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Comment by boneitis | Hacker News Reader

I don't have much experience with non-tactile driving HUDs, but what always gets me is how, with every major version of Android, all the basic, essential functions take increasingly more screen tap counts in different places on the digitizer as they get buried deeper into submenus, calling for ever more amounts of your sensory bandwidth.

These workflows, from quickly adjusting lcd brightness or toggling bluetooth to utilizing functionality in the Maps app, have devolved from almost-total muscle memory with one or two taps to multiple times that and all over the place on the smartphone display.

People are obviously going to use their phones and heavily navigate with Maps while driving, no matter how much PSAs and campaigning happen. It's sort of like the developers are causing car accidents in the name of shipping off their users' engagement metrics back to the mothership.

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> I don't have much experience with non-tactile driving HUDs, but what always gets me is how, with every major version of Android, all the basic, essential functions take increasingly more screen tap counts in different places on the digitizer as they get buried deeper into submenus, calling for ever more amounts of your sensory bandwidth.

Very much this. My favorite is so small, but so, so silly. Google Play used to have a search bar at the top of the home screen. If you click it now, a little message pops up saying search has moved to a different tab. So you click that tab and STILL have to click the same area of the screen to perform a search. So many moronic design choices at these companies.

I almost never use the Play Store (I have my apps and haven't installed new ones for some years) so I didn't notice this, but I just tested and confirm this feels freaking dumb.

I followed some introductory course to UX a few years ago, and this seems to go against the very essence of what I remember of it, which is mainly "put things where the user expects them, officialize the desire paths"...

> (...) with every major version of Android, all the basic, essential functions take increasingly more screen tap counts in different places on the digitizer as they get buried deeper into submenus

The one thing that struck me configuring my spare Samsung first time was this approach of hiding setting under sub-screens. For example how you can handle Wifi in One UI: you go to settings, in connections section you have Wifi entry with switcher. An entry that look like static combines 2 options. Tapping on text opens sub-screen with another on/off toggle and advanced setting hidden under three-dotted menu. Then, once you connect to a network editing its settings doesn't open by tapping on network name but by sprocket on right. And if you want to change ip, dns settings that's another tap below under drop-down section. Of course this is all approach for demanding users and regular ones will handle stuff from pulled-down notifications widgets but still - mos of the stuff is indeed deeply hidden.

There is a large burden that smartphones have to carry by having to facilitate, or be in some way involved, in every aspect of our life. And at the same time, industries involved in producing these products, have to stay busy and employed. So we end up in a situation where everything stays in constant flux.

Updates break older apps, change the UI/UX, it's really an interesting situation we're in at the moment.

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