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Scott Jenson
19a1def6c76345f4a23fc410a64cc761593494f9c528cd018f454d70714ab044
Product Strategy Advisor to Mastodon Core team. Previously UX Strategy: Apple System 7, Newton, and Apple Human Interface guidelines. UX Director at Symbian, manager Mobile UX at Google, creative director frog design San Francisco. Head of Product for two startups. Returned to Google to lead the Physical Web in Chrome and explore multiple UX research projects in Android. Left 2024, now advising part time. mastodon.social: 2017-2022

I see this type of #UX mistake all the time. People use a control in the wrong location and have to create high energy signs to 'fix it'.

The first image has the button effectively *behind* you vs the normal placement of having it *next* to you. This one physical layout difference makes the signage so much simpler and intuitive.

Google's latest layoffs on the Chrome team really hits hard. They are letting go of people that desperately want to keep the web open. You can hate on Google on you want (I'm with you!) but the people on the Chrome team were amazing and only wanted what was best for the web.

This was so incredibly short sighted and stupid (and ultimately counterproductive)

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqqmprpfmlerfemmc6yzwwchl5xs6kqx9kcxuppt4vu0vtuxv92ujs3c65al As I said in the blog post, you have to use a Pixel 7, 8, or 9 (normal or pro models) A 3a is far too old and won't support this new haptic. In fact any A-Series phone (which have a reduced cost haptic motor) won't work.

A friend was telephone scammed and was told by the #Apple store they was most likely hacked because they used #Chrome. They strongly encouraged them to switch to #Safari.

This seems very suspect to me. I appreciate many here don't like Chrome but is Safari magically more secure?

I'll be speaking at #FossBack today in Berlin at 14:30

The topic is "Does Size Matter?" for #OpenSource projects and #UX

Larger projects tend to handle UX tasks a bit better, is it impossible for smaller projects to do great UX? (spolier: yes)

Volkswagen to bring back physical controls to their cars

This is great news. As someone who has done a ton of #UX work on digital devices, I'm not totally anti-screen. However, there are a few critical controls, e.g. headlights or defroster, that should completely unambiguous, fast, and certainly NOT hidden like Tesla did last year with it's v11 update.

https://insideevs.com/news/701296/vw-physical-controls-to-return/

Every time I have to use #GIMP it's an exercise in frustration as it doesn't use many of the established image editing paradigms that have been standardized for decades. Today's lesson: Selecting a portion of a bitmap layer with the rectangle tool and then dragging the selection is.... odd.

n.b.: I know this is *possible* I'm just saying it's not *discoverable* by anyone that has used bitmap editing tools their entire 30 year career

nostr:npub1j46f9va5qdrmamcwmncew7g8mwekgma386dhws6k04fsnlkqpcpsj23gm7 Hi Scott. Loved your https://jenson.org/text/ piece.

Per this comment of yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37630804&p=3#37633331) I understand that the solutions in Eloquent are not yet in a product that can actually be installed on users' devices?

What kind of constraints are you working under? What would it take for something like Eloquent to become a part of AOSP?

Best regards and thanks again.

nostr:npub1yz5vhuu6jc3v9d2dld8gmjphcwfwa0czc7gu8n8vs874hvewjfsql3u7dt The majority of the code is in my prototype app written in a language called Processing. There were a few experiments moving it into Android but I don't believe it made it to AOSP

Replying to fc0321d0...

nostr:npub1j46f9va5qdrmamcwmncew7g8mwekgma386dhws6k04fsnlkqpcpsj23gm7 Have you had a look at the MessagEase keyboard?

I've found that swiping left/right on the spacebar to move one character at a time combined with swiping up on the backspace giving me a delete key (inverse of backspace) means that I can be imprecise with my finger taps but still very quickly do edits.

Additionally swipe-and-return on backspace deletes a whole word, which is very nice.

Replying to Avatar Elio Campitelli

nostr:npub1j46f9va5qdrmamcwmncew7g8mwekgma386dhws6k04fsnlkqpcpsj23gm7 Editing text on the phone is almost torture. Who are these people that don't see the issues???

nostr:npub1tnxpmhv2yq5vxxuvd7yqhdmxkny0yy4vejf396jmq9x9kj4xmxaqaezyf4 You'd be surprised how many people tell me that 'young people can edit just fine"

nostr:npub1wr5ev2agwddm3zt48dlr5nhujfkjxxtn3pmtd0cxg8ddlkaspm7sakpq2w I agree, marking menus are underappreciated. Our UIST paper calls out our use of them

nostr:npub1wkxfqlrhmhcqey2uud994442eh53n2fxs5qng9r79rvy40p4s8jqmajlrc Yeah, there ARE intriguing things to explore but part of my realization is that how you unload/reload is quite varied so may easily confuse any, for example, weight sensors you might have. It's a fun thought experiment

Replying to e9a49734...

nostr:npub1j46f9va5qdrmamcwmncew7g8mwekgma386dhws6k04fsnlkqpcpsj23gm7 - I’m not sure the % of users who use PW managers, however the PW managers I’ve used have always taken care of dealing with two fields.

And besides, doesn’t this issue go away with time as Passkey technology takes a hold?

nostr:npub1f8xusdf4xawmtfq2zgl6e85qdmj6mn8jalza8pylejl3fzwfa06qqt3ncr Eventually, but the point here is that using 2 fields is a strawman, it's a solution that doesn't work, so why prop it up?

With respect to the design by fear: people prefer a defensible position to a nuanced one. So using 2 fields, even if wrong, is easier to defend if something goes wrong.

So much of design is unpacking these unfounded fears to actually solve the real problem for users.

Replying to 70646b93...

nostr:npub1j46f9va5qdrmamcwmncew7g8mwekgma386dhws6k04fsnlkqpcpsj23gm7 one side effect of two password fields is that it's much easier for the user to differentiate between "sign up" and "login" pages if *the rest of the page is badly designed*.

I've accidentally used the "sign up" page to try and login to quite a few sites where the signposting is bad & there are the same email/password fields on both pages. "Account already exists with that username" <- I know, I'm trying to login to it!!

Arguably it's a different root issue, but nonetheless is uncovered by single password fields and is an interesting observation from experience.

nostr:npub1cy3h36xwevyujjx4j65epyz5v35ejlqtsz3w8hrstx6en08alzrqjmd37f As you point out this isn't really helpful as using one bad design decision to help fix another is a death spiral.

#ChatGPT just feels really insecure

nostr:npub1t3gd5yefglarhar4n6uh34uymvft4tgu8edk5465zzhtv4rrnd9sg7upxq

That was actually part of the problem. Even though they were at fault, as I did have my own equipment, this justified them to refuse to help.

I just spent most of my weekend diagnosing why my home internet spontaneously stopped working. The details are tedious and VERY boring

The details don't matter, it's just maddening that something as basic as "wifi" can just go down for apparently no reason and there was no clear way to fix it.

It's finally all good but let's just say I'm not very happy with Comcast...