@adamgreenfield thank you for these posts. Our technology is user hostile to the most able of us, to those with less capacity it is downright harmful.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I feel the same rage. My rage is additionally fueled by the fact that I know that these things can be designed better if only somebody cared and thought for a moment.

And then I think of all the layers that this must have gone through. Somebody designed it. There were likely meetings about it, people discussed it, somebody coded it, somebody tested it, somebody accepted it, and then it got released. Didn't anybody notice these obvious problems anywhere along the way?

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I have provided volunteer tech support for elderly Apple product owners for years. Number 1 problem is how to hold the phone without accidentally triggering a touch event at the screen edges. Number 2 is “what’s do you mean ‘my Apple Account password?’”

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I've seen several elderly people use a notepad with their own written step-by-step instructions on how to perform basic tasks on a computer, like sending an email. In all cases they did it through the web UI of whichever email provider they use.

Now imagine these people's horror when that provider redesigns their already perfectly fine UI in order to keep their full-time designers and developers occupied.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn "here's a dozen essential functions but they're only available in a swipe gesture you will have to try to rote memorise, because if you don't you might accidentally trigger it, change a setting to break some aspect of your device, and then have no idea how to fix it, but always know it was "your" fault".

The fundamental rot at the core of UI and UX is a phenomenon of the application of a broader cultural-political programme of anti-structure, and anti-hierarchy.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn Yes. I set up a custom focus on my mum's iPhone. I'm supposed to be the techy one in my family and even I struggled with it.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn At least on Android you can replace the stock UI with any number of third party alternatives aimed at simplifying phone UIs for the elderly or other people with difficulties dealing with screens. They just want to use it as a phone? There are UIs that give them an icon for their address book, and a big button to make calls.

Can't do that on iPhones!

@adamgreenfield Way back when I taught adult education classes, every cohort would have someone who wanted to know why their grandkids were so good with their computers. And I explained, patiently, that they didn't have any skill, just no sense of consequences for getting something wrong, so they try things to see what works.

It's been twenty years, and the difference (as you point out) is that companies have decided that every one-pixel mis-click or typo should result in catastrophe.

@adamgreenfield I sent your post to my mom and she says, thank you.
@jessamyn @JeniParsons

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn Finally had to resort to using Assistive Access on my elderly parent's phone recently because of cognitive decline. While it makes things much simpler for them to use and understand, it's horrifically buggy.

I can understand why Voiceover users get so angry about it now. On paper a good idea, and one that's vital for them, but the sheer sloppiness and disregard for the quality of the implementation... Well.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn Just about every app dev team I’ve been involved with the front-end devs sported their flagship maxxed out iDevices, and when I bought a bunch of cheap BRICS-market ’droids for them to test with… LOL the amount of bickering… Emotional intelligence is a rare trait indeed.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn #evilGoogle does evil on #evilAndroid on purpose. Under that mess of settings they hide all offensive against users.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn
Smartphinw Useless interface designs.
People wind up feeling stupid and incompetent. They wind up bewildered and scammed. They feel terrified to hit the wrong button, and then not be able to find it again. It’s so, so hard to watch. It breaks my heart, and it makes me furious.

While the UI Designers who must often be useless antisocial scum
feel very powerful and clever because they are able to put others down.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn

And there is no excuse for it. There's nearly 50 years of accumulated UI design and research to draw from. Plenty of workflows to deploy to bring users, including those with special requirements, into your design process. BUT the big companies and I will single out MS and Google, have paid lip service to all this knowledge, thinking they know better, They don't. They are serial offenders against UI design.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn Even before one of my parents got a dementia diagnosis they struggled with Skype on their Windows PC.

They would try to quit the program from the systray icon. One of the three menu options was "Sign out". Which they would often hit.

Murphy's Law was at work and once signed out their copy of Skype would forget both username and password.

Catch 22: my parent could not start a Skype chat with screen sharing with me so I could talk them through fixing the problem.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I just filled in a form that asked for a postal code, and had a default code that could not be erased - at least until I typed the first character of an actual postal code.

I was very annoyed at this UI choice ...

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn

All of this. True. 100%.

40+ years in IT, C.S. degree, many pro IT certifications for OS & dB products MS, Oracle, IBM, HP, going back decades...

It's all a steaming hot mess, frankly

I run into that same thing where people think it's 'their' fault. It is not.

SW design is awful, UI design is done by 20 somethings that think everything is a 1st person shooter video game.

Fuck. Them. All.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn There are few FOSS launcer apps in Android designed for elderly persons or text based launchers. I find Blad Launcer in F-Droid very useful in that matter. It uses it's own Dialer, Contacts, Call log UI which felt similar to old phones. It also uses it's own simple album, video player, alarm and a pill section to keep track of medicines (which is unique and useful). It's not an absolute solution but way better than nothing.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I am #nearsighted & without correction lenses I am clinically #blind & no I am not traumatically blind an example of traumatically blind is #military

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn first off even if their low English their still could be smart at other things im fine with low English & even if they are low English their still certain words to important to know in English before visiting my country of Canada words like “washroom” “help” or emergency numbers like 911”

@adamgreenfield you’ve probably seen bit for anyone that hasn’t Ed Zitron’s article https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/ is my go to when chatting about this issue.

@adamgreenfield This is such a big deal. I feel like software folks are often trying to make their mark or prove their worth by designing new/different shit and every time the UI redesigns people who struggle have all new setbacks and have to relearn.

My guide for my work is Agre's simple set of maxims including

"Whenever they start to blame themselves, blame the computer,no matter how many times it takes"

https://www.librarian.net/stax/4965/how-to-help-someone-use-a-computer-by-phil-agre/

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn My 90 yr old mother manages her iPhone just fine - I put it in assistive mode. It’s simple to use, locked down, only has a few apps she needs. Every few months I take it out of that mode to run updates for her.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn in another millenium i remember seeing a very elderly lady (we were at a gas station) trying to fill her gas tank w/the nozzle just not fitting the opening very easily. this was when self-serve was new. all i could think was: "wouldn't it be nice if as we get older, life became easier". but ofc the opposite.

maybe hardware/software design benefits the designer, not the user.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn
Thank YOU, Adam, for highlighting these deficiencies of modern smartphone UIs.
As a reasonably intelligent person in his 70s, I solved this problem by having grandchildren who can navigate my Android phone for me.
It's kind of a time-consuming and convoluted solution, and it required me to anticipate a problem that didn't exist when their parents were born, but it's currently the best I can do under the circumstances.
Short version: I think you've identified some of the hidden costs of enshittification.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn it's bothered me for years too. And the main problem being of course that the companies putting this crap out don't care and never have 😡

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I feel that as technology helped add bells and whistles to any interface, there's been a race to add more and more effects, to astound the users. If you put that with the barbaric unruled software development, you have today's UI/UX. Marketing keeps on pushing surprising new features, software development now comprises every day new complex libraries and frameworks, on which the growing number of users is inversely proportional to the control they have.
Here we are.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I’m with you on the fury. I used to happily help people with their tech but recently I can’t because I get too angry and it gets in the way.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn Yeah what is it with UIs getting constantly redesigned? Hot keys losing/changing their meanings, familiar menus gone, hidden who knows where. This happens with every product, not just phones. Consistency is for boomers or something? It's maddening.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn

I appreciate your post so much, my elder sister has a distinct inferiority complex about anything to do with computers or phones, and is convinced that everything she doesn't understand is her fault.

Whether UI or just sop, if anything doesn't go as expected, "she" has done something wrong.

It's why I always tell her when Apple mail begins doing some crazy damned thing, and I say I guess I'll just live with it for a couple of weeks, until someone reboots that server... and the issue is resolved. I keep hoping that will give her a different perspective.

Lovely that you help your relatives, neighbors and friends, I hope when everything is cranial implants that the younguns at that time will help me, too.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn I’m not old, I’m a proficient English speaker and I work on software 40 hours a week for a living. I STILL struggle with UI/UX every single day. So many terrible designs have creeped into a majority of software and it’s only accelerated further by “vibe-coded re-designs”. Change for the sake of change is one of the most terrible afflictions of the modern world.

@adamgreenfield @jessamyn

A neighbor i try to keep track of asked for help with his TV. He is 71 and mostly homebound. It keeps popping up this warning, he says.

Its a samsung smart tv. Samsung was pushing an update to its tv os.

Lets just let it update i tell him. It will be ok.

It was not ok. UI totally changed. Nothing works like it did, shit autoplays and there are sneaky advertisements mixed in with the regular channels. Horrible and confusing and distressing for me and my neighbor.

@adamgreenfield I used to work in IT support, AND support a usability research centre, so I empathise deeply with you. At least once a week I'm confronted with "Fifteen years [later] things have only gotten worse." How do we allow it