Hacker News Reader

Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it; maybe it's broken in my browser. I can drag 4 types of items to a floating grid that connects them but then nothing happens.

EDIT: Ah, you drag items on top of each other for them to change. Instructions unclear, and I am dumb.

View on HN

> Instructions unclear, and I am dumb.

You're not dumb -- it's not only unclear, but the interface actively suggests the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

One of the best lessons I ever learned was from Don Norman's famous book, The Design of Everyday Things. Which basically teaches you that the user is almost never dumb, but rather human. And that the responsibility of understanding how to interact with an object, or program, always lies with the creator of that object or program. The designer. It's their job to design something so that it teaches you how to use it. (His most quoted example involves how a plate on a door invites you to push it, while a handle invites you to pull -- and this way you'll never try to pull a door that needs to be pushed open, or vice-versa.)

In this case, the interface invites you to drag things among the various pre-existing points, to continue the "constellation". It does nothing whatsoever to suggest that it would make any sense to drag the labels on top of each other. Indeed, previous experience suggests that this would simply lead to overlapping and obscured labels, so we actively avoid it. And the lines that get drawn between nearby points and labels goes even further to suggest that this is a game or experience about connecting things in a graph-like way -- which, once again, overlapping does not fit into conceptually.

I would never have thought to drag things on top of each other if I hadn't come here to the comments.

The lines are misdirection and need to be removed.

What's with all the lines to the little moving dots? Haven't figured out what those do yet.

Nothing. They're completely confusing. At first, I thought maybe the little specs is where the combination happened, so as they passed between a set, they would automatically get crafted based on that set, in a neat chaotic way. Nope. Then I thought maybe I had to set up the "recipes" and wait, or click things, or I don't know.

I didn't realize it's just a basic drag drop combination thing until I saw the video, after coming here to see if anyone else was having trouble with Safari.

I wonder if that's how it worked originally but was dialed back because you'd have n^2 queries per UI interaction

Thank you to know how to spell correct you are my best speller that I seen. Me to I do not know what is that I was mad for a second but once I have seen this I cooled down a bit. Thank you!

You are not dumb at all, I think it's not terribly clear indeed.

Thank you! Yes the instructions were missing, and it's hard not to assume that Firefox isn't supported. I was having the same (bad) experience as you.

Yep, at first i tried to make geometric arrangements out of multiple items too.

Water surrounded by 5 fire in a circle - ish - did absolutely nothing.

Only by checking the HN comments i figured out you have to combine items.

haha... the lines and dots never bothered me actually... i was scrolling throught this saw the thing about the lines and had to open the tab back up to see the lines... i never noticed they were there

Sorry but your first letter of your sencetce is wrong because the first letter is has to be big.

Not dumb at all. It's bad UI.

I didn't have a problem understanding it, but then again, I've played these Alchemy games before. It was one of the first games I ever played on my first Android back in 2010.

Yeah this is what I thought of and I fell back on my old Alchemy habits trying to get to Life to create man and all the other stuff. maybe I'm forgetting or it's different with this game but I haven't gotten there yet, but I've gotten several greek gods and a cyborg, so that's sort of life.

Just makes me want to play Alchemy, though. Even Doodle God doesn't scratch the itch Alchemy did in 2011. I found it on StumbleUpon. Oh those were the days. I wonder if I still have the APK on my SkyDrive...

As usual, an actual game that was made by an actual creative with some intent and thought and FUN behind it is more memorable for the average person than miles and miles and miles of procedural (in this case, AI) generated garbage.

You can just click / tap on 2 items consecutively, without drag and drop.

I don't understand what you mean. Clicking does absolutely nothing for me. Clicking items in the right column does nothing; clicking items I've already placed does nothing. Clicking items consecutively does nothing, in either part of the screen.

I don't see how to use this at all without drag and drop.

On mobile you click, on desktop you drag and drop.

On mobile it's just tapping, no drag and drop required.

Yes, it'd be better if you could just tap two items, and they filled the useless central pane instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com