I couldn't agree more. I once had a really interesting conversation with an accessibility person who said in passing "accessibility is for everyone". He didn't make a big point of it, but it really stuck with me, and I'm always reminded of it when I see things like this. I've been working in the digital world since the late 90s, keep everything up to date, have a recent iPhone etc. etc. etc. and I'm stil occasionally stumped by things like how to turn on repeat in Apple Music on my phone.
Got a new android phone (i think it was huawei), couldnt answer calls. I was thinking I as always has to press or slide the green phone icon, but actually had to move the center grey icon on the green phone icon.
I was planning to reply to your parent comment that discoverability has always been an issue for me when I work with Apple devices. Whenever I use my wife's iPhone or Mac for a couple of minutes, I get frustrated because everything is all over the place, none of the apps work well together, and everything is hidden.
Back on Android, (or Windows, or Linux), it makes sense, whereas she loses her way. Just to point out, a part of discoverability I guess is familiarity with the underlying principles the UI follows as well.
To add two more points to this. I think there's one thing platforms in general got very right: simple touch controls. My one year old is discovering that sliding fingers across a screen, touching and pinching (the three basics) does stuff. Hidden menus, press-and-hold, and so on is secondary. Second, icons are something which is wrong. You need to guess their initial meaning, and translate badly in conversations, like recently with my mom: "press the rectangle with four arrows pointing out of it" (fullscreen or whatever it was).
"Here's an image, guess what is supposed to happen when you click it, also i will give you no info on hover over -- you must push me and then try to guess what i did!" (btw if there's a bug or a configuration state in the app that you or i am unaware of -- you might've pushed me at the wrong time and i might've let you do that)
This is a bad example. The floppy disk icon means "save" and has now for very nearly as long as floppy disk were in common use. It's the same as a "tape" icon means something to do with video even though video cassettes were only a common thing for 10 years.
The Apple II was the first computer that was widespread enough for people to have seen that had a floppy disk. It came out in 1977. Apple dropped the floppy disk in 1998 (21 years later), so it's been 22 years since it was standard in Macs.
Even allowing for some switching time, it has meant "save" for longer than it was a common physical object.
Awesome question. Replacing it would be worse of course (because then not even the old timers understand it). One thing i liked about google docs?? Was automatic save, maybe this is the trend. If you take a 5mb picture on your smartphone there is no question do you want to save it. Space is cheap.
But if i really have to come up with something, I'd say green arrow pointing up. Meaning 'upload to your (own private) cloud'
I appreciated the Windows Phone 7/8 and early Win10 approach to compact icons which was/is: Just have a button next to the icons that expands them to show labels when you press it. Unfortunately later redesigns to Win10 apps seemed to drift away from these patterns towards just having unlabeled icons everywhere.
Windows 10 introduced the navigation bar, which is essentially a vertical version of the Windows Phone application bar, just using a "three lines" icon as the "show labels" button instead of an ellipsis. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls...
The start menu and inbox mail app use this control, for example.
> Just to point out, a part of discoverability I guess is familiarity with the underlying principles the UI follows as well.
This is one reason why UI patents are not a good idea. When different platforms are forced to adopt differing UI patterns because they can't do what their competitors are doing, you get the current mess.
Speaking of Android, I used my phone as a hotspot for over a year. When I dropped my phone and the screen broke, while I waited for a replacement screen to DIY, I was able to use ADB to navigate to the assistive tools that would screen read. With that I was able to toggle on and off some settings relade to keeping the hotspot on and churning.
Accessibility can help normal people in extraordinary situations too.
I had actually thought Apple might have removed the Repeat functionality when I upgraded iOS a few years ago; when someone else showed me how to do it--which involved scrolling the entire app to find some new hidden features--it felt more like a prank than real software :/.
Accessibility makes things easier not only for those who need it, but, somewhat surprisingly, also for quite a lot of people who wouldn’t normally think of themselves as even needing or wanting any help. This is usually referred to as the Curb Cut Effect, and has been extensively discussed.
With examples given like curb cuts for wheelchairs helping everyone, and OXO brand kitchen utensils meant for impaired hands just being better for everyone.
