Maintaining effective UX while improving user familiarity

[manicottiK]

As the "fighting" continues over hamburgers and other UI and UX changes, can we have a constructive discussion on ways that Microsoft or third party developers might 1) increase user familiarity and initial comfort, 2) maintain an effective user experience, and 3) provide some form of consistency (logical or representational) among the size platforms (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone)?

I'm not looking for "hamburgers suck" or "Metro sucks," but rather creative and constructive ideas followed by rational critiques and suggestions about them.

 

[Harrie-S]

I am not sure of this includes what you were thinking of.
But I saw the CALCULATOR and the ALARMS apps. I think that this kind of "native" apps decrease the need of "a lot" of 3rd party apps.
Or in other words will windows 10 decrease the app gap "problem"?

 

[Legoboyii]

As the "fighting" continues over hamburgers and other UI and UX changes, can we have a constructive discussion on ways that Microsoft or third party developers might 1) increase user familiarity and initial comfort, 2) maintain an effective user experience, and 3) provide some form of consistency (logical or representational) among the size platforms (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone)?

I'm not looking for "hamburgers suck" or "Metro sucks," but rather creative and constructive ideas followed by rational critiques and suggestions about them.

They should just explain why they are going this route and putting hamburger buttons everywhere instead of just shoving this change down everyone's throats. They are really bad at explaining why, they either do it or don't usually...

 

[manicottiK]

I am not sure of this includes what you were thinking of. But [the new] "native" apps decrease the need of "a lot" of 3rd party apps. Or in other words will windows 10 decrease the app gap "problem"?

It's true that some of the new apps are more feature rich, but that isn't what I meant. I think that I'm looking for discussions on UI/design patterns that will help the phone remain effective, build cohesion with the tablet/laptop/desktop side of the platform, and invite new users in.

While I like Metro and think that it's effective, others disagree. We -- and the development community -- don't even yet agree on what a hamburger menu is for. With something that important unsettled, figuring out where to place it or what goes inside it is putting the cart before the horse.

Let me ask two key questions: what should go in a hamburger and how accessible do those things need to be? Some say that hamburgers are for settings, some say it's for seldom-used things. If so, why do we give such infrequently used things some prominence on the screen and why give it a full gesture (i.e., swipe in from the side)? However, if you are one who thinks that the hamburger should contain a major navigation for the app, then giving it a prime piece of real estate, making it persistent across all pages, or giving it a gesture makes sense -- but it also means rethinking the entire navigational model of virtually all WP (and some W8) apps built so far.

What I want in this thread is some general agreement on what a new app should be so that it's instantly familiar to new users (whether we like it or not, many folks know that the "three line thing" is a button that makes more choices appear and they look for it at the top left), that doesn't crush the usability effectiveness that we WP users have had for some time, and that has a way of transitioning from small screen to big and from fingers to mice.

 

[anon(5325154)]

Let me ask two key questions: what should go in a hamburger...

Personally I like all-beef patty, lettuce, onion and tomatoes... (sorry, couldn't resist)

Joking aside, for your question: 3) provide some form of consistency (logical or representational) among the size platforms (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone)?

As I have suggested in another thread, the answer is Continuum. Configurations where the primary means of input are keyboard and mouse (i.e. desktop, laptop), they should use UI elements that make sense in that mode. On the other hand, for configurations where the primary means of input is touch (i.e. tablet, phone), while the look-and-feel should be similar to the desktop mode, they should have a set of UI elements that make sense there.

The beauty of Continuum is that it can tie these two seemingly inconsistent modes of operation into one cohesive experience. We've already seen the beginnings of this when you undock a hybrid laptop and transition it into tablet mode. You'll see the start menu grow to full screen and the spacing in the taskbar widen, yet it still feels like you are using the same OS with the same design language. This is what needs to happen with other controls such as the hamburger menu to achieve consistency without sacrificing usability across size platforms.

 

[EBUK]

I've nothing against hamburger menus, and I think Metro works well on the phone. But, if we are going to have hamburger menus, why must they be at the top of the screen? Can't we have them at the bottom for ease of access for one hand use?

 

[manicottiK]

If the app bar, which in WP8 consists of a transparent "..." button on the left, up to four buttons in the middle, and a visible "..." button on the left were changed to be hamburger, zero-to-four buttons, ellipsis, would that work for you? There's no reason why the coming Office-style apps have to give the ellipsis to the "show ribbon" function -- they can simply use one of the four buttons for that (just as the current Respond button in the email app displays a popup choice of response types (reply, reply all, or forward). That kind of change, on small-screened devices, groups functions and doesn't make touch targets any smaller than they are now.

Thoughts?

 

[manicottiK]

Another key question is should Microsoft be optimizing design for visual consistency across form factors (desktop, tablet, phone) or for usability consistency (adapting layout to device holding patterns)?