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I hope you’ll indulge me in a bit of an off-topic post tonight that I do not intend to make political in any way. Many of you know that I have a 92 ye
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Thanks Susan for a timely and constructive post.

I suspect the process required for booking a vaccination will vary greatly between countries. Here in the UK this 70 year old had a very simply phone text offering an appointment and it couldn’t have been easier to follow the link and select a date and time. There was enough personal information about me and my surgery that sent it in the text to make it clear that it wasn’t a scam and the whole thing was resolved in no more than a minute or two.

Moving on to desktop applications, I was in your father’s category when it came to upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and put it off for perhaps longer than I should have done. One constant in the ageing process is the growing desire to stay in our comfort zone! When I did upgrade my main machine this time last year I was surprised at just how smoothly it went and how closely the upgrade configured Windows 10 so that it really just looked like a feature-updated Windows 7. It might have been different if I’d bought a new Windows 10 machine rather than upgrading the old one, of course.

So having made a small move out of my comfort machine with the computer, I’ve just gone the whole hog and taken delivery this week of a new car which I’ve leased instead of a lifetime of buying and which has introduced me to all the massive technology changes in today’s new cars that will take a bit of getting used to. After driving for over 50 years it’s quite amusing to be prompted when to change gear!

Comfort zones aren’t restricted to old age of course, we all live in them most of the time and it’s always a good thing to stretch them out a bit now and then. I certainly agree, however, that those companies that were initially encouraging, and now effectively requiring, us to do so need to take account of all the many types of customer they’re dealing with and make the process as intuitive as possible. That’s an increasing challenge in a time of fast-moving change.

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You are missing a critical bit. Many of us older folk do not use or have the facility to use Text. Some don’t even have email.

CT

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wdburt1, Seff

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No indeed, they don’t. Mrs Seff has a go at text but doesn’t use WhatsApp or email.  However, I think that more older people use text than could, for example, scan personal documents. Nonetheless, Susan is right that it behoves all of us to assist those who are less able than us in these things. It’s no coincidence that Mrs Seff’s health contact number is my phone rather than hers!

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Whilst I’m not in a position to help get people signed up for their shots (I’m in Australia where things are happening at a slower pace) but I am in a position to comment on the latest trend in websites. The problem is Hipsters and Script Kiddies, who think the latest “look” is cool and who design to be noticed, rather than for ease of use and convenience. It’s the “getting noticed” thing, morons with an IQ lower than their age are doing everything to be noticed and so become the latest “influencer” without having the intelligence to make a coffee. Bit like the latest fashions coming out of Paris and Milan. Have you seen them? If these fools are going to run the world, I’m taking the red pill.

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I think you’re also talking about a generation that has been brought up on, and is solely concerned with, hand-held devices as compared with “our” generation of desktop users. The people who design new systems are largely from the former generation and haven’t yet woken up to the realisation that one size does not fit all. Websites designed around hand-held devices don’t look good on a desktop with a widescreen monitor!

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I could not agree more.

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Web sites designers in this category either don’t care or really don’t know.  Either is a sad comment, probably falling on deaf ears.

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That has been a big problem ever since the web became popular. Too many sites look ‘cool’ for the time but are unusable because of poor visual contrast and inconsistent visual clues. One of my main complaints is using excessively small font sizes to cram more on the page. My aging eyes prefer a larger size near the size normally used in a book.

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Charlie

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Your comments about color design are unfortunately correct. Some web page color choices are abysmal even for ‘normally’ sighted people.

Ctrl/A (select all) sometimes makes a difficult web page readable.

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Not only web sites.  MS is also of the opinion one size font fits all computers/devices/tablets/smart phones etc.etc. Theirs, and others suggestions on changing text on Windows 10 don’t always work the way one expects. Sure there are third party options to get the job done , however why couldn’t MS be more considerate of older users with poor and failing eyesight. Their File Explorer is a prime example. Maybe the MS powers to be have been shopping for socks in Bangkok street markets where ‘free size- one size fits all’ is the catch cry.  Yes, ‘cheap’ is the operative word..

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Charlie, klang

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I have a related concern with application development in general.  Many developers use the concept of having to “hover” over a region before a widget or control becomes visible.  Yes, us regular users have become aware of where some widget or control should appear, but for the less active user, this can be quite frustrating.  I spend time coaching my 90 year old Mom on how to achieve simple actions which are not obvious to her.  I admire her at 90 for trying.

 

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geek, Myst, Cybertooth, Canadian Tech

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As one who has coded his own simple photography website (and added a page about COVID-19; as a retired pharma exec I was putting out a daily newsletter on drug and vaccine development from March to December), I’m acutely aware of the choices that have to be made.   There are key choices to be made regarding background and font selection up front as well as how one decides to make links visible.  It’s straightforward to design a user friendly site and just as straight forward to design one that totally fails in that respect.

 

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Lots of very much on-point comments here already.

Aesthetics have surpassed usability as the primary concern in most UI design, whether it be for an app, an operating system, or a web site. We’ve dispensed with the “old-fashioned” skeuomorphic design that clicks in that part of our brain that is attuned to dealing with three-dimensional objects in space, in favor of a minimalist, flat design that is “beautiful,” in the words of its purveyors, but which is anything but to me.

There was a study reported on The Register that showed that even experienced computer users were faster with a skeuomorphic UI than with a flat UI with all of the elements in the same places. The excuse for dropping skeuomorphism has long been that we needed it as a set of training wheels when GUIs were unfamiliar to all of us, but now that everyone knows how to use a GUI, we can ditch the training wheels and embrace the pretty.

It’s clearly not just about teaching people to use things (though clearly there are still a lot of people who have not learned the things that “everyone knows” by now… I am surprised, as all of the seasoned citizens I know are quite comfortable using web devices of one flavor or another. Humans have been using 3d physical objects since there have been humans, and even if we’re adept with GUIs, we’re still wired for physical objects, so a GUI that taps into that is “hardware accelerated” in our brains. It doesn’t have to be to the point of fake leather-bound books on rustic wooden bookshelves, and that when opened have dog-eared pages, like some programs did during the 1990s. There’s certainly such a thing as overdoing it… but to me, the basic Microsoft Classic theme of Windows 9x, XP (with the theme service disabled), and Classic in Vista and 7k, is still the gold standard.

When 95 came out, I don’t recall anyone talking about whether it was ugly or not. People talked about how it was easier to use than previous versions. Back then, when many or most people truly were beginners, the focus was on usability, full stop.

Now when I hear someone talk about something like the default theme of the Linux Xfce desktop, it’s usually something like, “It looks so dated and ugly.” I’ve read where people have said this about the Windows Classic theme too. Opinions vary, of course, but the utilitarian simplicity for me is beauty. I look at that and I can feel all of the UI elements jumping out at me, announcing their purpose. That is beautiful!

In Linux, I am currently using the QTStep theme in Aurorae (KDE window decorator) and in QtCurve (KDE application theme engine). QTStep is based on GNUStep, which in turn was based on NeXTSTEP. It’s glorious!

A line from the article:

Unintuitive user interfaces and other tech barriers are driving seniors to simply give up altogether on trying to sign up, said OATS executive director Thomas Kamber.

We are talking about a matter that is more important than aesthetics or branding here, but usability and intuitiveness have been out of favor for so long that I suspect few of those who call themselves web or UI designers even know the basics of good UI design. It’s not surprising, given that good UI design so often is in direct conflict with the minimalistic “beauty” for which they strive.

When Apple was developing the original Mac, the intuitiveness of the design was everything. The idea was people would just look at it and know how to use it, without reading any documentation or taking any lessons. The “File, Edit, View…” menubar that is present right now at the top of my Firefox screen as I type this was very much a part of that, and I have yet to see an interface design that surpasses it for sheer usability and information scent.

If you don’t know that term, information scent is a term for how a UI hints at what each element does, in such a way that the information or options that are available within that element are hinted at before the person even interacts with the element. The File, Edit… menubar is a paragon of information scent, as the user immediately knows that file-related options will be under File, View-related options will be under View, and so on. Contrast that with three vertically-stacked horizontal lines, commonly known as the hamburger button, which doesn’t convey anything in and of itself. Lots of web sites have these, but to know what is hidden behind it, you need to actually interact with it and find out. Some sites have a lot of options, while others have nearly none, and there’s only one way to find out which kind of site you’re on at any given moment.

One of the big UI design guidelines is that UI elements should not disappear. No one should have to wonder where the thing that was there has gone! But the hamburger button’s whole misguided purpose in life is to do exactly that, to hide most, or in some cases all of the UI options (other than the hamburger itself).

I remember reading a write-up by a more thoughtful app designer. They revised their mobile app, and to make it use less space that could be filled instead with content, they got rid of a menubar and put in a hamburger. And like so many app designers (and this is not always bad!), they had telemetry enabled, so they could see the results of their redesign.

They were surprised, to say the least. User engagement with the options that were now two levels deep within the burger menu (that had been one level deep with the menubar) were used far less than they had been with the old app. Across the board, everything that was hidden behind the burger was being used much less.

They realized they’d messed up, and they reverted to a menubar, and the engagement with the options went up again. The conclusion by the author was that even though there is a screen space penalty associated with menubars, they’re worth the trouble.

Back to the matter at hand… Around here, the local county council for aging will help seniors with these kinds of things. It may be an option for those who feel stuck. Contacting their primary care provider for health care should also work… pointing people in the right direction for things like this is part of what they do.

 

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I look after about 120 Win7 systems. Most of my clients are older folk. I use Team Viewer for remote control to support them. TV has been a great tool to help some of my clients to register and get appointments.

Many of my clients do not own a smart phone or use that thing called TEXT.

As for web page design, I am a usability expert and have worked in that field. The vast majority of web page designs are not much better than pitiful. Apple’s biggest advantage is that they actually use usability expertise in their designs. That is what leads their believers into believing it is easier to use an Apple. Actually, it is.

My favourite is the ones with yellow text. That is virtually unreadable. Another is web pages that are so full of so much, it is difficult to find what you went there for. A classic example is Gmail. Most all my older clients found it to be way to confusing to use. It kept changing. It is full of all kinds of “shortcuts” that are not the least bit obvious. Designers are trying to cram more and more on those web pages to the point that they become virtually unusable — especially for older folk who just don’t see what the youngsters see.

Many web pages are full of tricks. Intentionally designed to trick you. Many of my older clients find that utterly deceitful.

As for Windows 10. Most of my clients did not and will not make that jump. Most have iPads now and some are buying smart phones. It is unlikely that they will ever buy Windows 10. They will simply use their Win7 systems until they do not work any more, then just junk their computer. They will then opt to use their iPads and smartphones. Meantime, I have locked these systems down and they have not had a single Microsoft update of any kind in almost 4 years now. Not one of them, not a single instance of any kind of a problem has resulted in this lock-down over thousands of computer use months now. These system just run and run. They are the same every time they are turned on. That’s what elder folk want. Things not to change.

CT

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Pierre77, ctRanger, SueW, Myst, lurks about, AlphaCharlie, wdburt1, Tom-R, Charlie, HiFlyer, Cybertooth, WCHS

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What do you mean by “I have locked these systems down”? I assume Win7 no longer has updates from Microsoft, so how do you keep the bad stuff out?

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I assume Win7 no longer has updates from Microsoft, so how do you keep the bad stuff out?

@geek, I have a few thoughts on that exact question.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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I’m a 73 year old frustrated with trying to sign up for a Covid-19 shot/shots. I know my way around computers but EVERYTHING has to be done online. And the sites leave a lot to be desired!

I managed to register me and my 77 year old husband because we have different email addresses. One of my friends could not register her 96 year old aunt because she doesn’t have an email address and they do not allow two people to register with the same email. So even if you try to help, it will create additional problems – signing up for an email address that you really don’t want nor have further need of. Older people that do not live in an assisted living residence or a nursing home and do not own a computer nor a smartphone are being overlooked because there is no place to call to get help.

The hospital site I used said “You must use the chrome browser”. Well I don’t have chrome installed on any Windows computers so I pulled out my android tablet.

I went to the site, logged in from the email we got telling us we had registered and when I went to schedule an appointment, all I saw were light gray rectangles in every date from the current week through the end of September. I figured I did something wrong. I tried on my phone, a different android tablet figuring maybe the first tablet and phone weren’t running the best version of android even though it is the latest version of chrome. Same thing with all three.

It would be so simple to have a few sentences stating, if you do not see times to schedule under a date, then there are no vaccines available.

Figuring I must be doing something wrong, I downloaded a portable version of chrome and installed it on a USB stick. I used it on two Windows computers and got the same gray rectangles after I had logged in and selected the site.

Eventually I decide it wasn’t me.

I suspect if I wait a few months and try again, ( my husband or I had been doing this almost daily for a week) I might get lucky and see times listed.

 

 

 

Got coffee?

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Ascaris, b

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Here in Canada, we are seeing a lot of what you describe.  It comes from each institution, state, province trying to do their own thing.  Instead, it should be a universal app that is well designed.  The result is a lot of really poorly designed web pages

In our case, on the hospital site that I finally found, I could use an email address for one of us or both or choose text.

On one site there was a phone number that was never answered or a chat link.  The chat link was unresponsive for like 10 minutes, then announced a response could be more than an hour — it was 4 hours

CT

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plodr wrote:

The hospital site I used said “You must use the chrome browser”. Well I don’t have chrome installed on any Windows computers so I pulled out my android tablet.

Any Chromium browser should work as well as Chrome proper, and really, Firefox or Safari probably would work too. Most of these “best viewed with Netscape Chrome” things are not as they were 20 years ago, when such a warning was probably accurate. Now, it’s usually a function of laziness or cheapness on the part of the web developer or site owner, not being willing to test on other browsers. There are some exceptions, but most of the time, any modern (up to date) browser will do fine, regardless of what the warning says. Sometimes it is necessary to spoof the useragent string, but an extension for whatever your browser is makes that pretty easy.

I don’t have Chrome on any of my computing devices either, nor would I besmirch them so. I’ve got MS Edge (Chredge) on two of my Linux PCs, but I draw the line at Chrome.  Many Chromium-based browsers identify as Chrome, though, and since they’re based on the same Chromium base as Chrome proper, anything that works in Chrome should work on the others.

 

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Military veterans don’t need a computer.  They can call their local VA office or clinic to get an appointment.

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People used to like to laugh about AOL, but I think it was pretty successful at getting anyone onto an email paradigm.   My brother is a corporate IT guy, and got my now 95-yo father on Windows 10 by installing classic shell.  But now that I’ve taken over the “tech support” role, I can hardly remember how to do things “the Win 7 way”.

 

He has trouble with the mouse buttons, and worse is smart phone, which for medical is pretty much imperative.  Finger gestures are just a no-go for him.  In that respect the original Apple (Xerox PARC?) mouse design is probably better.

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Canadian Tech wrote:

skeuomorphic UI

Amen.  If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  KISS.  thanks CT.

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Microfix

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You are so right. In fact, many believe it was the best Windows we have or will ever see.

CT

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Myst, Microfix

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I enjoyed the old Windows 7 solitaire games and was frustrated when they disappeared in Windows 10.

In order to recover the Windows 7 solitaire games, we had to go back to an old Windows XP installation and download the files onto a USB drive and load them onto a Windows 10 machine and then install them under Windows 10.

I found instructions by Mauro Huculak on How to get the classic Windows Solitaire game on Windows 10 at  https://www.windowscentral.com/how-get-classic-solitaire-back-windows-10 .  You may also be able to download the classic Windows XP solitaire games by doing an Internet search using the search phrase download classic Windows XP solitaire games. In addition, you may be able to recover the files from an old Windows 7 machine.

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WinAero has the classic Windows games packaged for easy installation on Windows 10. I used it on Windows 8.1 years ago, and it worked nicely.

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geek

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We have also been frustrated when helping seniors sign up for Covid vaccinations.

Here in the Philadelphia suburbs, it is a daunting undertaking. We ended up building a 15 sheet Excel file that first recorded the locations of healthcare practices offering vaccinations by county and the web links to sign up for their waiting lists.  The list includes over 80 individual practices that allowed a person to sign up on their wait list for vaccination. Of the 80 wait lists that we signed up for in late January one got back to us last week to offer an appointment.

We then built separate sheets for each of the 10 pharmacy chains in the region that offer Covid vaccinations and identified each of their stores by ZIP Code. In total there were over 200 possible locations to secure vaccinations from a pharmacy within a 100 mile radius. At the top of each sheet we included a web link to their appointment page.

We then went on to each of the pharmacies website and began a search by ZIP Code.  Frequently, if you put in a single ZIP Code it will give you 10 stores in the immediate surrounding area.

We then grouped pharmacy branches by a key ZIP Code. By tying 10 stores to a single ZIP Code and then searching by that ZIP Code we could expedite the appointment search process.

Once we completed the data organization, we then conducted appointment searches at least three times per a day (5 a.m., noon, and midnight) until open appointments were found and booked. We ultimately found that the best time to search for appointments in our region was at midnight.

Using this methodology, it took eight weeks to secure vaccination appointments for our parents who are in their seventies.

We are now assisting others in securing appointments.

We have also learned that our state senators are assisting seniors with securing Covid vaccination appointments and recommend that seniors or their representatives reach out to their local elected officials for assistance.

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Susan Bradley

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there are governments in this world which took on the task of distributing vaccines. Many of them have done a really good job of it. The USA and Canada are not ones that get hero buttons for their handling of this. What we have is a clear need for some central work that is simply not being done.

CT

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wdburt1

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My sister lives in New Mexico.  I live in upstate New York.  New Mexico is used to being disparaged, but in a recent exchange of emails comparing notes on how to get a vaccination, she describes a nearly ideal process.  Most importantly, it includes a state-run web site on which you can register and establish your eligibility and get on a waiting list.  Then, when your turn comes up they email or text you.

So far as I have been able to tell, we have nothing like that in supposedly advanced New York State.  Obtaining vaccination appointments is like finding tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime concert.  They become available without much notice and are taken within minutes.  As has come to light recently, a high percentage are taken by people out of the immediate area.  In other words, we have people traveling around the state in search of vaccinations, potentially spreading the virus.

State authorities made sure that medical workers and certain others were covered first.  The EMT’s organization had to fight for equal treatment and obtained it.  One of my brothers and his wife are EMT’s and they obtained vaccinations quickly and locally, with no fuss, no wait in line, no uncertainty.  Then the state turned to setting up clinics limited to those with inner-city zip codes.  The rest of the eligible population has been left to fend for itself.

Some counties have started their own waiting lists but not mine.  People are actually being paid to spend all day sitting in front of the computer waiting to score an appointment.

Amazon can tell me how many items remain in stock, and can let me pre-order if they are out of stock, with updates on the status of the pre-order.  It’s not like this is rocket science.  But New York State offers no such information.

I got lucky by checking the Walgreens web site each morning.  One morning about ten days ago I found the usual “No Appointments Available” at 730AM but decided to double back around 9AM.  I must have showed up just as the concert tickets went on sale.  I could take my pick of appointments the next day at a local store, which was never before among the stores offering appointments.  I grabbed one, of course.  The Walgreens web site was in chaos that day, and tended to run me around in circles.  It had promised to send me an email confirmation.  That didn’t show up until late evening.  But the people at the store were friendly and professional.

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[geek]

In Ontario (Canada) the problem began with chopping Ontario Public Health budgets after election of a ‘new’ government. When the pandemic struck, Premier Ford decided to be in charge of everything. But instead of funding Public Health to do it’s historical job of organized vaccination clinics, he inexplicably created an entirely new organization led by a retired military officer. The result is a slow train wreck.  Then, instead of buying a working online reservation system, they created their own without proper testing – it failed on the first day for many people outside Toronto. When they tried the phone number published everywhere, they were on hold for 2-5 hours – only to be told that number was for Toronto residents. I haven’t yet heard how that fiasco happened!

A bit more on-topic, using the Ontario Public Health site, I couldn’t find some information until I happened to hover over some ‘words’ at the top! Not blue, not underlined, not buttons or anything else that shouts “Menu”.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by geek.

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I entered (to my surprise) “senior citizen” status over a quarter century ago. Maybe because  I have been using computers for a very long time, even before that, I have not encountered some of the problems with Web sites (except for a few exceptions) that others have mentioned here. Those I have encountered are no big deal: my bank demands I use Chrome to do online banking. Well, I use Chrome for that because, particularly these days, I need to do things at the bank online, so no alternatives there. I do that and then I move on. So far I have not had my accounts emptied through some back door opened by Google, or experienced some other inconvenience worth mentioning. I also do most shopping online now days. Same overall experience there, after the sites delivering my shopping got themselves properly setup and sorted themselves out after the initial couple of months of chaos.

One kind of Web sites I find are almost guaranteed to be a problem and even trouble, is government sites, at least here in the USA. No matter if it is county, state or federal government. For example, in my opinion, the IRS online tax forms filing site, without being the worst, is no shining example of user friendliness.

And my state and county Web sites, trying to find out what is the general situation and make reservations to get the Covid-19 vaccine, is pretty hopeless. It shares the characteristics of what wdburt1 has described here it is like in NY state : ” So far as I have been able to tell, we have nothing like that [some place where things are better organized] in supposedly advanced New York State. Obtaining vaccination appointments is like finding tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime concert. They become available without much notice and are taken within minutes. As has come to light recently, a high percentage are taken by people out of the immediate area. In other words, we have people traveling around the state in search of vaccinations, potentially spreading the virus. ”

Change that from “New York” to “Maryland” and you’ll get the appropriate picture. Maryland’s state government has decided to let the counties handle all the covid-19 vaccination rollout within their respective borders, and the result is as pretty pathetic as it is diverse: in my county, after more than a month and a half since I registered, I still do not have an appointment for my first shot although, because of my age, I am in the second highest place as far as priority goes and vaccination also supposedly started for those of us there several weeks ago. People a lot younger than me got theirs weeks ago, but they live in other counties And, back to the main issue of accessibility: I can’t speak for old people, just for my own old and maybe not too badly aged self: to me the design of those sites is pretty dreadful, not so much in looks, but in their tendency to misfire, freeze, time out when one clicks on a button that is supposed to connect to something in the Web site relevant to one’s search for information, etc.

Also worth mentioning is that today, as a bonus for reading what people have been writing here, I have learned something I had not even heard of before: the word “skeuomorph” and, by looking it up on the Web with Google(!!!) I’ve also learned its meaning. I’m not sure that things being displayed scheuomorphicly (?) will do a lot for me, but I’m gad that it might be helpful to someone else out there. Maybe it is because I am used to flat displays with no visible buttons — maybe mostly from reading books?

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[wdburt1]

Many counties in NYS have an Office for the Aging or something similar.  In a nearby county, that office has dived in to assist seniors in getting vaccination appointments.  That same county has taken it upon itself to create a waiting list.  Total population in that county is about 50,000 and it is officially part of Appalachia with a per capita income to prove it.

In the county where I live, no such assistance is offered.  The health department’s web site goes for days without updates, still showing links for appointments for county-run vaccination events that took place several days beforehand.  And those events were still limited to “essential workers,” long after the state threw eligibility open to everyone 65 or over.

The emperor has no clothes.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by wdburt1.

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Although I live in Massachusetts, I had great luck signing up for my shots on the CVS site, but only after I finally decided to get up at 6 in the morning to access it! Since CVS is in NY, you may want to try it:

https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine

Good luck.

 

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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OscarCP wrote:

Change that from “New York” to “Maryland” and you’ll get the appropriate picture.

I live in Maryland Oscar and my wife and I had no problems at all getting our Covid shots.  If you want try this site that my wife used, type your Zip Code in the Find a Vaccination Site, and you’ll be given places that are convenient to your location.  We are both in our 70’s.  Hope this helps you.

covidvax.maryland.gov

 

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Charlie, Thanks for your reply and glad that you and your wife are already vaccinated at least once and if that was your first, have also your second appointment all set up automatically.

I have done exactly what you recommend more than a month ago: I registered with the county … and I am still waiting. I have also registered with Safeway, that is expecting to get vaccines, so I’ll be in their list when they do. For the last two weeks I have also tried and tried to register with CVS, that has many pharmacies in my area, and there the situation is like the one described by wdburt1 in New York. It is really wild.

That, and the fact that my county is not doing a great job of vaccinating people. As I did mention in the comment you refer to, the situation is different from one county to the next.  The performance of mine has been less than stellar, so far.

As to the problems using poorly designed Web sites: one trend that I have noticed is that some sites that used to be good for what I wanted to do there, have started offering less opportunities to do things, particularly getting information one needs out of them. It’s not that what one can see on the screen is confusing or looks bad, or is hard to see at all. No, the sites look OK, but there is not enough there of the things that should be there and, in fact, used to be there. I am running against it more often now, mainly in sites where I find reports and technical information, including sensor data I need for my research. I wonder if the pandemic has made, somehow, making economies necessary, and someone said: “OK, less make the site smaller an less useful so we can save money.” And it’s not just me: bringing this up in email exchanges, people readily agree: “yes such and such site is now terrible.”

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

I’m not sure that things being displayed scheuomorphicly (?) will do a lot for me, but I’m gad that it might be helpful to someone else out there. Maybe it is because I am used to flat displays with no visible buttons — maybe mostly from reading books?

It is definitely helpful to me for a website to differentiate between mere decorative elements (such as text with a colored background) and an actual button that one can do something with. Clickable elements that look just like the text around it are pointless IMO–how would you know what to click on and what not to click on? The eye needs a cue to hone in on.

The upshot is that when I’m on a website like that, I end up clicking around uselessly all over the page because the “designer” was either too lazy to create an informative UI or too narrow-minded to realize that the site is there to serve a purpose and not just to look good. Not that the all-flat look is any good in the first place, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

I prefer buttons that identify their purpose, like the “Submit” button at the bottom of this reply page. If there were no outline and gradient shading around it, to me it would appear like simply a stray word that somebody forgot to erase from the webpage.

Here’s a site by well-regarded UI/UX experts who discuss these sorts of issues, taking a middle ground between extreme skeuomorphism and total flatness. From among their large amount of articles over the years  I can recommend the following from earlier on in the flatness mania: this, this, and this.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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wdburt1

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Cybertooth,

I would agree that, looking at some of those examples you put the links to in your comment, it would be hard to do things easily if the pages were designed without enough contrast or a clearly visible borders around objects such as buttons, or they were poorly designed in some of the ways shown in the “bad” examples.

But the thing is, I don’t remember anything that bad showing up my browser screens often enough to be a problem for me (or maybe just in a few, forgettable occasions?) And I usually do quite a few searches every week looking for different kinds of information that take me to different Web sites, including some never visited before.

I wonder if that is because I have always used, and use now, a laptop or a desktop and not some other device with a smaller screen, such as a tablet, or a cell phone to access the internet? (I have a cell phone that I use to either talk to others or, occasionally get or send some text messages.)

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Very similar sentiments to others here. Like Tom, I am in Australia, and here we have a QR code tracing app called SafeWA that people are required to scan a posted QR code and each shop they use. Yes, a little Orwellian, but we live in unusual times, and, thankfully, we haven’t had a Covid-19 death since last year, lives matter. And with apps like this, contact tracing is done in record time.

However, it leaves the elderly out in the cold. My mother’s in her 80s and uses her mobile phone AS A MOBIILE PHONE. No apps, other than the SMS app. I managed to get her set up with the QR app, and she seems to have gotten into the habit of doing it.

However, her boyfriend has an ancient (and I do mean that) iPhone, a hand-me-down from his grandkids, and he can’t even download the app, because in order to do so, you need an Apple store account. For which you need an email address… He has never used email in his life and wouldn’t know how to. (Yup, he’s that ancient and technologically impaired.) So he has to resort to the paper backup form each store has for people who don’t want to (or can’t) do the app. Each store, each restaurant, even if it’s a takeaway, he now has to sign into by hand.

He understands it’s necessary, especially as a person in a high-risk group, but if you can’t even get an essential app you need for survival installed on a phone without jumping through some technological hoops, there is a problem.

No matter where you go, there you are.

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PerthMike: “ I am in Australia, and here we have a QR code tracing app called SafeWA that people are required to scan a posted QR code and each shop they use. ”

Is that everywhere in Australia, or only in Western Australia?

Would someone with a laptop or desktop have to scan a QR code too? If so, how?

That seems to be a problem for cellphones and, maybe, tablets (as I suspect is also mainly what people are discussing in this thread, but would be nice to have someone confirming, or otherwise disproving my suspicion.)

But perhaps not so much of a problem for laptops or desktops, that can also have problems with contrast, etc, but perhaps less with other things, such as missing useful bits and pieces, because they have larger screens that can display more detailed information, also more conveniently arranged.

The kind of problems I usually encounter at Web sites is more often that they are flaky in the way they run, and considerably less often, that they are bad in what they display.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I’m just glad to know that we’re not the “older generation” (yet) anyway…

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I’m one of the older people. As a former programmer and web designer, I get annoyed by websites with gray text on white background, or white text on gray background, or font so small I can hardly read it. If it’s a large company, I give them my polite feedback, as they ought to know better. But today I wanted to thank you for your article and didn’t see the button because it was gray on white. Oops!

2 users thanked author for this post.

Charlie, OscarCP

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If you use Firefox you will most likely hate the new Firefox 89 Proton “update”.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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