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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

It took me a few seconds to parse the calendar view, but my first guess about where to tap was correct. And I expected the month and year rollers to move separately, which the article says is counterintuitive. But I don't own any devices that run Safari, so maybe it's inconsistent with the usual expectations of the interface?

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They're getting tons of customer service calls though. Objective data always beats subjective, and the objective data here is that a bunch of customers are confused and unable to use the website.

I have no doubt that 9/10s of people reading HN would be able to figure this out if not more. But what is the figure like out in the normal/non-IT world? I miss when Microsoft had their accessibility research lab that tested stuff like this scientifically and released tons of great papers. We need more of that, I'd love for Apple to invest in stuff like that.

> They're getting tons of customer service calls though. Objective data always beats subjective, and the objective data here is that a bunch of customers are confused and unable to use the website.

The problem is whether they're getting calls because the UI is objectively worse, or because there's an upstream selection issue: there are comments on the gist showing the UIs on other browsers are not fundamentally different, the biggest difference is that Firefox desktop makes it much clearer that the month/year is an active control, and the three desktop variants clearly allow textual input.

They also indicate that their population is:

> As such, most of our customers are in their 60s or older.

So sounds to me the issue is not that Safari is worse than the rest (although it's no better either), but elderly generally get (or get offered) iPads for pretty obvious reasons, and so there's a huge selection bias.

I guessed correctly as well due to the blue arrow next to the date indicating further interaction was possible. I have decades of computer use experience though. I'm not sure if it's intuitive for every demographic or what an appropriate interface would be for our elders.

Another anti-pattern this UI and most modern UI has is a dramatic reduction in the number of visual cues that identify interactivity. This is a system widget, and blue indicates interactivity... but that's almost it. The shape is often used for other purposes, such as for a breadcrumb, and actually the positioning makes it look more like a breadcrumb. Furthermore, it's going to be used from a website, and thus you can't rely on the fact that the rest of the site's colors will be consistent with this particular shade of blue on an icon indicating interactivity.

It's all rather minimalist - and if a user catches it, that's fine, but if they don't, there aren't any fallbacks or additional hints as to what to do. Additionally, the icon seems fairly small from the screenshot - though on an actual device that may not be an issue. It may be too small to function as a good UX element.

Look at the UI: The grey bar connects the month and year, making it seem visually as if they would move together.

It's a really terrible UI - why would the month and year both pop up at the same time? They should come up independently.

I disagree about them needing to be separate. Once you have that panel open (and knowing how to open it is the problem), you see the two high level selectors that you need. If you only need one, then the other is harmless and will not confuse you; you will just not touch it.

Of course it's better to have them moving separately, otherwise somebody would move 12*n times the month to move n times the year, before discovering that the year also moves, if they'll ever discover it. However a better solution would be to show only the month and only the year in two separate screens. No surprises, no chances of using the UI inefficiently.

And for 12 months, you can show all of them together on the screen. Same for the years, you can show more than one at the same time and scroll many of them together.

Absolutely they should _move_ separately, but they can both be visible at the same time.

I'm not suggesting that they are stuck together; that would be pointless.

I think you're talking about slightly different things.

The issue (which I agree with) is that the month and date "share" a continuous grey background which makes them seem connected.

They can be visible at the same time, but it would make sense to me to separate the backgrounds as to indicate that they can be scrolled separately before touching them.

Ok, I see. Yes I do agree that having some visual indication of independence of month from year would be better than none.

Although in this case since the only thing you can do is try to touch and move something, it only takes one "not sure what this does-touch" action to discover that they are independent; and then you know how to operate it. Not ideal, but low on the pain scale.

Popping them up at the same time is really good for "pipelining". I know that the year picker is next and I know where it is while I am entering the month.

If you hide it on a different screen I need to react to it when it appears.

Not to mention that you now need a "Next" button and a "Back" button in case I made a mistake (or just want to double-check what I inputted)

> Look at the UI: The grey bar connects the month and year, making it seem visually as if they would move together.

It does not, that interpretation does not make any sense.

Although I do agree that the old skeymorphic iteration of the control which made it clear those are wheels and the bar is an index was infinitely clearer: https://www.andyibanez.com/img/date_picker_pre_7.png

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