Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

> They really double downed on making the list feature a pain by autoplaying every movie upon selection. Now I can’t add or remove a movie without playing the beginning. Fortunately, I don’t have a data cap at home, but it still causes my receiver to switch audio modes, leading to annoying clicks and pops as it settles in. Not appreciated. My thumb was already on the OK button. If I really did want to watch the movie, pressing it twice isn’t so hard. In exchange for convenience nobody could possibly need, I’m forced to deal with aggravation I can’t avoid.

Boy isn't this annoying in Netflix too? I notice if you go to look at a show's information more closely (selecting it from the main screen), it automatically starts playing the first episode. I don't want that! I can manage that, really! Thank you!

I think we're hitting a critical mass of UX, where we're trying to dumbly pre-suppose behavior. There's ways to do this correctly (via machine learning), but blanketing behaviors for all users is just downright stupid.

> There's ways to do this correctly (via machine learning)

Please no. The actual users using an account may change over time (and rather frequently), e.g. in a family situation.

Also, in general, I like my systems to be predictable, and I prefer if they don't try to be smart.

> > There's ways to do this correctly (via machine learning)

> Please no.

Indeed, that's the second coming of Office 2000's "adaptive menus". It was an awful idea then, it's an awful idea now.

Even if the account has a single unchanging user and the feature actually works correctly and it doesn't impair initial discoverability, changes in software behaviour will break muscle memory and at least annoy.

Gmail does the Windows 2000 "adaptive menu" by hiding the folders you don't use often behind an expando.

I hate it. Hate hate hate hate hate it.

Naturally, there appears to be no way to override and say, "just show ALL my folders ALL the time! If I didn't want to see a folder, I'd delete it!"

But I don't expect a lot from Google, which seemly has zero UX experts and I'm not even 100% sure its products are developed by human beings. (See: Buzz, Wave.)

also for reasons I don't understand, when I search google, the links to "images, maps, shopping" etc. are in a completely random order. They will literally switch between searches. WHY?

There isn't 1 button for that, but you can either drag the separator or just set all folders to "Show".

Fair enough. I'm not partial to anything, but UX designers gotta eat.

...by justifying themselves to their bosses by annoying users.

> Boy isn't this annoying in Netflix too? I notice if you go to look at a show's information more closely (selecting it from the main screen), it automatically starts playing the first episode. I don't want that! I can manage that, really! Thank you!

This is a horrible feature. I was a Netflix subscriber for years (an early adopter in the mail-order DVD days), and after weeks of fiddling and trying to disable this mis-feature, I finally unsubscribed because of it.

Microsoft tried that with Ribbon, turns out having the machine change behaviour/move stuff because it is used more/less is also a bad idea.

Microsoft tried that before the ribbon (with adaptive menus dynamically showing/hiding items based on use).

The ribbon is not fundamentally adaptive, IIRC the initial Office 2007 implementation was neither adaptive nor customisable, although it was partially contextual (some ribbon tabs would only appear when they made sense e.g. formatting when selecting text or cells)

On Netflix it depends on where you click. I think the info symbol is in the bottom right corner.

I don't know what platform you're on, but on the Xbox app there's no info button, you select the show and it takes you to the info page and also begins playing the episode.

I assumed usual browser. Sorry.

So then there was a gratuitous UI inconsistency across platforms? Management problem.

The user should not need to learn that (on the internet) - it should be amazingly obvious. "Start Playing" and "More Information" are clear. "My Show" (it starts playing) is not obvious considering we have been using Netflix for years, clicking on a show or movie for more information.

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