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Comment by cja | Hacker News Reader

I'm an Android user since v2 and have watched it become so much less usable over time. The average person has no idea what is clickable and what is not in v5. This causes fear and confusion. My wife (aged 30 and intelligent) cannot reliably send SMSs on her Nexus 5.

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Agreed, I loved the old iPhone 3 UI, since then, it has gone to hell. Android is also in that hell, with the "Flat UI", and my brain hurts trying to find what's clickable.

Damn you flat ui!

>> Agreed, I loved the old iPhone 3 UI, since then, it has gone to hell. Android is also in that hell, with the "Flat UI", and my brain hurts trying to find what's clickable.

The whole point of going with raised buttons and such was to provide a visual cue as to what was clickable. It seems UI people who missed the early 90's are getting to relearn this lesson. When I saw flat I just shook my head.

It really seems to go in cycles. We've gone from flat UIs (think ncurses-based) to using texture and shadow (90's - mid 2000s), and now all the way back to flat again.

I'll never understand why these designer types think that discarding all of that context is a good thing.

It happens in all areas of everything. I'm convinced. It comes in cycles, because of generational retirements/career transitions. Younger/newer folks don't have the experience to know what the older/more experienced folks do. The older/more experienced folks do a bad job of documenting their experiences for the next group.

I'm thoroughly convinced I'm correct, but have no data to back it up.

We should do a head-to-head competition between two Grandmothers, one armed with an iPad2 using iOs6 and another one using iOs8 and let them do the same tasks, and measure the time it takes to do those tasks.

Count me in!

IMO, Android 4 was the pinnacle of stability and usability in their lineage. I had a Moto X and 2012 Nexus 7. The upgrade to Android 5 on my Nexus was saddening; it was different for the sake of being different, and it fixed problems that didn't exist (and introduced many new ones).

Even 4.1 was much better than 4.4 - all the migration from text and contoured buttons to symbols. an open eye for "turn off snooze" on the alarm is indicative of what I think is really poor design.

I haven't used v5 so I cannot comment on that transition. However I was around for the transition from v3 to v4 and I'm pretty sure the common sentiment was it was strides more usable. Also, without malice, I find it pretty shocking your wife cannot reliably send an SMS.

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