How about the most depraved volume control design of all: the actual reddit web video player (at least the embedded player on old.reddit)?
The slider is hidden by default. Hovering the volume icon makes the slider appear. There is margin between the icon and slider, though, so you have to quickly "zip" your mouse across this gap/chasm before the slider disappears. If you make it over to the slider in time, your hover then preserves its visibility.
I know for sure the devs at Condé ain't dogfoodin' on that interface anymore!
I get it's not the same thing but I wish iOS had lower volume settings. As it is, if 100% is max volume then the difference between 0 and unit above 0 on iPhones is about 30% volume. Like, in the middle of the night when everything is quiet, if I was the set it on the lowest setting and make some game sounds I could hear it 2 rooms away with doors open. But, Apple decided you don't need to set it below 30%. Maybe they're trying to force you to buy Airpods
I experienced the same "muted, TOO LOUD" when I bought some very sensitive IEMs, but fortunately I have a rooted Android where I can customise the volume control curve, so I moved more of the steps down towards the lower end of the DAC range and made the loudest just a little beyond "threshold of pain".
In fact, it's the worst of the worst, since it's just plausible looking enough to be the only option on over a billion devices.
On top of that, the EU passed a bill to make them fix it, and they... didn't. If you have headphones that are too loud at 'unit above zero', and use the volume limiter in the device safety section to set it to a reasonable level, it just completely mutes the headphones.
This isn't a hardware issue. Bluetooth devices have an integer volume setting, and the "unit above zero" setting is definitely not '1' on iOS like it is on android.
I've hit this problem with 100% of the non-apple headphones I've used.
That would be interesting to have the volume bars logarithmic instead of linear.
The focus ring on manual cinema camera lenses are like this where there is 270° or rotation from near to infinity giving a human plenty of room to move while AF lenses only have 90°. The distances are much smaller and harder to get smooth focus pulls and feels much more linear. So yeah, not the same, but similar-ish in that there's not enough action in the sweet spot and too much in extremes
for example I read kindle books on my phone in dark mode (white text on a black background). Having the brightness all the way up isn't fully bright white text, it is more like brightish grey.
To get bright text to read in bright environments, I set the kindle app to black text on white background, then use accessibility to invert colors. I get noticeably brighter text on a black background.
the difference between 0 and unit above 0 on iPhones is about 30% volume.
I have found that when playing audio to a HomePod, pressing Volume Up on the phone increases the volume by 1.
But if you immediately press Volume Down, it goes down by 0.5. So, with two button presses you can get the half-step increase you wanted in the first place.
It's like adding "a little" to a volume change command with Siri.
"Siri, turn the volume up a little" turns the volume up 0.5.
"Siri, turn the volume up" turns the volume up one.
"Siri, turn the volume up a lot" turns the volume up two.
In macOS, there used to be a modifier key to have the volume change in half-steps, too, but I've forgotten what it is.
I think the only place that Apple has done a good job with volume controls is the AirPods Max. But even there, I'd like more granularity at the low end.
Ah yes, skeuomorphic design, where you take something that's a physical artefact of the hardware and force-fit it onto an utterly different device on which it makes no sense whatsoever.
How about one where the first click sets your volume to max, and then pops up a dialogue to subscribe to a newsletter or sign up for an account? I've never seen such an atrocity, but I could see one plausibly being developed.
The SaaS subscription one fulfilled the same sense for me.
To be fair, Netflix' cheapest subscription option deliberately says that you will not be getting the best audio options including audio levels that are not the same between content. They clearly have the better audio for the higher tiers, so they are deliberately borking things.
The one that started shaking more and more as the volume got louder sent me. Sometimes you have to give credit where it's due, even when the result is unusable.
I like how towards the end they added the vanilla Apple mission control UI in there - which doesn't have any volume control at all just to prove their point. That really caught me off-guard and was funny af.
how does it have no control? you just pull it up or down accordingly. i appreciate the joke that it's not a great design, but to say "doesn't have any volume control at all" is an odd thing to say.
I was just saying it was funny that they just used the in real life used screen as their design of the worst thing they could come up with, especially as Apple touts itself as great at design.
As others have said, if they made it a non-linear scale so that there is more room between the lower value and less as it approached the max settings.
However, it is at least functional opposed to the person that I replied suggested it wasn't.
The worst is the “AI transformation journey” volume UI. You talk to an agent to describe the character of the volume level you want. It loads a volume control “skill” and adjusts it.
> Should is interesting because of its subjectiveness. It’s a question that only makes sense to be asked in first person. And you have to know about much more than just design to be able to answer it — you have to understand about business, technology, culture, people. Answering the should question is a skill you only get after many, many years answering questions alike.
I wish more front-end designers would consider "should" more often.
"Oh, we can make the scrollbars in our web page auto-hide so PC users get the same experience as Mac users"
But should you?
No. Because one of the reasons I use a PC is because auto-hiding scrollbars on a desktop/laptop is a bug, not a feature, and I disabled that bug while I had a Mac because it's annoying.
"Oh, we can implement smooth scrolling in JavaScript!"
But should you?
No. Because browsers already do it. And your implementation will fail on at least one browser and cause scrolling to just be fucked up. If a user has disabled smooth scrolling, it's probably for a reason. Don't force it back on.
"We can create our own implementation of a drop-down box"
But should you?
No. You're reducing accessibility for literally zero gain. I hate when I'm entering my address, tabbing through the fields, reach the State, and pressing O then R doesn't bring me to "Oregon" or "OR", and instead brings me to Rhode Island. Side note: The order of entering an address is street address, city, state, zip code. If your form order is any different, you're a madman.
> "Oh, we can make the scrollbars in our web page auto-hide so PC users get the same experience as Mac users"
That's interesting. Our UI has scroll bars for sub-panels. On my Mac in FF, the scroll bar is always visible when there is overflow. Same screen on a co-worker's Chrome has the autohiding scroll bars even when there is overflow. So it feels more like a Chrome issue than a Windows issue, but I guess at this point in time we just assume everyone is using Chrome.
> The order of entering an address is street address, city, state, zip code.
In the US. Most of Europe uses street address; postcode, settlement and optionally province; country. There are still enough occasional warts that you shouldn’t dictate the structre of the second line, though: e.g. in France you’ll usually see things like “75005 Paris” but large institutions that get separate deliveries may list addresses like “75231 Paris CEDEX 05”, where everything but “Paris” is a postcode-like routing instruction. Unless you definitely, absolutely know better, just let people type in whatever postal label they want.
I have mixed opinions on this one. I appreciate the auto populating of City/State when you first enter the Zip. By doing that first, the suggestions of typing in address/street could be a much more accurate list as you've already filtered by state/city. The ones that come up with options from other states when I type in 1234 Main St will give me a list of pretty much every state/city in the country.
This feels like the physical equivalent of email validation, though it's harder to properly validate.
Similar to email validation, I've definitely seen people get bit (or, well, their customers getting bit) by people making untrue assumptions about the acceptable form of an address. See: a number of products that can't be ordered for USPS General Delivery simply because the address form won't allow it.
Yes — so much friction is introduced by redesigning when there should be refinement at most. Or doing nothing at all.
It takes wisdom to do that, and it doesn’t justify a salary. So we get experimented upon by UX designers at every company.
While the volume controls are fun, at this stage in the thread I’m struck by how few people have got to the point of the article at the end: the “should” question.
I once worked for a mainstream headphone manufacturer who added a volume control to a product that was so widely despised that a special firmware release had to be done to disable it completely, or else the returns bin would overflow almost overnight ..
So this had me chuckling so hard, having worked professionally in the pro audio world for decades - I can say that some of these 'solutions' would actually be accepted in certain market segments .. I especially love the designs which use a built-in accelerometer.
It seems the good ol' knob is not going anywhere any time soon.
The slider is hidden by default. Hovering the volume icon makes the slider appear. There is margin between the icon and slider, though, so you have to quickly "zip" your mouse across this gap/chasm before the slider disappears. If you make it over to the slider in time, your hover then preserves its visibility.
I know for sure the devs at Condé ain't dogfoodin' on that interface anymore!
In fact, it's the worst of the worst, since it's just plausible looking enough to be the only option on over a billion devices.
On top of that, the EU passed a bill to make them fix it, and they... didn't. If you have headphones that are too loud at 'unit above zero', and use the volume limiter in the device safety section to set it to a reasonable level, it just completely mutes the headphones.
This isn't a hardware issue. Bluetooth devices have an integer volume setting, and the "unit above zero" setting is definitely not '1' on iOS like it is on android.
I've hit this problem with 100% of the non-apple headphones I've used.
The focus ring on manual cinema camera lenses are like this where there is 270° or rotation from near to infinity giving a human plenty of room to move while AF lenses only have 90°. The distances are much smaller and harder to get smooth focus pulls and feels much more linear. So yeah, not the same, but similar-ish in that there's not enough action in the sweet spot and too much in extremes
for example I read kindle books on my phone in dark mode (white text on a black background). Having the brightness all the way up isn't fully bright white text, it is more like brightish grey.
To get bright text to read in bright environments, I set the kindle app to black text on white background, then use accessibility to invert colors. I get noticeably brighter text on a black background.
I have found that when playing audio to a HomePod, pressing Volume Up on the phone increases the volume by 1.
But if you immediately press Volume Down, it goes down by 0.5. So, with two button presses you can get the half-step increase you wanted in the first place.
It's like adding "a little" to a volume change command with Siri.
In macOS, there used to be a modifier key to have the volume change in half-steps, too, but I've forgotten what it is.I think the only place that Apple has done a good job with volume controls is the AirPods Max. But even there, I'd like more granularity at the low end.
http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
EDIT:
previously
763 points by yankcrime on July 13, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 477 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819384
To be fair, Netflix' cheapest subscription option deliberately says that you will not be getting the best audio options including audio levels that are not the same between content. They clearly have the better audio for the higher tiers, so they are deliberately borking things.
One example (you need to play tic tac toe to set the volume) https://www.tiktok.com/@vivancodes/video/7612511893340671240
It seems like that account has quite a few more too
- https://neal.fun/not-a-robot/
- https://neal.fun/password-game/
When I search the Android UI, it looks very similar, but horizontal.
As others have said, if they made it a non-linear scale so that there is more room between the lower value and less as it approached the max settings.
However, it is at least functional opposed to the person that I replied suggested it wasn't.
I wish more front-end designers would consider "should" more often.
"Oh, we can make the scrollbars in our web page auto-hide so PC users get the same experience as Mac users"
But should you?
No. Because one of the reasons I use a PC is because auto-hiding scrollbars on a desktop/laptop is a bug, not a feature, and I disabled that bug while I had a Mac because it's annoying.
"Oh, we can implement smooth scrolling in JavaScript!"
But should you?
No. Because browsers already do it. And your implementation will fail on at least one browser and cause scrolling to just be fucked up. If a user has disabled smooth scrolling, it's probably for a reason. Don't force it back on.
"We can create our own implementation of a drop-down box"
But should you?
No. You're reducing accessibility for literally zero gain. I hate when I'm entering my address, tabbing through the fields, reach the State, and pressing O then R doesn't bring me to "Oregon" or "OR", and instead brings me to Rhode Island. Side note: The order of entering an address is street address, city, state, zip code. If your form order is any different, you're a madman.
That's interesting. Our UI has scroll bars for sub-panels. On my Mac in FF, the scroll bar is always visible when there is overflow. Same screen on a co-worker's Chrome has the autohiding scroll bars even when there is overflow. So it feels more like a Chrome issue than a Windows issue, but I guess at this point in time we just assume everyone is using Chrome.
In the US. Most of Europe uses street address; postcode, settlement and optionally province; country. There are still enough occasional warts that you shouldn’t dictate the structre of the second line, though: e.g. in France you’ll usually see things like “75005 Paris” but large institutions that get separate deliveries may list addresses like “75231 Paris CEDEX 05”, where everything but “Paris” is a postcode-like routing instruction. Unless you definitely, absolutely know better, just let people type in whatever postal label they want.
Similar to email validation, I've definitely seen people get bit (or, well, their customers getting bit) by people making untrue assumptions about the acceptable form of an address. See: a number of products that can't be ordered for USPS General Delivery simply because the address form won't allow it.
It takes wisdom to do that, and it doesn’t justify a salary. So we get experimented upon by UX designers at every company.
While the volume controls are fun, at this stage in the thread I’m struck by how few people have got to the point of the article at the end: the “should” question.
So this had me chuckling so hard, having worked professionally in the pro audio world for decades - I can say that some of these 'solutions' would actually be accepted in certain market segments .. I especially love the designs which use a built-in accelerometer.
It seems the good ol' knob is not going anywhere any time soon.
+ Mud flaps