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Comment by Ruq | Hacker News Reader

Related: Too much of technology today doesn't pay attention or even care to the less technologically adept, either.

Smartphones in my opinion are a major example of this. I can't tell you the number of people I've meet who barely even or don't even know how to use their devices. It's all black magic to them.

The largest problem is the over-dependence on the use of "Gesture Navigation" which is invisible and thus non-existent to them. Sure, they might figure out the gesture bar on an iPhone, but they have no conception of the notification/control center.

It's not that these people are dumb either, many of them could probably run circles around me in other fields, but when it comes to tech, it's not for a lack of trying, it's a lack of an intuitive interface.

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It doesn’t help when you get a new iphone it doesn’t ship with its documentation. You have to get to the actual documentation page on apples site, and then dig a little to get to a page that looks like this (1) that merely outlines a few possible gestures. Not which ones to use when beyond a one sentence example. And this is just for the OS. What apps ship with documentation that outlines how these gesture functions are used in their app?

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/learn-basic-gestures-...

Despite being a young person in tech, I find myself totally at a loss when presented with an iPhone. I gave one a try a few weeks ago (went with a Galaxy instead) and my fiancée had to walk me through in baby steps.

Android apps tend to be decent about giving a little tutorial when they open, highlighting buttons with little blurbs explaining their use. Is this a trend with iOS?

I don't know, I've seen mature people who couldn't operate a cassette deck and likely would have trouble with a typewriter. These people definitely grew up around these devices.

I don't think (modern) technology is at fault here.

It appears to me, as an outsider, that interfaces are designed with a "one size fits all" approach, at least at the prestige end of town. Instead of allowing the user to choose design and interaction that works for them, the designer (or product owner) acts as if they know what's best for all users.

What would the alternative look like? Applications shipping as a bag of arrangeable buttons and widgets that the user assembles into pages?

Or the user picks from a set of assembled by someone else

The smartphone world is too crooked to have an alternative IMO. Just keep eating everything the vendor gives you on the top of shovel.

Actually, I find this highly ideal. I wish there was a button to press which would switch the interface into an almost Visual BASIC GUI editor like thing, permitting me to edit the arrangements. Also, I would like it if such an OS was more strict on forcing its interface objects (think: SimCity 2000 for Win95 with GDI-integrated GUI good, SimCity 3000 with Fisher-Price full screen toy interface bad). Also throw out much of the post- Windows 2000/KDE 3.5 desktop user interface 'innovation' but make all things editable in layout. I WANT MY COMPLICATED BUTTON GRIDS! :^(

Siemens PLM NX 10 is another example of what I like in an interface. The GIMP big time as well for its customizability. You know what I don't like? Gnome. I curse Gnome 3 (namely, the design cancer Gnome fell to early on) for why KDE has yet to recover to the comfiness of KDE 3.5. Apple is another hate.

I want a computational environment, I am a cyborg! I build my environments to my specifications. I am a privacy and control absolutist with these devices, because they are cybernetic extensions of my mind. SV: Stop being over-opinionated pricks trying to monetize every last drop of attention for every bottom-pocket penny in microtransactions. What we develop here is far and beyond more spiritual than we can all imagine. The utter lack of owner/user sovereignty shown lately, basically since iPhone and Facebook, captured in the term Enshittification, is absolutely appalling.

Anyway, thank you for reading my unspellchecked schizo-ramblings. Now carry on with the great monetization, metatron hungers!

I think this tends to sound like a better idea than it is. It's good for power users who want to optimise their UI to suit, but regular users aren't going to do that.

Gesture navigation's lack of discoverability is a problem for sure, although I'm not sure how to best address it (people aren't likely to sit through tutorials...)

You have to do tutorials. Actually, why isn't there a UI tutorial app which is basically just practice for all the different BS ways UI writers invent to do the same things? It should come pre-installed. Like a DuoLingo for user interfaces! Heck, make sure it covers as many common interface paradigms as possible!

Congratulations, you just invented OpenDoc.

I think themes might be closer to what I'm imagining. For example, material versus skeumorphic. But as the OC was talking about interactions, I'd be interested in seeing a scale of assistance or explicitness. For example, at the "I've never used computers before" end of town, there should be lots of inline annotations about what buttons do, lots of dropdown lists, etc. At the "power user" end of the scale there would be keyboard shortcuts, icons, tooltips etc.

> The largest problem is the over-dependence on the use of "Gesture Navigation" which is invisible and thus non-existent to them.

This is uniquely an iPhone problem, not a smartphone problem. It’s been one of my biggest gripes after switching from android. Where the heck is my back button? Home button? Any buttons? I really despise Apple’s obsession with minimalism and will be switching back to android when this phone dies.

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