
Tips.app is just the 2022 Apple IIgs Toolbox and I'm not haughty enough to look down on it.
I like this feature, but what annoys me is that unlike the regular use of Back, you can’t Forward to undo the Back in that situation, even in the common case that the original tab is at the top of the history (i.e. has no current Forward target of its own).
If you've enabled Shake To Undo in Settings>Accessibility>Touch, then you can undo/reopen the closed tab.
Another thing that annoys me is when you open a new tab via Look Up > Search Web (which in a sense is quite similar to opening a link in a new tab), then that new tab cannot be closed by Back.
I wish Apple would spend a year or two in streamlining all that stuff.
Worse yet, the gestures ... I searched in vain for a decent printable sheet of the commonly used gestures, only to make my own set of diagrams for an iPad I tried to get my mother to use, leaving her with a set of laminated sheets: the green one detailing the parts of the iPad, the red sheet showing the different screens and how to get there, and finally a blue one with the gestures.
I think iOS really needs a "Tutorial mode" app bundled with it. This of course requires that someone resist the temptation to interject with all of the bundled apps that Apple wants you to know about but aren't needed to do the basics. No Focus, no Stocks, no Apple TV ... just show me how to get around in some Settings, practice locking and unlocking a screen, drills for all of the basic gestures.
Another commenter on this thread writes that there is an on-boarding process that was introduced with the iPhone X: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966383
Then again, perhaps they don’t need to be universally intuitive / discoverable; i.e.: the users who need these features may instinctively search for them and eventually discover them.
Anecdotally, I’ve been able to discover three out of four actions mentioned in the article (the fourth one was about the calculator app, which I don’t use that often).
The users who don’t need these features don’t have to know about them, don’t have to click through tutorials, or be pestered by hints.
Welcome to the new iCalculator!
To simplify your experience, the only operator button is "+", which now takes half of the screen, and is therefore easy to find and press, adding to the pleasure of using the calculator.
You might ask, where's the "-" button? Was it stupid to remove it? No, it's brave! Don't be so negative about it; our UX studies show that "+" is statistically the most used button, and so your needs don't matter.
If you need to subtract, swipe "+" button down; to multiply, swipe "+" right, and to divide, swipe "+" down. Swipe "+" up to raise to an exponent.
To quickly square numbers, hold "+", then perform a square gesture clockwise aronud the button. To take a square root, perform it in reverse.
You may notice that we have removed the digit buttons as well. That's because you don't need to type the numbers in - just say them out loud! Swipe the screen diagonally from the bottom left corner to the top right one to activate voice input.
Note: digit buttons can still be enabled from the accessibility options in the system dialog.
Note 2: voice recognition of operators is coming in a future upgrade.
To clear your input, you can simply restart the app, no buttons needed.
Note 3: you can enable a haptic shortcut in system acessibility settings: "Clear input by shaking phone".
Finally, you can read this instruction manual by telepathically tuning into the lead engineer's mind, as it's not available anywhere else.
Enjoy your intuitive iExperience!
Yes, we could add all kinds of buttons....
...and get one of the best paid calculator apps in the app store, as discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32902520
Apple's solution is not "middle ground". It is Clippy: something that dumbs thing down to such an extent that they become harder to use.
I wonder if anyone knows when this gesture was introduced. Has it been there since the beginning? I've had an iPhone since the day they came out, have watched most iPhone announcements and WWDC keynotes, and I had no idea about this gesture. I wonder how many Apple Geniuses are aware of it.
PCalc has a backspace button, along with a bunch of other buttons making it more complicated than the iPhone calculator. It makes sense that Apple kept it simple with just a C/AC button.
Given how Apple's Calculator works on the Mac, with the delete key erasing digits one at a time, it would be sensible for them to offer this key on iOS.
If they offered no delete functionality, that would be insisting that no one needs it. They don't do this — they offer the functionality behind a gesture that is nearly impossible to discover.
Yeah, who'd need a delete button on calculator?
Simpler is better! Long press the "+" button to access advanced features, like "*".
I discovered the “space bar allows you to move the cursor around” hack through a friggin’ TikTok video only a few weeks ago. My mind was blown; never did I realize I needed a feature this much, I always thought it was just my fat thumbs that were the problem.
My wife was equally blown away.
Some may consider me an idiot for not discovering this earlier or googling this, but seriously, I just never realized there could be a better way and was always blaming my fat thumbs. I just thought other people never had this problem.
The discoverability of this feature sucks.
We could call the presented paradigm needs-based discovery.
It inherently means that some people won’t be aware of solutions that benefit others – that is, until their need or exposure evolves. And that is okay. More than okay, it’s great. To return to the basics… people don’t like being inundated with features they don’t want and they do like discovering solutions to problems.
This is excellent design.
Could those features be better presented? Always.
The iPhone interface has an incredible array of constraints: it needs to serve literally every type of person on the planet. That’s beautiful. I have huge respect for designers capable of connecting with such diverse stakeholders. It is masterful design in the most pure sense.
I was baffled by how unintuitive it has become. So many "secret codes" you need to know these days to use an iPhone. Swiping down from the top on the left or the right bring you different dashboards? Swiping up from the bottom and hold to switch between tasks? How is anyone supposed to guess guess this stuff?
The problem lies in the following cases:
1) Person accidentally does something
2) Edge case / state / scenario, which cannot be solved without knowing some shortcuts.
I think iOS became too complicated for some people. At the same time the UI is a pretty messy and inconsistent at times.
You end up in a mode where typing no longer adds characters, but replaces them. If you're at the end of the document, it would still add characers, but you stay in override mode. Meaning that once you're in this mode, it doesn't strike until you start editing or try to fix a typo, when the computer. WordPad doesn't even have any visual distinction.
Visual Studio Code's solution to this is nice. If you enter `Tab Moves Focus` mode, with <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>M</kbd>, the info bar shows the text `Tab Moves Focus` in a (tastefully) highlighted button, clicking which disables that mode. So you will have a moment of confusion upon pressing tab, inadvertently entering the mode, however the situation of 2) is avoided as a helping hand is visible.
Perhaps another UI is to have a log of activated keyboard shortcuts always visible, with 'new' shortcuts highlighted more obviously (perhaps with some estimation of decaying familiarity). I'm not familiar with this being implemented anywhere, but I think it at least merits consideration.
[0] This is activated with <kbd>Insert</kbd>; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_key [1] In the version of Word I currently have installed, this behaviour seems to be disabled/removed. However, Wordpad still changes into override mode upon pressing Insert.
Another issue is inconsistent placement. For example during iPhone setup, sometimes you have Continue buttons centered in the bottom half of the screen, and sometimes you have to tap the small “Next” label at the top right of the screen. I’ve had family members get stuck in that process because the Next button was so inconspicuous and so far removed from the main elements of the current dialog that it was completely unclear to them how to move forward.
These are generally referred to as accelerators, and are by design harder to discover as they are targeted at expert users. You trade learnability for convenience and efficiency (also less clutter, which should not be underestimated).
Good article on this: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ui-accelerators/
Just to clarify, there are indeed also some places in iOS where it’s maybe less ideal, but my point is that there is a place for undiscoverable features.
A couple of my friends who don't work in tech. are sort-of hobbyist iOS fanboys, and they always get a kick out of it when they show me some feature or gesture that I wasn't familiar with.
I think it’s extremely problematic when these are core UI actions instead of shortcuts. Manipulating long form text is quite annoying without the space-bar trick for example. Hard to see how you’d make that discoverable though. (An interesting UX thought experiment!)
I knew the other gestures, which are nice conveniences. The lack of clear controls in the calculator is a good example of poor discoverability. The other examples are actions which all have more obvious alternatives, either visible in the UI (tab switching of various sorts) or more directly interacting (caret placement). I think it’s fine that those are less discoverable because you don’t actually need to know they exist unless you want to, and they become obvious when you find them.
With, uh, one big exception: the new tab/back button thing is an excellent idea, and I even remember it being announced as a major new Safari feature (on macOS! It might’ve even still been called OS X it’s been around so long). But it’s horribly buggy, leaving phantom tabs and history behind at every turn, and has been the same since it shipped. I think I have a mental model of how it works and its failure modes, but just imagining the explanation is exhausting.
(It's perhaps slightly less intuitive that you can also swipe the bar UP to access the tab switcher interface)
iPhones prior to the iPhone 11 used to be able to sense the pressure you touched with on the display, and a firm touch had a ton of neat but hard to discover user interactions, from previewing links in safari without opening them to preventing accidentally hitting the flashlight on the lockscreen on X/XS by requiring a bit of pressure.
One of the best (imo) features was the ability to move the cursor in any direction by dragging firmly anywhere on the keyboard. No delay, no press and hold, just instant access to a cursor. The new "haptic touch" way of doing this makes it difficult if not impossible to scroll down, and needing to press and hold ensures it will always be slower.
20 second video demo of how it used to work: https://youtu.be/XlcCgiYF2Fs?t=25
Must be tons of fun to use with Swipe-type input (aka Flow, etc)
"Siri, delete all of my alarms" is the only way to do this with a single action, since UI only always deleting one by one.
1) iPad for Dummies (they need to get rid of that name)
2) a bunch of random publishers selling magazine-style paperbacks like "iPad OS Guide for 2022". You can find these on mag-sharing websites, as they're low-volume and usually only available at checkout counters at grocery stores, or airport shops.
You don’t have to navigate text with the spacebar, you can touch the text directly and touch and hold.
You don’t have to delete numbers in the calculator, you can hit C to clear the current number and retype it (a lot of people think that doing this will totally clear your operation, which isn’t true: C is different than AC).
You can hit the tabs button in Safari to switch between tabs, swiping the address bar is a shortcut.
I would also argue that the safari address bar swipe is very discoverable. You can see the next tab’s address bar on the side of the interface, so it’s implied you can scroll to it.
Basically, an analogy to this argument is that the author of this article should be telling us that keyboard shortcuts should be banished because they’re not discoverable.
Also, I don’t think discoverability is the same on touch screens as in desktop operating systems. Nobody complains about the discoverability of pinch to zoom or tap and hold because it’s so obvious and intuitive. On the desktop, drag and drop is a similar feature that could be seen to be not so discoverable.
I don't think Android is necessarily better though - I simply have more experience with it.
Maybe power users are a part of those communities because they can't figure out how to use your product in the first place?
I collect these: https://nitter.net/umanghome/status/1283074787175092224#m (Click Earlier replies to see all tweets, and then scroll down).
The actions in this article are _shortcuts_. Like a single swipe to switch tabs. It's hard to make it more discoverable (there's a tiny hint on the hide, but that's it). At this point, there's two options:
- Overload the UI showing the possible action. Results in overloaded UIs and worse UX.
- Leave it as-is and just mention it online or in "did you know" pages.
The second option usually makes sense the most. I see a big online trend of "let's remove right click options because they're hard to discover", and I think it's ridiculous. Actions hidden behind right click should be visible elsewhere (e.g.: the options on a file manager are all in the menu bar too), but right click is a fast and convenient *shortcut*.
>Ah yes, the three finger force press double tap right swipe, of course.
What bothers me about these is how non technical people who don't search will never find them. On the other hand, it might be good to have things hidden so someone non technical can't get their phone into a bad state.
Do UI designers think that everybody would be good at their job?
They have C and CE (or AC) buttons to either clear the last entry or everything, similar to the app. You could very well reason they are sticking to convention.
Also in most basic use of a calculator it's quite fine to input the last number again, it's probably often even more convenient than backspace.
This makes the backspace swipe feature an extra, non-essential feature, and it's probably ok to not be discovered organically. Most UI is full of hard to organically discover accelerators aimed at expert users. They are intentionally not visible, to keep the basics simple for novice users.
The right question is; can people use the calculator app without knowing about this feature? The answer is yes, as many people do without any problem.
Again, you could have a discussion if there should be a visible backspace button, but accelerators are an important part of any well designed UI. To answer your question: They don't think it will be discovered organically, it's by design.
If a user taps a link that is set to open in a new window/tab, while the bottom/top (depending on user config) URL bar does animate to show the transition, the user may still expect to be able to navigate back to where they came from (especially in such a case where they haven't deliberately made the decision to open in a new tab).
I'd argue it would be worse UX for the back swipe to not navigate to the previous page in such circumstances than that it does but closes the tab (which is reasonably signalled by the URL bar animation).
Another feature that isn't well known is swiping between recent apps by swiping horizontally along the bottom of the screen. I didn't know about that feature until somebody posted about it on HN a while back.
The best one is the kinetic (inertial) scrubbing they brought to videos on iOS 16. For example, open a YT video from Safari (don’t open on the YouTube app), go full screen and the flick to scroll backwards and forwards! I bet we’ll all consume more data as a result of this UI addition. I certainly use the YT mobile web version as a result.
It's probably different now, I ditched the Apple boat long ago.
Preferably software instead of human so it’d be slightly less embarrassing.
I’m afraid there’s a shortcut to something that would save me X minutes per day but that I’ll never even know to ask.
Do people try to do this? I've never considered not using the IKEA instructions.
For your average user many of these features will remain hidden and I suspect that’s partially by design. They want such users to have a simple experience.
Interestingly: It was a senior citizen in a local shop who pointed that to me when I needed to scan some documents for him.
An app or website we only use once a week or once a month needs to be more obvious and discoverable than the iPhone we pick up 100 times per day.
you can actually tap and drag the scrollbar! You need to find the correct time for it to appear, and you need to tap it just right - not too much on the top or on the bottom. And then you can very quickly go up or down, without stupid scrolling like idiot.
Very useful if you want to scroll more quickly. Scroll like it’s 1998!
“Intuitive and easy” > “unintuitive and easy” > “intuitive and hard” > “unintuitive and hard” > “non-existent”
Click on options in the built-in one, there is a "show mouse pointer" check you can click. Here is how it looks[0].
0. https://static1.makeuseofimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...
Talk about action discoverability.