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That’s a fantastic post & a great example. UI Designers often blame the user or say “well it’s complex software so the UI is complicated.” But your example shows that even something as complex as piloting a jet aircraft could be simplified for general use if the designers cared to do so.
Have you read The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition - Kindle edition by Norman, Donald A.[^]
The book explains how designers often do things wrong then blame the user and the users often feel stupid even though they really aren’t. The design just makes them feel that way.
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You overlook the stupidity of management. Before I retired, I tried to design based on real user input. Often, when I demo'ed the result to management, they just had to change it, making it needlessly complex and cumbersome to use. Instead of putting the most common two or three items at the top of a list followed by the remainder of the choices in alphabetic order, they required full alphabetical order.
For example, let us look at selecting client language. In the United States, English and Spanish are the most common languages; they would require Africaans and Arabic at the top of the list and Spanish way down below Farsi, German, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and a host of others.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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I wouldn't call this management "stupidity". It's trying to make it look as if you add value even though you're far from expert in, or have only put superficial thought into, what you're commenting on. Code reviews are just as useless when "reviewers" harp on variable names or formatting because they have nothing to say about design or merely skimmed the code and missed bugs that could have been spotted with due effort.
I would have told them that the UI was carefully considered, that their input would be noted but that they would not be making decisions on the UI, and that the demo's purpose was to show that a milestone had been reached and provide a preview of what would be shipping.
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The software in question was for in-house use only by company staff. The language choice was for matching clients with clinical providers and translation services. After several months of use, the language breakdown of our new and re-evaluated clients was something like:
- English - 80%
- Spanish - 55%
- Korean - 15%
- American Sign - 5%
- All others - 1%
The total is higher than 100% because I allowed multiple language selection. If more than one was selected, I would pop up a box asking for the order of proficiency. The numbers given are approximate - I do not remember the exact figures, as I retired several years ago.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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Jalapeno Bob wrote: You overlook the stupidity of management
That’s true. And your example is a really great one. Unfortunately management stupidity is the super power that overrides all other super powers. 
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Isn't that an excellent example of a developer centered design? If you sit e.g. in Norway, as I do, or in some East European, Asian or African country, English or Spanish is not the primary language alternatives! You may say "But the US is our primary market! (Besides, that is where I am living ...)", fair enough if you simply do not care about other markets. Why then worry about all these other languages at all, if you do not care about the users of those languages?
In Windows - but also in *nix - the environment always informs you about the locale and the preferred language. If you really cared for the user, you would honor that. If you want to do the job well, you would use the locale to select not only the top entry, but a few more down the list, such as French and English as the two top entries in Canada (if the user's preferred language is a third one, it obviously goes ahead of both). If the user at some time has selected yet another alternative, he is probably making use use of that language, so put any explicitly selected language up on top as well.
Then you can list the rest of the languages - those with no indication of being relevant to the user - in alphabetical order. Those that goes on top are those that are more likely to be chosen by the user. And not those preferred by the developer!
This obviously goes for all locale related UI aspects, not just the language, but e.g. date and numeric formats and lots of other things. If you use system provided functions for the formatting, you may evade the issue, until the user is given a chance to select some other format, some other value. Say, a valuta calculator: A user in Norway who sees USD on top of the list every time, even after having selected NOK a hundred times before, gradually gets sort of p***ed.
If you don't care to do a proper job, then you might as well do as your boss says: Do not give any preference to any choice. Giving preference to your choice, rather than that of the user, does not improve the quality of the user interface.
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One thing drives be nuts is that on a list of countries in alphabetic order you press U and it comes up with the first 'U' country at the bottom. Logically it should be at, or near, the top so I can find UK (in my case) with a single click.
Are there any positive reasons for this behaviour?
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The software in question was for in-house use by company personnel providing services to clients. It was not used by the clients due to HIPPA regulations. The language choice did not change the interface. It only provided input for selection clinical providers and outside translation services to serve the client. There were members of the clinical staff who spoke English, Spanish, American Sign, Korean and German. The one Arabic speaker retired. One young immigrant from India spoke several Indian languages, including Pashtun, but was not certified yet certified to use those language skills to serve clients.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
modified 30-May-22 12:41pm.
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Thanx. I haven't read the book you referenced, but its now on my Amazon buy list.
My experience occurred in 1994 when the 777 made its first flight. The company I was working with flew a group of us to Boeing in Seattle for a mini-conference to discuss designing user interfaces. The 777 was the first aircraft (they say) that was designed, built and tested using electronic design and simulation software. Boeing, of course, does not always follow their advice (737[^]
User interfaces are first driven by requirements, which management usually has complete control (their mistake if not include the interface designers). Requirement creep is usual the reason for management intervention and not always well done. Oh well, not a perfect world.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Is that page supposed to lead somewhere? I tried clicking the big NO button and the words "click here" but nothing.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Which only means that the UI made to perfection 
(try HERE, but at your own risk - it is even worst after that)
“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
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It says "Please click HERE ..." so you obviously have to click HERE... 
And that one was easy compared to what's coming
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7 minutes...
That is terrible.
Sander, you are a bad person.
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4:21 and I actually selected MY OWN COUNTRY FLAG! 
That flag is absolutely terrible, took me over a minute (selected Luxembourg first)
User Inyerface wrote: YOU ARE AWESOME!
A true interface legend.
[Dancing Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air gif]
Joan M wrote: Sander, you are a bad person.
Yeah, I get that a lot
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That is truly obnoxious.
It took me 11:49 to get to the dancing Carlton. I'd hazard a guess that the author of that horror copied about 80% of the instances of idiocy found on that interface from sites they had encountered at one time or another. I know that I've run across several of them.
My pet Peeve is password requirements that don't specify a maximum length. I also hate "you must use a special character" ... Oh, sorry, "&" is invalid.
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I eventually gave up at the captcha. Positioning of the tickboxes is genius.
But a little close to the mark - I hate the common one that asks me to "Select all schoolbuses". How the *%#$ am I supposed to know which are schoolbuses? Here in the UK they come in any size, shape and colour... and some are trains!
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In this particular case, I think you're supposed to check them all.
And as you said, the tickboxes are positioned in a way that the upper row isn't visible and you have to scroll for it
Real-life captcha's like these are a pain.
Like, select all traffic lights, but one of them just goes slightly into a new box, so does it have a traffic light or not? 
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Sander Rossel wrote: Like, select all traffic lights, but one of them just goes slightly into a new box, so does it have a traffic light or not?
That’s the thing that always gets me. Drives me crazy!
Something I learned long ago is that captcha uses the data from the user’s selection to be the answer for the next users. Did you know that?
That means if the majority of people select a particular part of the image then it is considered part of the answer. Users are selecting and training the algorithm. Seems kind of nuts.
I also found that captcha wants 3 picks. So if you have 3 chosen and there is a sliver of traffic light in a 4th then it should not be selected. Isn’t that crazy?
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FreedMalloc wrote: My pet Peeve is password requirements that don't specify a maximum length.
I've been in a situation where corporate wanted me to reset my password, but didn't tell me the requirements.
IT told me at least 8 characters, I had 16 I think.
Other than that I had upper, lower, number and symbol, but it still wasn't valid.
Ultimately, IT let me enter my password directly into the AD to circumvent all requirements
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An insidious trick is to accept a long password when registering or resetting but silently truncate it to the maximum length. The next time you log in it fails because the hashes between what you set and they ultimately accepted don't match. Then your account is locked as you repeatedly try to log in by shortening the password a character at time. At which point I call support with 3 requests: 1) please reset my password; 2) please tell me the max password length; 3) please locate the developer and break their kneecaps.
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Yes, sites that are picky about which special characters are acceptable is one of my pet peeves - and there is no excuse for this if the code behind the text box is properly written!
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You beat me - 12:06 to get the dancing carlton... Truly awful...
Sincerely,
-Mark
mamiller@mhemail.org
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Funny stuff.
BTW one of UI topics some of my team researched with objective testing was the YES/NO, ON/OFF, etc (binary states).
User confusion of what is the current state versus changing the state is increased. One button, versions and two buttons versions. The human subject testing was quite thorough and comprehensive. There were multiple phases of this testing. In aerospace a mistaken judgement of the system state could be fatal. BTW Apple users a sliding binary button which is quite effective. Their UI is generally pretty good but not always obvious.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I detest those sliding binary buttons. Especially when used for cookie options. Totally arbitrary selection of colour / position, worsened (possibly? I can't tell) because I'm colour blind. 
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