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S_Bear | 4 months ago

I'm a technology librarian and I spend around 20 hours a week helping seniors with their devices. I really wish that phone and TV engineers could shadow me for a few weeks and see what problems people really have using their devices (yes, people drag their TV to the library for me to look at). The number 1 complaint by far is getting rid of the home button on iphones and ipads. I've had a few patrons switch to android because it has fewer touch controls.

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flanbiscuit|4 months ago

Even with Android I had to enable the "3-button navigation" at the bottom because they defaulted to Gestures whenever they introduced that (google search says it was Android 10 in 2019).

bjoli|4 months ago

On my last two phones I have been asked what I prefer. When I selected gestures, I had to do a course.

Which is better than iOS in every way, because there is just one way to go back and there being no indicator in the app how you should do it. Do I swipe or do I look for a back button?

wilsonnb3|4 months ago

Depends on the vendor, Samsung still defaults to three button navigation.

ryandrake|4 months ago

I'm really tired of this (now long lasting) UX trend of getting rid of physical buttons and sometimes software buttons, and replacing them with vague "gestures." Totally undiscoverable, and also, by the way, not easy for people with limited dexterity. I'm hanging on to my iPhone 7 for dear life, even as Apple and 3rd party developers abandon it and try to shame me for keeping it. The last time I tried to use my wife's newer phone, I had no idea what to do. I just kept randomly swiping from top to bottom and bottom to top and all over the place at random speeds until it did what I wanted it to do. Infuriating.

Even if touch screens are not remembered as one of the worst inventions of the early 21st century, they are going to at least be remembered as enablers of terrible human-computer interaction patterns.