Sundry complaints

The Degradation of User Interfaces

What's wrong with device interfaces for users today. Lots. User interfaces have *degraded* over time, they have not "advanced." They have become harder and less intuitive, the opposite of what designers should strive for:

1. Use of naked pictographic icons, with no text explaining what this "abstract maybe picture of a disk saving function, but maybe something else" actually does.

2. Worse, every company uses their own *bespoke* pictographic icons. There is no longer a universal language denoting "save," "unpublish but do not delete," "advance to the next screen," etc.

3. Hiding all explanatory text for functions behind a "you must know to hover your mouse/finger here to get the explanatory text to pop up." It's awful.

Additional problem: Even large stationary monitors don't have enough space for all the popup clutter that every single app and site uses now. I'm not talking about ads. I'm talking about instructional popups that occur because you have to hover over a picture to get a menu of explanation or functions.

4. Replacing the user save function with a promise of autosave, BUT WITHOUT ensuring that it works each time, and WITHOUT positive feedback/confirmation that the save has occurred.

Additional problem—autosaving saves errors, too. Autosaving is not what I want in many documents or functions. I want the ability to choose when to save so that I don't allow my errors to overwrite correct answers.

5. Removing all options to force a save.

I'll probably add more. Feel free to add yours.

The Taboo About Reality

Our conscious disconnection from reality—indeed, we want to do this as a society—is reflected in how rapidly today we replace direct terms with euphemisms.

It's faster than it's ever been, and almost no basic word has escaped the trend.

"Resources" is one of these new words that has replaced another word. Take stock of how often you see the word "resources." How often you hear it. Notice how strange it is; notice what word is being conspicuously avoided.

I just heard a three-minute interview clip in which the speaker was talking about the affordability of feminine hygiene products. The entire point she was making was that pads and tampons were too expensive. Whether you agree doesn't matter. The point is that that was what she was talking about.

She used the word "resources" so many times. People didn't have "resources to afford" the products.

What was the word she wouldn't say? Money.

See if you notice this. The word "money" has become socially taboo in the past 15 years.