Don Norman: 'Apple has fallen prey to the most disastrous part of design ' | Hacker News Reader

Don Norman: 'Apple has fallen prey to the most disastrous part of design '

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It appears that I might be the only person who thinks this is nuts, but it truly drives me insane, and I believe it started around the iPhone 7:

The power button on the direct opposite side of the volume up button!!??

This looks nice in photos and schematics, but makes it annoyingly difficult to press one button without pressing the other. It makes it a two hand operation.

That was when I realized that Apple might be focusing on the wrong things.

It drives me batty to a weird level. I feel like the protagonist in the Papyrus SNL skit.

I assume you have a non-Pro iPhone.

On the Pro models the screen is always on and so to unlock you would simply swipe up from the bottom. No button presses.

We are likely to see this LTPO displays trickle down likely from the next version.

I've had nearly all of them, Plus, Pro, and non-Pro. It doesn't change the fact that if I want to turn the volume up, I am just as likely to lock the phone.

I know what you did!!!

holding a pro one handed, with my right hand, index finger on volume up and down, and my thumb is significantly higher than the power button. its actually uncomfortable to hold my index on volume and thumb on power at the same time. if i shift my hand for my thumb to be on the power button, my index finger is well below volume down.

(continuing with the Papyrus sketch supposedly "insane" person mentality)

I'm sorry, I am but a simple man with an opposing thumb.

The term "opposing" is supposed to mean something, isn't it? What is it opposing, exactly?

> It looked good on the rendering.

My index finger! My thumb opposes my index finger! You have forsaken millions of years of human evolution, for a rendering???

I knoowwww what you diiiid!!!

Yes, I agree, and it’s also bothered me since they moved the power button to the side. I assume it was one of those things Steve Jobs fought against and they moved it as soon as he was gone because it looks cleaner, however there’s also an argument that as the screens got taller, it became harder to reach it.

You can’t get used to it by holding the opposite side of the phone off center, but it’s still too easy to accidentally press the wrong button.

The always on display has kind of mitigated the not knowing which way is up problem (though I disabled it because of battery life and I kept thinking I had a notification!) but I still have a small sticker on my iPad to tell me where the power on/finger print button is and I still curse the thing every time I accidentally turn it off when changing positions whilst drawing.

The new phone control on the new iPhone is irritating as hell as well my partner constantly switching to camera mode when picking up his phone. I use a pop socket on my phone which grips either side of the phone and slides down which covers that feature thankfully as it can't be disabled in settings yet (usual for apple) and the new Apple watch software I can't get used to the new controls but it also keeps opening up or scrolling to the widgets for some reason so I can't always just glance at the time anymore!

Have definitely noticed a drop in usability in Apple products over the last few years.

Yes, I am constantly cursing at my iPhone because of these design decisions. Does it really hurt to have a home button on the front? Especially when there is now a proliferation of buttons on the sides?

Hurt? Maybe their sales. I wouldn’t buy any model of iPhone that reinstated the home button at the bottom since screen real estate is more valuable.

These sorts of differences are why there should be different models for different tastes. I miss the front buttons a ton, and would happily give up some screen space to get them back.

I agree. On the other hand Apple has done different models to some degree and since they didn’t keep e.g. the Mini models, they don’t seem to be happy with the sales of all of them. Right now they still have a model with the home button though, the latest iPhone SE. Not sure for how much longer, but it’s still there, currently has an A15 which still holds up very very well, and sees infrequent model-line updates.

> Apple believes that words are ugly, they try not to use them

They are a global company.

Trying to build a UI that is coherent across diverse languages like English, Japanese, Cyrillic is incredibly complex.

And then you still need to factor in the 14% of the world who can't read.

Given the success of smartphones it does seem like these concerns aren't concerning the market.

The number one technical issue I handle for elderly relatives is explaining what the application icons mean and what they do. Most tech people have internalized the hamburger menu icon. It's completely meaningless to first time users.

I’m sorry but if you have elderly relatives who are first time mobile users then they are the problem.

I am perfectly patient explaining what a floppy icon means to a child who is new to the device and never has even seen a floppy disk before

In 2024 I no longer have any patience for a senior citizen who has been proudly ignorant of anything “techie” for the past two decades of their life and now is hopelessly lost in the modern era.

These boomers were handed unprecedented prosperity though their entire adult lives and decided learning new things in the 90s and 2000s was beneath them. Why should they have to relearn anything? They got that far without a computer.

I have boomer parents and am well aware of their generational ignorance.

> And then you still need to factor in the 14% of the world who can't read.

if you're in a country where you can't read, chances are you're not making enough money to have realistic chances to buy iphones.

generic android low-end stuff? sure. but it's like Lexus worrying if people in shantytowns can figure out how to use their touchscreen dash -- not a demographic they serve.

The door question should interest anyone who maintains housing: how can a closed door, to be opened either with lever or knob, signal whether it should be pushed or pulled?

Convention over configuration.

A stylized graphic of a swinging door could be displayed to make it multi-lingual, but to do it just with design language sounds challenging. I'd love to know if there are any solutions to that.

If I had to handle that, I'd put an up arrow for push and a down arrow for pull. I don't know if that works across cultures or not.

Anything that's opened by pushing shouldn't have a handle to grab onto. Anything you pull should. Sort of like this:

https://www.amazon.com/IRONWALLS-Commercial-Bar-Panic-Exit-D...

I once watched a person give up on trying to go into a room which had a poorly configured door handle.

The "Norman door" concept made me feel much better about myself as I had always assumed that I was the stupid one, not the designer. I appreciate having the company.

Most comments so far are complaints about things not working how they “should” - be careful of getting rage baited, people.

What you’ve read is nothing more than a grab bag of rage-bait comments from a psychology expert promoting his latest book. And he put in enough breadth for each individual to find something to latch on to.

Color me impressed, dude is a master of psychology.

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