Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

34 points by superasn 110 days ago | 36 comments

For me, it is the shift toward thin, auto-hiding scroll bars. I see it on macOS, Linux (Mint), mobile phones and probably Windows too (though i haven't used windows in a while).

Is this a cleaner look? I have always loved visible scroll bars because they act as useful guides for where I am on a page and how much content remains and just easy to drag. Now you have to hover over it first.

I am curious what UX changes have stood out to you lately, for better or worse.. Maybe some designers reading this forum will take notes.

wronex 110 days ago |

All the extra empty space everywhere. Some websites are impossibly empty. They look zoomed in. This is super annoying.

The loss of a clear design language for desktop apps is also frustrating. Windows XP apps tended to use standard Windows controls, in more or less the same way. Modern apps though are all spaced out HTML/WPF CSS styled wannabe websites.

We cannot solve complexity with empty space and style sheets.

Also this glass thing on iOS. Definitely under cooked. The keyboard doesn’t even fill out the bottom corners of the screen.

DuncanCoffee 110 days ago | |

I installed stylish for Firefox and sometimes use some custom CSS to enlarge the body. I recently did it for chatgpt, on a 32" having the main content filling 1/4 of the display is ridiculous

shawn_w 110 days ago |

Those thin scrollbars are unusable, especially on touch screens.

I'm still salty over flat design; I want buttons that look like buttons, dangit.

dlcarrier 110 days ago | |

If it's any consolation, research shows that you're right about the poor usability of flat design: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-caus...

NoPicklez 110 days ago | |

100%

If you want them, make it so when I mouse near it extends out

collingreen 110 days ago | | |

Omg no. Don't move clickable things suddenly under my mouse that weren't there when I picked where to put my cursor.

I absolutely detest systems like this that break my current mode because they guess I might want shovelin something else as a new mode. Even if you get it right 9 times out of 10 I find it so disruptive. Somehow it makes me feel like the system is -untrustworthy-.

Grain of salt though - I tend to take a power use stance on things and want my tools to augment what I'm trying to do instead of do things on my behalf.

austin-cheney 110 days ago |

* touchscreens in cars

* crippled features in iOS safari compared to desktop safari. I know why they do it, because they want people buying apps from the App Store. But it’s still garbage

pedro_caetano 110 days ago |

Not recent but the slow trend towards a complete loss of clickability in both desktop and mobile UX.

I read text and sometimes I can interact and click/tap it for some action but other times it is just text. Not having a visual distintion between those two seems hostile. But maybe I'm just showing my age.

jrmg 110 days ago |

My state’s car registration renewal system is now a chatbot rather than a form.

raaspazasu 110 days ago | |

NC?

jrmg 110 days ago | | |

Yes!

To add further insult, it doesn’t tell you that there’s a $11 charge for paying online until after it’s interrogated you for all the details of your renewal.

DavidPiper 110 days ago |

Liquid Glass is the obvious regression in the room for me.

Windows 11. The "EOL" of Windows 10 could also be considered a UX choice.

I also recently upgraded from an iPhone 13 mini to a 17, and I'm still not used to the larger screen size. Phones that can fit comfortably in your hand and pockets are in short supply.

AI-"enhanced" Autocorrect can be a nightmare, especially when you're talking about niche topics, or different languages.

Infinite scroll and addiction-as-product-design is a scourge on many.

Previously non-algorithmic news sources that now algorithmically feed you headlines.

Lots of websites have a slightly-but-noticeably degraded experience on Firefox.

The Internet at large without uBlock Origin.

-----

Most of these are not design "choices" though, they are profit motivated. Good and/or humanist design often tends to be at odds with profit these days because attention is currently primary vector of exploitation for companies.

"More Usage" != "Good Design", but people do like to be employed and receive a paycheck, myself included.

apothegm 110 days ago | |

Nailed it.

pxtail 110 days ago |

Obsession with cli/TUI for LLMs interaction instead of proper IDEs

dlcarrier 110 days ago | |

That's just the most basic interface, with GUIs being written on top of that rapid IDEs built onto GUIs.

In my experience, everything involving AI is half-baked, not just its output but its creation too. It's all a bunch of proof-of-concept research papers tied together into a house of cards that only works if multiple layers of virtual environments are all precisely the same version it was developed on, there's far more memory free than the models and their output occupy, and the lunar tide is within range.

A few more layers of GUI and IDE would probably make the whole thing collapse.

pier25 110 days ago |

Buttons with icons that force you to hover to understand what they do.

dlcarrier 110 days ago | |

Double points if it's on a phone and there's no hovering, and triple if the effects are irreversible so clicking on the wrong one costs you.

dlcarrier 110 days ago |

The entire idea of a user experience makes no sense to me. A user interface is unnoticeable and forgettable, because it's a utilitarian functionality.

A user experience can only be an experience if it's notable and memorable, and the only way for that to happen is for it to get in the way. On top of that, everyone will eventually adjust to it, so to stay notable and memorable, it has to constantly change, so it can always get in the way.

Worse yet, if a project included research to optimize usability, that constant change will mean it is always departing further and further from peak usability.

dxdm 110 days ago | |

Don't mix up UX with UI.

The experience is not the interface, but how you accomplish what you set out to do. Unobtrusive UI that helps you get things done is what part of the experience should be.

tootie 110 days ago |

Animations and transitions are out of control. I use 1password extensively on my phone and the process of loading and unlocking involves multiple superfluous animations for a task I'm trying to do quickly.

KomoD 109 days ago | |

> I use 1password extensively on my phone and the process of loading and unlocking involves multiple superfluous animations for a task I'm trying to do quickly.

I do too. The animations take barely any time, unlocking the actual vault is what takes time.

dlcarrier 110 days ago | |

On Android, you can disable animations under the debug menu. It make the phone significantly faster.

gethly 108 days ago |

1. Sign-up and sign-in forms split into multiple steps.

2. Captcha *** everywhere

3. Websites not loading if you block some google domain because they depend on some 3rd party fonts and scripts. It's more of a UX than UI though.

ChrisRR 110 days ago |

All of the empty space in the reddit app. Redreader has the same amount of info in much less space and doesn't look cluttered, and yet the official app somehow manages to look empty and cluttered

ampham 109 days ago |

iOS making a random app on my phone the default ‘Open with’ in Files instead of opening quickly in Preview.

Recently was trying to open images in Files and it kept opening in my Canon print app. Thought it was a glitch so I just deleted the Canon print app.

Tried opening the file again and it opened in Copilot. Figured out I had to change ‘open with’ to Preview. Copilot is still set as the default. I’m sure I can change it somewhere but why is that the default in the first place?

mh2266 110 days ago |

the scrollbar change happened in 10.7 Lion. it was released in 2011. on mobile it was there since iPhone OS 1. it is not a recent change, macOS/OS X/Mac OS X has had these scrollbars for longer than it did not have them.

you can disable them in the settings app, and have been able to since Lion...

drsalt 110 days ago |

mac os getting rid of titlebars. i want to see the title of the windows i have open. i want to drag those around. i don't want "content" taking over my computer and my screen as a default. i want the mediated experience of a nice friendly operating system in between.

baranmelik 109 days ago |

not being able to access desktop features on mobile. I don't expect these features by default but having the option would be nice; especially given that the phones have more than enough RAM for any of these features.

verdverm 110 days ago |

super rounded corners, so annoying and unnecessary

developer platforms have been increasingly adopting large amounts of empty space like social media platforms

shoving in-platform Ai adverts to try and get me to use their shitty products (I use Ai in coding, but I don't want theirs in every single little place)

moomoo11 110 days ago |

using modals when pushing a new screen would have been far better

Sevii 109 days ago |

It now takes 3 button presses to switch tabs in mobile safari. It used to take just two before glass.

onetokeoverthe 110 days ago |

thnx for the report.

Still don't understand why most web pages (including with forms!) are not static like here on HN. But instead, reload every time one tabs back to it.

The energy and time wasted...

jml7c5 110 days ago | |

Are you sure your browser isn't unloading tabs to save memory? I think Chrome enabled automatic unloading a while ago, and it's been standard on mobile browsers for ages.

dlcarrier 110 days ago | |

Hacker News uses very little memory. The other tabs are likely being closed at a higher priority, once your RAAM is used up.