The age of snarky UI
75 points by edwardloveall
75 points by edwardloveall
My pet peeve is any website or app that suggests "maybe later" instead of "no" as an option:
Do you want to enable $feature?
- [X] Yes
- [ ] Maybe later
Not only this gives the app permission to repeat the request in the future, but it also sounds snarky to me, as if the app knew what I want better than I do. (I would be fine with "Maybe later" as a third option!)
As someone pointed out on Tumblr, it indicates a very sketchy understanding of "consent"
Extremely annoying and problematic. Every single time, it's a subtle reminder that we are not the masters of our computers. Reboot? Yes, now; or let's schedule a time. Refusal is prohibited. We don't get to decide, we get to choose among the limited set of options they give us. Such is the essence of "user experience"...
UX fills awkward moments when AI fails. It brings “user illusion” to a level where users have to believe that there is no computer, no algorithms, no input. It is achieved by providing direct paths to anything a user might want to achive, by scripting the user and by making an effort on audiovisual and aesthetic levels to leave the computer behind.
We will inevitably act through products, a story will be told, but the product itself creates and shapes it. The designer becomes an ‘author’ creating rather than representing experiences.
Experiences are shaped, created and staged.
On vine, when commenting on another user’s video, you are not presented with an empty input form, but are overwriting the suggestion “say something nice.”
On Tumblr, a “close this window” button becomes “Oh, fine.” I click it and hear the UX expert preaching: “Don’t let them just close the window, there is no ‘window,’ no ‘cancel’ and no ‘OK.’
UsersPeople should greet the new feature, they should experience satisfaction with every update!”
Obnoxious pattern. Looking at you Signal https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4590
Never owning a car with a huge display instead of physical buttons, is a mountain I am willing to die on.
Suggested reading: A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar.
I'm in the same camp. I usually turn off the "media system" anyway, and if a car is unusable with the screen turned off then I'm not buying the car.
Dark UX patterns and negging are user hostile. In some circumstances I dare say that “snarky” is not strong enough language; it is the age of abandoning principles and succumbing to the profits promised by an inhumane technimony.
Thank you for clearly showing the healthy response when it’s possible — the “Delete App” button.
"Consider taking a break" … I’m annoyed because of the condescending tone
Maybe my non-nativeness is shining though, but I don't consider that suggestion condescending?
I agree it'd be better to say what they're basing the suggestion on in addition to what's currently shown so you know what caused it, though.
I think it's a mindset (if I am on the same wavelength) and it's not explicitly stated, but her complaint is the system immediately assumes she is driving recklessly because she is not staying between the road lines when in reality she is keeping the system safe from some nasty jolts. Roads in spring in New England tend to be full of frost heaves and potholes.
The one about turning off reminders really bugged me, because the message is not only literally true, I think it's meant to be taken at face value, and intended to be helpful. Think of all the complaints you've read about apps giving you useless reminders! (A typical Dutch person would never have this reaction…)
There's a dysfunctional communication pattern between humans when one of the participants has some degree of ASD. The more neurotypical person will "read between the lines" and assume the other person has a hidden emotional state or intention that isn't really there. This person is doing exactly that with the reminder message.
Tangent: I had that concept in mind because yesterday I read this article (caution: AI-assisted) about how LLMs do the same thing, probably because they're RLHF-trained by neurotypical humans to be "helpful".
A recurring experience: I say something explicit, the other person hears something implicit. They respond to the implicit thing. I point out that the implicit thing is not what I said. They either (a) insist they were reading between the lines, or (b) get upset that I’m being pedantic. The conversation never recovers.
Some missing context is that Duolingo does engage in snark. It’s part of the brand. If you enable the home screen reminder widget the app provides, it displays increasingly unhinged reminder images the closer you get to midnight without doing a lesson.
I don't see this difference between the reminders one and the others. Each of them is about the computer thinking it knows better than the user. The author isn't the one reading between the lines in any instance.
What? She literally says what she thinks the "undertone" is after every message. What is an "undertone" but reading between the lines?
The undertone: You are lazy and we’ve given up on you.
Why isn't the undertone "we're sorry we're bothering you, so we're going to stop"?
Okay, she's not the one reading between the lines first, the developers are. As your quote says, once that's happened, the conversation never recovers.
we're sorry we're bothering you, so we're going to stop
Sending a notification saying you're going to stop sending notifications? Just continue sending the notifications. Trust the user will turn them off if they don't want them.
It's a good point! And my own between-the-lines projection onto the developers is that they've read so many complaints about app notifications that they've concluded most people must not know how to turn them off. It's hard to win at this game unless you just don't say anything…
I think that’s exactly it, the system decided that the driver doesn’t need to know why they should take a break, they should just trust that the car knows best. So maybe patronizing rather than condescending is more accurate
The Hyundai I currently drive sometimes... seems to be a good car, but the software is atrocious.
just from the top of my head
The only thing that reliably works is connecting a phone and playing music, I am surprised
The TOS on startup makes me crazy. I looked into disabling it but it requires actually adding to the wiring (as of a few years ago anyway). The nanny state stuff is bad in general: my wife and I both have driver settings saved; you can only swap to one of the settings while in park and your hand cannot be depressing the button to release the shifter at the time or the settings will not adjust. Bear in mind all of the things involved in adjusting to a driver setting are things I can still do one-by-one at 90 mph while weaving in and out of traffic running from the cops; I just can't have them happen for me as I am leaving my garage.
I actually modified my car to deal with such annoyances. Annoying beeps? Cut the wires to whatever sensor was triggering it. Cut the wires to whatever device was beeping too for good measure. Peace achieved.
The hostility of corporations is such that I wouldn't be surprised if car makers started adversarially developing ways to prevent this in the future. Maybe one day cutting out things like a caveman will not be enough. Maybe they'll make it so the car complains even harder if the sensor is gone. Maybe they'll make it so the car doesn't even start in that case. Maybe one day we'll need to fake the sensor data instead. Build a little thingy that just plugs in and reassures the car that everything is alright so it stops nagging us about things.
Ugh, I hate "snarky" prompts and messages like this.
Cars are some of the worst offenders. My current car says something like "take over wheel" when I'm holding the damn wheel! On my last vacation we had a car that continuously beeped at me saying "focus on driving", which was exactly what I was doing until the car broke my focus to look at the dash to see the stupid message. Also, such messages appear for too short a period, sometimes by the time I'm able to look at it (because I have to focus on the traffic situation for a few more seconds, FFS), it's already gone, adding to the frustration.
I would love to know if anyone actually measured the results in a good study and if these kinds of things have a positive outcome. Personally, whenever I see one of these (and I'm a very calm person), I feel aggression towards the app, the company, and anyone who thought it's a good idea. Typically it results in an immediate tab close / app uninstall / reporting the email as a scam. Is it actually worth it for them?
I think it's the evolution of a far older malaise where signs say "thank you for..." when they mean "please do...". if I could wave a magic wand and make every such sign silently crumble into dust I would.
Or when a company stops offering a basic convenience and says "we are sorry for the inconvenience"
Surprised no mention of the LLM West coast Project Manager personality.
I can’t quite figure it out. Passive aggressive, corporate sycophantic but with an undertone of kill all humans.
i wouldn’t really have lumped LLMs/LLMspeak with this phenomenon, because no one is actually authoring the condescending text that the LLM outputs…
but then, we might consider that there is some nonzero amount of condescending/snarky material in the training set, and maybe the issues aren’t quite so distinct?
My hot take is that no company should try to sound “more human”
It pisses me off. We are not friends.
My Mazda CX-5 does one of these -- after you've been driving for an hour or so it suddenly sounds a loud chime and flashes "consider taking a break!" Every time this happens the chime really startles me, and I would be surprised if this hasn't caused at least one accident somewhere.
The age of seeing the user as a tool to advance your company metrics, rather than an entity you want to serve. Imagine how well you could hit your metrics if users would just stop doing things wrong.
Author complains about how the car warns them to stay in lane. I wonder how they would feel about those cars that intentionally steer the wheel when it feels the driver is not paying attention.
Mine doesn't. It's not expensive enough. Fortunately it has ESP.
Their car could do this for them. They have it disabled obviously since they apparently consider driving not into their lane acceptable...?