Facebook Paper's gesture problems | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Paper's gesture problems

scotthurff.com

130 pointsdlg64 comments

Paper is a nice app but the biggest problem is that it's still full of garbage. Even though I've unsubscribed from the worst offenders of my FB friends, 90% of what's in my news feed is still crap.

Paper kills the ability to quickly scan the feed for the 10 percent of stuff that might interest me even momentarily. I can either see one thing at a time with the stories full screen, or three things at a time with them in an awkward location at the bottom of the screen and one of them (for which there is a 90 percent chance that I don't want to see it) taking up the top two-thirds of the screen.

It's certainly pretty and with some content other than my Facebook feed, it might be a good interface. It would be perfect if I wanted to read 90 percent of this stuff.

But that's the whole idea. It's to keep you more engaged. But that's not how I use Facebook. I don't want to "engage" with it. I've got a million things competing for my attention and most of them are better than my Facebook feed. I want to get in, find the interesting stuff and then get the hell out. I suspect I'm not the only one.

No, you are not, sir. In fact, I have to assume that the people who are hyping the UI don't actually use Facebook a whole lot. This is the 10 year anniversary video on steroids. When you scroll through the 90% shit on traditional Facebook, I can quickly pass through hundreds of posts in seconds. Going through them 3-4 at a time is the future? Eck.

> "It's certainly pretty and with some content other than my Facebook feed, it might be a good interface. It would be perfect if I wanted to read 90 percent of this stuff."

Isn't this what Flipboard does?

Simple solution: swipe up on the carousel to make the cards full-screen, then browse. The whole UI works on this paradigm, so it may not be obvious at first, but it will be if this style of app continues.

I'm sure he's aware of that. This is a major element of the UI which shouldn't require you to move to another screen to enjoy.

Swiping near the bottom with my thumb hasn't bothered me so far, but the text is quite hard to read at that small of a size. I would also like to those cards a bit larger in the future.

Agreed about the text size. Things look great, feel good and it's easy to follow what's going on after a short amount of time but it can be hard to read.

But a simple vertical feed is soooo much easier to scan than flipping individual cards.

you can also see parts of more than one post in occasions, and have a sense of "place". with the cards, you don't get that at all.

cards seem to work better as implemented by google -- cards don't really have as much in common between cards.. they're one-offs. a newsfeed is a long story board, such as it is.

Am I the only one who is right-handed, but doesn't hold their iPhone like that? I rest the bottom of the phone on the top side of my pinky finger, which puts it higher in my hand and doesn't require the "hook" to swipe right-to-left in the bottom half of the screen.

I also hold the phone as you do, and thereby also do not have this problem. Clearly, he's "holding it wrong" ;P.

"when held and used in an uncomfortable manner, it's uncomfortable!"

I too hold my phone as you do, as I read on bart whilst also holding a bike and a cup of coffee each morning... however - the issue with the way we hod our phone is that my grip tends to need to be really light on the phone and I am prone to drop it easily - because to battle the "OW" areas of the phone, I need to rotate between portrait and landscape often...

You only have a worse grip of the device when you actually use the thumb probably. When I hold a phone this way and do not actively interact with it, my thumb usually presses on the edge of the device, making the grip firm.

Agreed. But when you're on BART and attempting to do anything other than lok at it, it can feel very precarious.

Most importantly, if you hold it this way, you can easily do a two-finger gesture with just one hand... gripping the phone like in the GIF just feels unnatural.

Maybe he lives in a high-crime area and thus must always be ready to quickly grasp the phone in case he gets "picked".

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/09/iphone-thefts...

I also hold the phone this way.

The author's grip puts the home button halfway outside his "thumb zone" forcing an awkward claw whenever you need to multitask or return to the springboard. Our grip puts the home button in a much more natural position.

Facebook Paper is a great example of ignoring ergonomic design to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing view, a trend all too common in app design these days.

It's a shame when what is pleasing to the eye and what is pleasing to the touch are such different things.

Now I'm paranoid that I might be a weirdo for holding my phone primarily in my left hand even though I'm right-handed. Am I alone in that? I think the reason I do it is because text and navigation are generally left-to-right, so having my thumb on the left side of the screen feels more natural. The animation in this post seems to confirm that.

You're not a weirdo. Left-handed people are smarter anyway.

(South paw here who uses his phone with his right hand.)

I'm right-handed and mostly use my phone in my left hand.

I keep it in my left pocket. It leaves my right (primary) hand free for doing other things. When I need the extra dexterity of using an index finger instead of thumb, I'm already holding the phone in the correct hand for my right index finger to poke at the screen.

I was just about to comment the same. Right-handed but mostly use my left hand to use the phone. Because my right hand is often doing more important things! Using a mouse etc.

Well i am left handed and use my phone with my right hand.

I'm always the guy who stands up for Facebook UI updates, so why do I hate Paper so much?

I think it's the fact that I am forced to touch, and swipe through stories I don't give a shit about. At all. Does anyone who is fellating the Paper UI actually use Facebook? You sure you really want to pan through hundreds of uninteresting posts...because it looks cool? I don't. I love the transitions and how responsive the UI is, but would I use this to take an overview of my friend's activity? Unlikely.

On a separate matter, how does Facebook Paper get its permissions? I have the Facebook app installed on my iPhone, but I don't have Facebook linked to the operating system. When I installed Paper, I was never prompted to login. Are they able to read a piece of information shared by the normal Facebook app in order to authenticate Paper users without requiring an additional login? Doesn't that violate the sandboxing of application data, or are they able to circumvent those policies since it's all associated with the same app publisher?

Same app publisher can share a common id. As long as you have one of their apps installed.

Yep! The Facebook app and Facebook Paper have access to the same keychain because they both are from the same publisher and register the same `keychain-access-groups` entitlement.

They're signed with the same distribution keys and have the same app identifier prefix, so they have access to the same shared keychain storage on the device.

I've been fascinated with phone placement in hands for product shots.

It always seemed like a little bit of a cheat - especially when the elongated 5 came out - just to show one handed use of a device is possible.

For me at least, the way the phone is positioned is hardly comfortable. The bottom right corner at the base of the thumb exacerbates the problem the author's talking about. When I hold the phone higher in my hand with the bottom closer to the base of the index, all thumb-hook problems tend to go away.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'd love to see some studies about how people hold their phones. In some respects, I've always felt one-handed device usage was neglected by manufacturers, but I probably didn't fully understand how many users simply use two hands. I imagine data around grips (similar to [this](http://www.razerzone.com/mouseguide/ergonomic)) and hands used for phones will be somewhat surprising.

This is the study I used as the basis of the Thumb Zone, etc.: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-re...?

And that's my fault for not following the linked sources in the article.

While I agree wih all your points in your assessment, I'm curious about the point the research mentioned about users changing grips depending on task. Will this be a significant problem? Or would it be an unconscious adaptation.

Personally, I never hold my phone in the position described in this post. For a start you can't even press the home button from this position. I hold my phone (in my right hand) with the bottom right corner much closer to the bottom of my ring finger.

I think it also depends on how big your hands are, and how long your fingers are. I have a 5" device and I can still comfortably touch anywhere on the whole screen with my thumb; the only "ow" spot for me is at the very bottom right corner.

Love Paper, 100% agree with you - I hate the Facebook iOS app and never want to open it again, but I'm missing the classic Apple vertical scroll view because it's just soooo good.

I'm probably not adding too much to this discussion since I'm just agreeing, but there it is.

From the article: All it requires is shrinking the space allocated to the Topic section above, and increasing the space allocated to the story navigation by 50 pixels. I think this actually supports the mission of the app even more — to push you to read stories you find interesting

I agree with this 100%. The lower navigation elements are WAY TOO small.

Another option (if any Paper developers are listening) would be to allow dynamic re-sizing of the lower navigational elements.

This is already allowed (it grows as you swipe up) - it just isn't "sticky".

I really love paper, but totally agree here. I've also noticed that while I scroll through on the bottom usually my thumb is covering up the content I want to see.

Maybe I just have big thumbs.

I've followed LukeW's version of reachable areas of the screen in my UI design. I think you've improved upon his.

I also find it fascinating how Facebook's main iOS app and Paper (per your article) conflict with your reachable zone. In the major app, they relegate the Search action in the farthest corner from right hand users. In addition, their overflow button on the bottom tab bar sits in the other 'Ow' zone.

Great write up.

I just hold the phone a little higher up in my hand and I don't seem to run into this issue. meh..

That said, I prefer having an option of manually refreshing the UI. When I'm connected to a spotty 3G tower - I don't get any indication if its fetching data or not. I suppose I can drag down the main UI and expose the iOS status bar and see the little circular progress bar, but not an ideal situation.

Biggest problem I had with my perusal of the app was the text on the lower cards is just way too small to be legible from a reading distance. Making the cards full-screen just slows down my interaction with it, requiring a swipe for every card.

Overall, it's a good interface for reading news articles and blog posts. It seemed like a terrible interface for going through status updates and wall posts.

I get what he's saying - but the swipe-zone of Facebook Paper is actually quite a large area - well into the "natural" zone. While the user may feel inclined to swipe near the bottom-right corner of the screen, they can actually swipe near the center of the phone's display towards the left-edge, and achieve the same effect.

Author here: I disagree that one can achieve the same effect by swiping near the center. A middle-to-left swipe on the phone doesn't make use of Paper's exciting physics-driven carousel. I can barely get any inertia swiping from the middle. Even worse, my thumb covers up most of the content and I have to make a "dabbing" motion to see a steady stream of stories.

I just tried swiping from the middle. I can advance 13 stories by starting from the middle. How is that not enough inertia? Why would I need to swipe 20+ stories in a single motion, when I cannot read any of the titles when they go by that fast?

Was that swipe comfortable? Could you scan most of the headlines quickly, or was your thumb covering up most of them?

Paper's story carousel is designed to get you scanning headlines quickly with the inertial scroll. I believe that the current configuration — with its gestural shortcomings — does not ideally accomplish that goal.

Yes, the swipe was relatively comfortable, and because I use Paper as a regular user (not someone trying to dissect the UI) I am scrolling to view 2-3 elements at a time. I am not scrolling for speed. I fundamentally disagree with your idea that this interface was designed for efficiency. It seems to me that it was created as a playful, gestural interface, that is novel and fun to use. If they really wanted to design for efficiency it would have been a table view.

I also disagree with your statement that a strong inertial scroll is important. What is the use case for needing to put so much inertia into the carousal that you cannot read the titles? Why would being able to flick through 20+ elements in one swipe be useful?

I do agree, however, that the elements could be taller.

Looks like we use the app differently, which is entirely possible in this world ;) My assumptions were twofold: 1) users would like to scroll and scan quickly (because they're impatient), diving into content to find something that looked interesting to read, and 2) that the inertial scroll literally amplifies that action — potentially getting you something you want, faster.

Flinging the carousel has a playful factor (that you mentioned) and serves to immerse you more into the content. The fact, though, that I have to hurt my thumb to do this is a glaring problem, IMO.

I agree about the thumb covering the content, but in the short period of time I've spent with the app, I've found myself swiping from the middle - mostly along the bottom-edge of the screen. And I guess the physics-driven carousel hasn't been a huge problem yet since I've mostly been swiping to pan through the content for skimming. Guess that's the challenge of any interface - that different users may approach it in entirely different ways.

Anyway, nice study on the interaction, and thanks for your reply.

Thanks for reading / commenting!

I'll second that. I didn't even realize the importance of momentum when using the carousel at first. I was cursing the designers for making it so damn slow.

I don't really have the issue with comfort as described here, but it does suck that the main source of mass content consumption (the bottom carousel) is mostly blocked by the natural place your thumb would be. Viewing content in full-screen is too slow for something like facebook, of which many of the posts you don't care much about.

This solution in this particular case also reduces the wasted space of the hero image across the top. Given FB's poor content, it is usually a stupid meme or some blurry cell-phone pic that was posted 2 days ago. Or maybe that's just my experience so far. But the news across the bottom seems way more useful then the hero image.

Your point about reducing the hero image is a very good one. I hadn't thought of that. And even if it's a poor quality image, the content is mostly static and distracts from the entire purpose of the navigation: getting you reading stories.

I understand why marketing shots of products like Facebook Paper or Facebook Home use beautiful, crisp photos to promote the product.

But I don't understand why these apps seem to be designed on the assumption that real-world Facebook users' feeds are actually filled with such photos. The same applies to the giant contact photos in Android 4.1+. This is great if all of your contacts have beautiful high-res headshots. In real life, most don't and it's an ugly pixelated mess.

I am right handed but I seem to split it for phone usage, and I also use both hands a lot of the time. I don't wish to diminish the point that this may be and for people who use the app as pictured it may be painful, but insinuating that 90% of people will do so just because nearly 90% are right handed is not correct.

I don't use facebook but I'm interested in how it goes for this app.

It seems you're still reaching for a corner and curve your finger inward, isn't it as stressful for the left hand ?

I'm not sure, pulling might be easier than pushing? I guess the difference is you are stretching in the air and coming back to your resting state while pushed against the glass rather than the opposite. Also you might be working around the fact that your thumb covers the content more when using the right hand.

What I've found myself doing is using two hands.

I wish more apps would consider the "meatspace" physical layer of their software stack like this...

I don't have an iPhone and have used one maybe twice, but the region the article is talking about is where the software keyboard is, isn't it? I find it difficult to imagine that the most common way of holding an iPhone is one that keeps the user from typing.

This! Right after I had written other apps would feel ancient when compared to Paper

(http://appiterate.com/does-your-mobile-app-feel-ancient/)

Inspired by a conversation over at Product Hunt: http://www.producthunt.co/posts/1105

Is there any way to try iOS apps if I don't have iOS or a mac? An emulator that runs on Linux? XCode in a OSX VM?

Off-topic: Is Paper (the FB one) US-only? It's not available here in Croatia.

For now. Switching the app store locale to the US will let you download it though.

Doesn't that require a US credit card?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com