I thrive almost precisely <i>because</i> I'm willing to explore and learn interfaces. The day I give up the desire to figure out how to use rather mundane objects is the day I officially give up being a tinkerer.<p>Does it take some figuring out when I jump from one android to another? Or to an iPhone? Or an old style phone? Sure, but so what? Do I want to do it daily? Not really. However, doing so every now and then is <i>hugely</i> beneficial to seeing how others see the world.<p>This is no different than why you should try different programming languages. Sometimes, it just helps to see things differently. Even if it is the same old todo list you have seen countless times. Maybe something will "click" this time.<p>Seriously, consider that when you are using a new UI, you are seeing something as envisioned by someone else. It may be that the someone else is a committee that couldn't agree on anything. In this case the learning experience will be mostly frustration.<p>However, do you really think that things that you know and use daily are truly easy? Watch a child try to operate a door sometime. Any kind of door. It does not matter.<p>Maybe I'm just projecting and hoping that by instilling a sense of "keep trying" and "learn what you can do, do not get upset with what you can't" to my kids. Surely I am not alone in this, though.<p>And this is far from new. The devices we have to learn nowdays are downright easy compared to the stuff from years past. Have you seen some of the heavy machinery that people operate? There are more levers on a standard worksite tractor than I can really make sense of.
IMO, it's more likely that your brain doesn't have space for <i>bad</i> user interfaces. I don't think we actually have any <i>good</i> ones yet.<p>Consider the physical world. Cars, toilets, old-school dial telephones, doors, blenders, paper books, hammers, bulldozers, can openers... have vastly disparate user interfaces, but no one complains about having to learn them all, nor do they expect some kind of chimeric "common user interface" and complain when the hammer and the table saw don't work the same way.<p>Hammers that required you to adjust screen sliders to adjust the force and angle of the blow would <i>suck</i>. Hammers and table saws that were given some sort of half-assed "common user interface" would <i>suck bad</i>.<p>So, yeah, there are a lot of bad UIs. That doesn't make (current favorite UI) a good one, though. The way that this gets better in the long term is for people to keep making new UIs (most of which will inevitably be bad). Trying to stop that process just means that it'll take that much longer before we get good ones.
I think a lot of it has to do with discoverability (or lack thereof) - e.g. buttons, which used to <i>actually look like things you could depress</i>, have turned into little icons that often don't even have a border. It makes it harder to know whether something is a button or just an indicator, or even purely decorative. The trend seems to be to hide everything away in (at times multiple) layers of submenus, require various gestures (with no hints that you can), and offer little in the way of context-sensitive help.
The author seems to present two main points in this essay:<p>1. I have a lot of really cool brand new stuff.<p>2. Instead of having 100 different UI's, let's have less.<p>Is there any value in either? Half bragging and half common sense does not an engaging essay make. And while I appreciate what I understand to be his second point, I don't think it's necessarily right.<p>Sometimes it makes sense to have more or less buttons on something, depending on its functions. A TV remote with anything less than 20 buttons is probably useless. A UI which does not take advantage of the wide-ranging input is equally useless. A car's GPS can't really work well with just 2 or 3 physical buttons, and vanilla Android is obviously ill-fitting, even with a touch screen. The author, a serious Mac user, shouldn't even be satisfied with OSX. Has he read the UNIX Hater's Handbook? It criticizes OSX's underlying operating system with the same points he makes against everything but his beloved iToys.<p>I have a simple solution to the problem of too many UIs. Stop buying so much shit. Keep the growth of technology in check by voting with your wallet, and keep your mind clear by not filling it up with anything other than what is absolutely necessary. Use your phone as your GPS and TV remote. Watch TV on your computer. You can really reduce a lot of your bulk, both in terms of hardware and software, by getting more out of what you already have.<p>[Obligatory comment against software patents.]
Good start in pointing out those disparate UIs. As you have pointed out, though, devs/manufacturers feel they have an incentive to create something different. From a user's POV what's needed is just one UI that he's familiar with. Maybe one solution is creating a UI (HW/SW/etc) that knows how to map functionalities automatically for different devices/apps.
Well, I think things will get more focused. Like Google's watch UI announced the other day, it only does a few things. Also, as voice commands start really taking off, visual UIs will fade in importance. Sure, we'll always have visuals, but it won't be so abused as described. Lastly, good UX is happening now, you see really smart people like Alan Cooper who design for goals, not just a single task. This way of thinking about an interface even before its made will cut down on some of the UI foolishness.
First world problems. Get an aeropress or french press for coffee. Get rid of your TV (that will take out another 3-4 devices most likely). Get rid of your watch.<p>There... now you are UI-defragged and you make better coffee.
How many are interfaces are you expected to deal with now? Zero.<p>This sounds as much about having too much stuff in your life than it does about user interfaces.<p>If you are complaining about your cars touch-screen, you should perhaps be considering if you really need a car with a touch-screen in it at all.<p>And for the record, my coffee machines user interface is roughly as complicated as the user interface to a light-bulb.
Today I opened one of many blog's I will skim with a unique design. I first looked for the date, it took me a good 20 seconds to find because it was in tiny greyed out text hidden at the bottom of the page. Then I saw this was a blog about inconsistent user interfaces, and I'd say it was partly the pot calling the kettle black.
"In 10 years, this UI list may look laughably small. We’ll probably be discussing the operating systems on our tube socks and dust pans. What can be done?" really makes you think.
> They’re trying too hard, and making a mess in the process.<p>I can sincerely say this about <i>all</i> the <i>graphic designers</i> and <i>ui/ux designers</i> I've ever worked with!
Guess it's time to crack out the Chemex for a simple pour over coffee, then hop on to our bikes! At least that will help with some of the brain fatigue.
This really wasn't an issue in the 1990s and even into the early 2000s. Back then, most applications running on Windows, Mac OS and even the various commercial Unixes followed rather clear and uniform UI conventions.<p>There were differences between applications running within the same ecosystem, of course, and not as wide of a range of device types. But because of the greater consistency, it was generally much easier to learn how to use new applications. A lot of existing knowledge carried over, and was immediately applicable when using a new application.<p>This uniformity has unfortunately never really developed well on the various mobile platforms used today. It has deteriorated quite badly under Windows, with Microsoft themselves being somewhat responsible for this. The situation is perhaps the best under OS X. But even here we've still seen applications like Chrome and Firefox use non-standard UIs.