[chongli]

Let's not underestimate neuroplasticity. Children can figure out almost anything. If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent.

Anecdotally, my 70-year-old father and several of my elderly uncles & aunts had a much easier time figuring out Classic Mac OS. Modern macOS and iOS are much more complicated. While they still use these systems, they do so in a much more superficial way and they tend to exhibit what (for lack of a better term) I would call a "fear response." That is, when attempting to do a novel task they refuse to experiment and instead resort to asking for help immediately. Classic Mac OS was much better designed to encourage experimentation and avoided surprising the user (in a negative way) as much as possible.

[chrisseaton]

> If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent.

A second ago the test for intuitiveness was 'a kid'.

[chongli]

You can take my post as disagreeing with the GP as well on the kid test. Kids have been the ones figuring out computers and doing tech support for their older relatives essentially since the dawn of home computing. If a kid can’t figure out how to use your computer then it’s probably irreparably broken (kids figure out how to fix computers too).

[srvmshr]

Here is a screenshot from my MBP which used to run 10.7 until two years ago :). I would anyday prefer these over the flatter icons.

https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR

[chrisseaton]

But is that just based on what you're used to rather than what is intuitively better?

[jjoonathan]

You'll find a lot of people, myself included, that point to the 10.6 era as peak OSX aesthetics. I personally prefer "steel and grass," some people prefer space, the specifics vary person-to-person but a lot of people agree on the trend. Skeuomorphism has an uncomfortably high skill floor, but it has an astronomical skill ceiling. With Apple, it shows. It really shows.

In contrast, flat design has a skill ceiling so low that it can turn the most creatively bankrupt troglodyte of a non-artist into a hunchback.

[chrisseaton]

> a lot of people, myself included, that point to the 10.6 era as peak OSX aesthetics

Just guessing... is that what you grew up with?

[jjoonathan]

No, growing up was OS9 with lime green highlights on a lime green iMac playing Bugdom. I'd argue that it was still better than flat design, but I would have to concede that nostalgia goggles might play a role in blinding me to how garish it all was. In contrast, the "I love 10.6" crowd extends considerably beyond my cohort in both directions. It's pretty clearly a skeuomorphism thing.

One thing I'll give flat design: it's better than the Fischer Price design that happened between the era of skeuomorphism and present day. Also, it brought dark mode mainstream.

[wruza]

I also prefer 10.6, growing up with DOS 3.0 and then a list of OSes and apps too large to fit in the margin.

[labster]

No, the old icons are objectively better. I’ve used iPhones since the iPhone 1 and I still keep the original as a music player. I have to hunt down apps on current iOS but astonishingly they all look somewhat different in the old days, which means they are easier to find. It’s easier to find my way around an old iOS I use once a month than one I use every hour.

[chrisseaton]

> No, the old icons are objectively better.

Do you mean you're used to the old icons?

My seven-year-old wouldn't recognise them.

[labster]

No, I mean I’m used to the new icons because I use them constantly and yet the old ones provide far superior UX.

Of course your seven year old wouldn’t recognize icons on a ten year old OS. What are you, twelve?

Seriously, go put the iOS icons for Phone, FaceTime, Messages, and Numbers in your bottom dock in a random order, and see how easy it is to use.

[laputan_machine]

Are you a UI Researcher? If you are, your approach to gathering research by rebuking everyone else's opinions seems less than optimal. FWIW I prefer skeumorphic design. Flat design won because it made scaling everything easier. It doesn't need to be this way now that SVG support has become widespread

[KptMarchewa]

Tons of people below 40 don't have the same instincts as you do.

[nine_k]

Yes, it refers to well-recognizable imagery from outside the computer world.

[swiftcoder]

Half the "well-recognisable" imagery seems to be of things that are long gone from the world. How many kids these days have ever seen a typewriter, a rotary-dial phone, or a point-and-shoot camera? The "save icon" has long overtaken the actual floppy disk. Many folks are even too young to know that the folder icon is modelled on physical file folders.

[chrisseaton]

But kids pick it up fine without these clues.

[jjoonathan]

Hamburgers and hieroglyphs: this does not bring joy.

Pretty objects: this activates the neurons.

[chrisseaton]

I don't really know what you're trying to say, but my child seems absolutely able to pick up modern UI design, including the hamburger icon and others, and use it very happily and with joy.

[srvmshr]

Not sure why the fixation on "kids pick it up just fine". The OS caters to a wide variety of people. If kids start with these design elements, by observing what parents do, they will do just fine. A similar argument can exist for why CLI when most devs can simply use graphical apps with same functionality. There is a subjective choice to what tool is most comfortable to use.

The reason this MBP was running 10.7 is because my elderly relative found it jarring with the new iconography and context menus (hamburger icon, share icon etc). This MBP was hard reset to its initial OS. For many people, including my relative, the glass effects and flatter icons were simply too high of cognitive confusion to get mundane stuff working.

[chrisseaton]

> Not sure why the fixation on "kids pick it up just fine".

Well that was the original claim in the thread.

> by observing what parents do

My daughter seems to pick things up by experimentation rather than by observation, and material design works for this.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

I’m not sure that giving the UI to the elderly is a truer test. Whatever difficulty they encounter, it’s just as likely that it could be because a previous experience with a different OS is shaping their expectations, or many other factors. It does seem that “time from 0 to successfully performing a novel task” is a good metric among many.

[srvmshr]

Classic designs were touted as "something you could give to a grandma and a professional alike" in magazines of heydays :)