[ghaff]

>Don't teach anyone how to use a specific UI, teach the concepts that made the UI look the way it does.

With all due respect, good luck with that. A lot of people aren't interested in learning about file systems or how DNS operates. They want to know what button to order from Amazon.

[int_19h]

The older UIs had those concepts, but it wasn't stuff like "how DNS operates". It was stuff like, "every app that works with documents has a File menu with New, Open, and Save in it". Or, say, "if you want to see all available actions for something that's represented by an icon, right-click for context menu". I taught my mom like that, and she was amazingly productive at learning new apps. She didn't always find the most efficient way to do something, but she always found a way to do whatever she needed to do.

Modern UI ditched all that. Just about the only consistent element is the hamburger menu, and how it looks once you open it varies drastically from app to app. In many cases, it's hard to even tell which elements are active and which aren't (because everything is flat!), and if they're active, what exactly they will do if you try to interact with them. When I got her an iPad - the very first one - she really struggled figuring it out, because not only all the existing concepts didn't apply, but there was no rhyme or reason to it in general.

[u801e]

> A lot of people aren't interested in learning about file systems or how DNS operates. They want to know what button to order from Amazon.

That's like saying people aren't interested in learning how to use a phonebook or how to call directory assistance. They just want to know who to talk to so they can order what they want from Sears.

[ghaff]

And by and large people learn the bare minimum needed in order to do those things. Certainly most of us have a pretty vague notion of what all exactly happens behind the scenes when we dial a phone. If the call doesn't go through as planned we might have some idea that the cell reception is bad or something like that. But we're probably not in a position to debug what's wrong in any significant way.

[sidlls]

How so? I don't understand this analogy at all. UI/UX design changes frequently involves changing the appearance and possibly location and even functionality of familiar things. If we changed the lettering in a phonebook, or even merely on the cover, to be, say, klingon font, we shouldn't expect the typical user to reach for that phonebook, yet essentially what the GP is suggesting is that it's sufficient for a user to understand the "phonebook concept" and users can learn the implementation details trivially based on that.

[u801e]

> I don't understand this analogy at all. UI/UX design changes frequently involves changing the appearance and possibly location and even functionality of familiar things.

And that's the fundamental problem because that doesn't take into account people who are familiar with how a particular application works. For example, if you compare a tape recorder, VCR, a DVD player, and a streaming service where you can play, pause, forward or rewind, it's essentially the same interface and that has been the case since the '70s.

It's similar to dialing a phone with a touch-tone system versus dialing a number on a smartphone (other than having to press a call button). The only major change in the UI was when the transition between rotary dial to touch-tone took place. Automobiles are another example (placement of the brake, accelerator, shifter, turn signal stalk, headlamp controls, etc (though things do differ from model to model to some extent).

So why do we keep changing the interface of computer applications every so often such that proficient users have to relearn how to do things? The reason appears to be that we're chasing a goal of making the UI more intuitive so that someone who hasn't used it before can figure it out, but that never seems to happen.

But, if people just learn how to use the existing UI, then they can use the application and other applications like it because of a standard interface.

> If we changed the lettering in a phonebook, or even merely on the cover, to be, say, klingon font, we shouldn't expect the typical user to reach for that phonebook, yet essentially what the GP is suggesting is that it's sufficient for a user to understand the "phonebook concept" and users can learn the implementation details trivially based on that.

A more accurate analogy would be to change the order of the listings in the phonebook to start from most common names and end in least common ones instead of being in alphabetical order because of the belief it would help new users find the information they're looking for faster compared to the traditional interface.

[satvikpendem]

That's exactly true. People don't care about the means, only the ends.