I forget the term for it, but it's exactly like Terms and Conditions. Always expect the user to solve any puzzle put to them using the least amount of energy/effort. It's quite honestly not worth it to anyone to go through the work of securing their information/data/whatever until it's actually genuinely at risk or they have lost something in the past. Until then it's an impedance and an annoyance that makes them very unhappy.
Once something like this happens it's impressive how much cognitive dissonance there is behind the excuses those very same people make or their claims that not enough was done to protect them. Don't get me wrong, these individuals were horribly victimized and it's not ok, but we can't allow ourselves to be satisfied by just blaming the company, especially if they otherwise provided the tools that would have kept the account secure. We can only realistically expect the companies we entrust our data to be responsible for making it possible for us to secure our data and not leaking it through other systemic failures. If we choose to shortcut it then it's our responsibility to learn from that and do better next time. We can't blame anyone involved here for doing what they should otherwise be motivated/expected to do. Apple provided the tools to protect the accounts, and as far as we know didn't allow them to be otherwise compromised. The victims set up their accounts in a way that they could easily access/recover them in the future (honestly, it's now required to remember around 20+ account passwords to manage our lives and it's only getting worse) regardless if they knew the risks or not. Security education is out there and it's as loud as we could hope to get it, people just won't internalize it until the risk is tangible. We can demand that companies like Apple, but it won't actually improve anything if people can't be bothered to use them or more importantly find it WAY more inconvenient and seek ways to bypass them in whatever way possible just to get them out of the way.
It's a shame that this is blowing up for Apple as if it's all Apple's fault, but maybe some good can come from it.
I wound up nearly writing a book in response to this so I'll try to sum it up.
I agree with most of what you've said in this thread, but...
> Why have a centralized legal roadblock to new product development?
Rephrased: Why have a centralized catalog of discoveries and inventions available to the public that afford the contributors temporary exclusive license?
The idea behind patents was to counter very real problems created by the failure of markets to balance out the incentive to invent and innovate with the incentive to make those discoveries publicly available so they can inspire or cornerstone further discoveries. If they weren't published they were hoarded as trade secrets and were at risk of being lost forever over time.
Did the inception of patents account for or even acknowledge the kind of market control they're being used and traded for today? The lauded free market has turned patents into a commodity, possibly by expectation, but it's clear that this activity is relatively recent and seems to me due to changes in how the scope of their exclusive license grants is being interpreted/abused. Would we be better off assuming that the publication of discoveries would lead to closely aligned derivative products that would create a competitive environment or should we be generous with the licenses granted "inventors" so there's greater incentive to share those inventions?
Personally I think we're just seeing the beginning of what effects doing the later can have.
I'm pretty sure we've already seen cases that prove that it doesn't, perhaps not enough to write a blog post about, but they are definitely out there (iOS 7's dramatic increase in the use of motion comes immediately to mind). I think it's a dangerous sentiment to promote in such a generalized sense and designers/developers need to be very cognizant of the value any animation provides to the UX. It's far too easy to justify the abuse/overuse of motion/animation, making any animation noticeable to "delight"/"tell a story" which contradicts any functional reason for implementing it.
I found the post overall to be pretty superficial. There was only one paragraph spent on describing the function/purpose of "motion design" and it placed far more emphasis on it's more marketable aspects than on it's utility to "educate your users about how to interact with particular elements".
"Motion design" is just one UI tool and one that really didn't need to be pulled out and promoted in this way IMHO as it's always been an essential tool in great software when used properly. I think it would have been great if it wasn't an "implicit announcement" but explored in detail what good "motion design" entails. It's easy to get carried away with it, and introducing motion with appropriate intent can be what makes an otherwise good application into a great one, but let's not pretend it's magic dust that can turn cole to diamonds.
Sorry people are downvoting you. I agree heartily with your reasonable dissent. This push shows every sign of being a capricious fetish and a trend. If it ever becomes notable, it will be as the nadir of a cycle heading back toward "Simplicity."
The examples in the page are utterly inessential and confusing - The back arrow rotating? Why did the arrow spin? Are there things in those directions? Can I move in those directions? No. It's clearly just because it can. It's not meaningful.
The Twitter box that spins, falls halfway, stops in mid-air then fades away when you click it? Saccharine. What is supposed to be happening? Is it "falling?" Why does it stop halfway? Why did it start rotating while it fell?
The vocabulary is all wrong.
A printer icon that gets bigger as it appears? Is it moving toward me? Is it inflatable?
A heart that fades away? Is love lost? What the hell is going on?
How can Google expect to be a design leader when they're luring people with vinegar?
I don't think these examples provide meaning - they merely grab attention as human vision has an irresistible response to movement.
And what's wrong with jump cuts? Do you suppose Hollywood and independent movie makers use them for a reason? How about human eyeballs, why do you suppose they dart around from object to object? And how about walls and doorways in architecture - why are rooms separate from one another?
This is clearly just an attempt to mimic Apple on a superficial layer.
Precisely. These are all very good examples of what to be careful of in designing any transformations or transitions. There are however, lots of incredibly useful and well designed transformations that actually enhance the overall experience and usability of an interface especially when used in conjunction with each other, fad or not.
I wasn't trying to dismiss it as a whole, but I did want to encourage the decisions to include it to be deliberate and thoughtful. That may have rubbed a few people the wrong way and I'm ok with that. I was hoping to start a reasonable dialog of where designers and developers should make an attempt to draw the line so that the end result doesn't become the equivalent of "now available in 3D!" so I really appreciate your response.
Spot on! So much onanastic talk on "flourish" and "delight", and so little concrete evidence on which of these expensive gimmicks, if any, effectively guide user atention and reduce confusion between screens, or the exact opposite.
> which of these expensive gimmicks, if any, effectively guide user attention and reduce confusion between screens,
I'll give out one hint free: The reptilian (and hence retro-human) mind developed to perceive each room or space as a state apart from the others. We have a second level of cognition which ties nearby rooms together and therefore an innate ability to learn the layout of a building from each room. Consider the predominance of Zelda-style maps in the emotional memory of this generation. Consider the dog who seems to enter every room happy for the first time.
The webspace - in this case, that is to say hyperlinks and pages - ruptures this layout through jump-cutting between nearby spaces. A simple amendment to its construction would "match its impedance" to established mental abilities. And if you continue this metaphor, you'll see additional forms. The typical smartphones' home menus, such as Android, follow this to an extent, but really, it's only the beginning.
Getting distracted by matters such as properly interpolating frames and writing portable GPU code to do this is fun and profitable, but if you want epic design you have to step back and understand the sources of these ideas.
That twitter box I built is unrelated to the post and an old relic I've had on my site for a while. Needs to be redone given my very recent (this month) redesign :)
I was trained as an EE and got my Master's degree much later in life, studying art and design.
One of the key differences between design and engineering I learned is that people _only_ respond to what is right in front of them. (except some engineers). This is a radically different approach from e.g. "Release early, release often."
If you show people a seed and tell them it will be a plant, they'll say, "Yes, but if that seed were red, I might like it more."
These experiences taught me to keep my art and design demos under wraps until they were much, much closer to reality. It also taught me to keep my presentations congruent with no out-of-place elements. If you bill yourself as a chicken farmer and a moose walks into the frame, people won't know what you're talking about.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons designs-as-presented often appear a bit oversimplistic. It's a form of communication which doesn't tolerant nuance and irony very well. Remember how poorly the Project ARA (modular smart phone) demos came out?
I wish you luck in your ventures, sir, but I'm seeing the human canon ball rushing to put his helmet on, on the way out of the barrel.
Which part? Andreessen taking his anger out on Snowden or the NSA's tampering? To the latter, yes, yes I do. If for no other reason than the consequences of such tampering are obvious if ever discovered and nothing ever stays secret forever. They made the decision and we can only assume they did it knowing full well what would happen should it ever come to light, leak or not. Would things have been much different if this was discovered 5 years from now? How about 10? Can we assume they would stop tampering with equipment at any point without disclosure?
IMHO no agency that is being funded to fulfill American public interests should be making choices that override, or put at serious risk, the needs of the public just to make their job more efficient/effective. Even if we accept reinterpretations of what public "needs" might be, this was a decision who's risks would be extremely costly should disclosure ever occur and it shouldn't have happened, perhaps even outweighing the benefits (to the public) they offered, which we may never get a straight answer as to what they were.
I was really excited to try this out, but then I hit the requirement to provide contact information just to download the library. This is, for good or bad, always off putting to me. I don't consider the need to collect certain information bad in itself as long as it's reasonable or at least justified. In this case however, there's a distinct lack of communication as to why the information is being collected and that makes me wary (it's also fairly common recently so this isn't the only offender). I can make all sorts of my own assumptions as to why the developers would need that information, but after being bitten a few times by folks who have been a little less than transparent with their actual use of that information I'd prefer not to rely on my own assumptions.
Some feedback based on my experience (take with a healthy dose of salt):
- The quickstart menu item is the only one that takes you away from the main page which interrupts the experience when using this particular style of pagination. The way back to the main page from the quickstart page is also not particularly obvious (just a back arrow within the logo would be sufficient).
- A big red flag is the counter counting how many gestures have been "tracked" leading me to believe that there's some sort of phone home going on which, all things being equal, doesn't make too much sense for a gesture library (unless some explanation is provided).
- Another big red flag is no mention of why the need for a full name is required in addition to the email, or why the email is necessary for the download (It's mentioned that it will be sent to the email if the user scrolls down to the 2nd form, but not in the first "page").
- No obvious way to provide feedback is immediately available (I assume it's provided in whatever email communication is made or within the library itself).
Intercepting the traffic coming out of the app shows me its making api requests to http://api.parse.com — so, basically, I would imagine it's sending some kind of usage data (can't yet decipher the headers as I don't have time) back to Parse.com, which is allowing it to 'phone home'.
Also... this is happening with every motion gesture attempt.
the tap counting is a way to capture anonymous data around the tap, wave and knock to help determine discrepancies between different forms. Thanks for note about the email at the top. Both the pod and sample app are available on our github.com/kiwiwearbles page :) Full name is required for the draw.
Personally, I think this sentiment cheapens his decision and makes less of what he's really done here. I think what he's done is pretty heroic, at least in modern terms, and something that very few, possibly none, of us would be willing to pull the trigger on.
Wether he's made, or is still making, a fortune is besides the point. He made the hard choice and has made it clear to everyone who's asked that he is all the better for it. This more than anything else is a powerful and important example that we may or may not see again. If nothing else he has highlighted the need for more empathy in software. His focus seems to be in bringing joy and entertainment to people and doesn't appear to have any ulterior motive. This is rare and we should be celebrating it rather than dismiss it by the fact that he has been fortunate enough to actually be successful from it (something that is also extremely rare).
The 'heroic' attribution is thrown around a lot today, and few deserve it less than a man who decided to no longer offer a silly game for sale as a result of idiot-generated controversy.
Addiction by itself is absolutely not a choice. Whatever it is that someone tried or was coerced to try that eventually resulted in that addiction may or may not have been a choice. A person may indeed, with appropriate support and resources be able to break their addiction, but they remain afflicted with it throughout the rest of their lives. Why do you think most people who were once addicted to alcohol must remain eternally vigilant to never touch the stuff again?
Playing the "no one's pointing a gun to your head" card and claiming it is therefore "non-coersive" in defense of targeting and manipulating addictive behavior may very well be profitable but it's delusional and downright dishonest to everyone, including yourself, to think it isn't exploitive and conducive to serious personal and social issues. You need look no further in the historical record to see how this plays out than the tobacco and alcohol industry.
There are quite literally thousands of documents that disagree with you on that, especially when it comes to physical addiction. Your response demonstrates a misunderstanding as to what addiction is, even if you happen to have experienced it first hand.
If you're really interested in continuing to debate whether your perspective of addiction should be adopted by others feel free to search Google for "addiction" or "is addiction a lifelong problem" or if that's something you don't have time for start with the first Google result I pulled up: http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/subabuse99/chap2.htm
There are plenty of other, better, sources that will provide more thorough descriptions of both the physical and psychological characteristics of addition. Practically all of them acknowledge that addiction, once attained, does not grant an individual the luxury of choice as you entertain it. One can certainly choose to seek the tools to control the impulses of addiction through willpower (be it internally or externally inspired), but that will never mean they can choose to make the underlying addiction go away and never bother them again at any point for the rest of their lives.
As someone who is grateful for your research and analysis, thank you, but filing a bug report is going to be WAY more effective, at least for iOS. https://bugreport.apple.com/ will get the ball rolling, even if it's been filed already. The more reports they get, the more likely they'll look at fixing the issue, especially if good use cases are provided.
I think you underestimate the impact these particular reviews are having for some, even if it's a minority.
Apple has as much incentive here as they have with any customer complaints. If it's important enough to developers and genuinely impacts their product (aka products Apple benefits from in more ways than one) they know it will effect the relationship they have with Apple. Like with anything however, the problem needs to communicated. The more people who communicate the same issue, the more likely it will get attention. https://bugreport.apple.com/ is the place to start. Not blogs, not HN, not Twitter or anything else.
If you want a problem you're having solved, start with filing a report in as detailed, and polite, a way as possible. Using blogs to bitch and complain about how Apple is ignoring an "obvious" issue, or how stupid they were to do things in such-and-such a way, is essentially counterproductive and being part of the problem rather than the solution. Using them to explain the issue, get a discussion around it going, coming up with solutions that work for you and fellow developers, and get additional reports filed, enhances the ability for Apple to respond with a genuine solution sooner rather than later. Sometimes they see the blogs and articles, but I'm sure it's more often they don't, so the trend I've seen over the last several years of vitriolic blogs being the first and only mention of a problem has, IMHO, really been disservice to the whole community.
It's always taken much longer than I would personally like or understand, but with enough bug reports filed on a given issue I do see traction and changes come later on down the road. They may not always be the changes I explicitly requested or expect, but they do resolve the problems in one way or another.
Once something like this happens it's impressive how much cognitive dissonance there is behind the excuses those very same people make or their claims that not enough was done to protect them. Don't get me wrong, these individuals were horribly victimized and it's not ok, but we can't allow ourselves to be satisfied by just blaming the company, especially if they otherwise provided the tools that would have kept the account secure. We can only realistically expect the companies we entrust our data to be responsible for making it possible for us to secure our data and not leaking it through other systemic failures. If we choose to shortcut it then it's our responsibility to learn from that and do better next time. We can't blame anyone involved here for doing what they should otherwise be motivated/expected to do. Apple provided the tools to protect the accounts, and as far as we know didn't allow them to be otherwise compromised. The victims set up their accounts in a way that they could easily access/recover them in the future (honestly, it's now required to remember around 20+ account passwords to manage our lives and it's only getting worse) regardless if they knew the risks or not. Security education is out there and it's as loud as we could hope to get it, people just won't internalize it until the risk is tangible. We can demand that companies like Apple, but it won't actually improve anything if people can't be bothered to use them or more importantly find it WAY more inconvenient and seek ways to bypass them in whatever way possible just to get them out of the way.
It's a shame that this is blowing up for Apple as if it's all Apple's fault, but maybe some good can come from it.