Button Pushes You (2022)

https://despens.systems/2022/06/button-pushes-you/

by john-doe • 3 years ago

131 42 3 years ago

noduerme5• 3 years ago

Gosh, yes, I find this style of obtuse labeling of buttons to be really annoying. It's especially prevalent when you're trying to get to API docs on some new framework you're checking out. Like, don't tell me I want to get started. Take me to the docs so I can decide if it's worth my time.

On reflection, this progression from function to call to action to obfuscated self-help-ish verbiage seems more like a general trend in marketing at all levels. Obviously, it must work in A/B testing, but I'm not sure it works in the general case. Here in the 2020s I think it serves as a kind of regurgitation of 1960s argle-bargle that's a callback to what's embedded in the brains of the children of boomers who picked up their parents' linguistic preference for out-there-isms to describe sensations of freedom from the old rigid hierarchies of the 1950s. So it's an appeal to nostalgia as much as a form of vaguely insulting corporate-speak.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Might be a tangent but trying to do end of tax year stuff when each service hides stuff like invoices behind screens of these kinds of buttons. Godaddy is horrendous: I think I had to click domain.name, manage, taken to a screen upselling me hosting them find some settings, click account, click my domain name again then something else then you get a list of invoices. On the plus side they exist! (as opposed to Amazon third party sellers) and a simple PDF download from there.

noduerme5• 3 years ago

I mean, GoDaddy specifically and smaller hosting providers in general have been a humongous pile of hacks and semi-functional abandoned marketing pushes for 20+ years. They're a master study in surviving by your fingernails, but definitely not in how to build a well-functioning user interface. What's more surprising is how many brand new companies get it totally wrong, when they don't have all that technical debt saddling them and there are plenty of great design examples to choose from.

atoav• 3 years ago

Regarding AB-testing, at which place do you think people enter more doors: In a clear accessible architecture or in an totally obscure maze?

More links clicked doesn't mean more people got to where they wanted to go, it could also just mean they had to try every link in order to find the one they looked for.

The most important thing to me is a clear structure and a button that takes me ro rhe clear structure. A website should be like a house. Ideally I already see at the entrance how the house is laid out and can decide where to go.

alexalx666• 3 years ago

I would prefer if references were highlighted using single colour :)

wardedVibe2• 3 years ago

It helps if you're on a phone or narrower window, in which case the color is like a separate mark.

JHorse2• 3 years ago

Slightly off topic, but I love the way that blog design uses the right gutter for annotations. Keeps it in context beautifully.

zem• 3 years ago

yes, i'm a big fan of that design too!

wardedVibe2• 3 years ago

Best migration of foot notes to the web (though the ones that pop up a banner as a sort of ur tool-tip, or expand into a bubble when clicked on are also decent). Most "footnotes" on webpages are actually end-notes, which is mostly a consequence of the lack of distinct pages. Fitting that a blog seemingly about design gets this right.

cratermoon• 3 years ago

Edward Tufte's sidenotes. https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/ "Sidenotes are like footnotes, except they don’t force the reader to jump their eye to the bottom of the page, but instead display off to the side in the margin."

JHorse2• 3 years ago

Of course it's Tufte. Thanks so much for the link!

rambambram2• 3 years ago

On a tangent, if you read the book The 48 laws of Power then you know about all the sidenotes (more like complete side stories) throughout the book. I started reading this book on my smartphone years ago, and it was just an awful reading experience. The real paper book was way more readable, but still very annoying because of the long 'side stories'.

fireflash382• 3 years ago

Reminds me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, tons of footnotes, some of which were their own contained stories. I remember at least one page that was quite literally 3/4ths footnote!

Yes, it did occasionally distract from the novel, but I'm the kind of person that doesn't mind reading and re-reading a passage.

heja2009• 3 years ago

Interesting. I didn't notice the side notes at all because I immediately zoomed my view to only see the main text as I do with all web pages in this day and age.

qingcharles2• 3 years ago

I find them visually distracting. I prefer Wikipedia style hover footnotes so they are hidden unless I decide I can't live without the citation etc.

lelanthran• 3 years ago

I find them visually distracting. I prefer Wikipedia style hover footnotes so they are hidden unless I decide I can't live without the citation etc.

Hover has poor usability on mobile. I don't think that I'm the only one who reads the phone on even short trips.

gwern• 3 years ago

WP style hover footnotes are fine because they are invariably mere bibliographic metadata. (This is also the case for OP, where every sidenote/footnote could, and should, just be a hyperlink.) You know what they are without hovering, because they are just a simple citation and you have zero interest in them unless you are factchecking or following up references. The fact that the footnote is an opaque link, a blackbox, is not an issue when you know what will be inside the blackbox & if it's worth the effort to you - you either want the citation or don't.

However, most of the interesting uses of footnotes people talk about, like nested stories, are not like this. Novels like _House of Leaves_ or _Infinite Jest_ for example. But these are fine also, because you can just assume you want to read the footnote and follow the reference. It just makes reading it more nonlinear and like a CYOA.

However, in between, there is no golden mean. It is very frustrating to have a book where half the footnotes are mere bibliographic information but the other half are interesting comments, digressions, meta-commentary, and so on. You either spend a lot of effort breaking from the text with wasted clicks/context-switches, or you miss a lot of important things. This is bad enough when it's a book using footnotes and you only have to keep glancing down at the bottom to see what it is - but it gets far worse with endnotes, and if they require multiple clicks each, you just give up!

jonahx2• 3 years ago

I don't buy the politically laden, existentially fraught spin being sold here....

"Users have to accept the spelled out mantra and change their attitude before accessing the next piece of information."

"The user should transform themselves into a “doer,” rather than being considerate, evaluating options"

"Before proceeding, users should identify with this new aristocratic class."

C'mon. It's just a way to visually emphasize an important next step.

Is the text sometimes self-indulgent and annoying? Yeah, it's marketing copy. That's nothing new.

noduerme5• 3 years ago

It's infantilizing, though. Compared with marketing copy of old. Much of which can just be laid at the feet of a corporate nanny state that infantilizes everyone. Which is ultimately a political point.

paulryanrogers• 3 years ago

Can you link to some examples of "marketing copy of old"? I'm curious to know how it differs.

uoaei• 3 years ago

I find it interesting that you insist there is no value to word choice on buttons in this comment, but your previous comment thread four hours prior (and ongoing) on another post delves into very pedantic semantics on naming types. Would you please explain the difference between the two cases?

jonahx2• 3 years ago

Would you please explain the difference between the two cases?

Absolutely!

You'll notice my complaint about the BPY article is not about its griping over semantically incorrect uses of buttons -- I'm fine with that! My complaint is ascribing those incorrect uses to deep dark political and cultural forces, or viewing them as harbingers of societal change. That interpretation strikes me as self-indulgent nonsense.

People are styling semantic "links" as visually prominent buttons because it's a practically effective way to direct the eye, and hence a practically effective marketing strategy. Most of them don't even know what semantic html is. So this is all explained by humans taking actions to accomplish their immediate goals and not caring about things like the html spec that aren't directly relevant to those goals.

The typical landing page with big type, punchy explanations, social proof and CTA buttons evolved mostly because it works.

moritzwarhier• 3 years ago

Initially I felt the same but I changed my mind mid-read.

The topic of "links should not be styled as buttons" is well-known to everyone who has or had to do frontend web dev, at least I think so.

And the reasons for that as well.

The common violation of this rule on landing pages and CTA-like interstitials is also well-known to every designer or frontend dev who has to work on pages that sell something, I guess.

This essay presents these tradeoffs and developments in UX, and makes a very good point aboit button texts and an annoying next step in this evolution of commercial UX design that I never could quite put my finger on.

drpixie• 3 years ago

Ah yes. This is one of the marvels of having browser APIs that want to give you (almost) complete control over the machine, and let you do (almost) anything...

Upside: You can do almost anything.

Downside: You have to manage (almost) everything yourself.

Downside: It lets other people do real dumb/annoying/inconvenient/stupid things, and you get to deal with the result.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

zombo.com

alexhsamuel• 3 years ago

Sometimes, when faced with button choices "OK" and "Maybe Later", I open devtools and relabel the latter to "Fuck off" before clicking on it. I used to think it futile, but now I understand that this allows me to dismiss the modal without myself being pushed by a button.

beachy• 3 years ago

I find it so offensive being given only two choices - "yes" or "maybe later". I salute your "fuck off" energy.

lloeki• 3 years ago

Someone should immediately make a cloud to butt like extension out of this.

qingcharles2• 3 years ago

On Temu there is a dialog that asks you "Yes" or "Maybe later." If you click "Maybe later" it pops up again and the only button to dismiss the modal is "Next time".

_dain_• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/EiKCK8YNVUk?t=2673

I'm sitting here like I'm in an Apple commercial or Square or Swipely or some bullshit tech thing, instead of "OK" I'm clicking "Got it!". Like [obnoxious surfer voice] "Ok, Got it! Got it!". That's how I acknowledge menus in the computer. That's how, when it becomes total Brave New World life, your torturers -- you're gonna have to acknowledge your -- "You've been assigned 10 hours of genital torture." "Ok, Got It!"

fireflash382• 3 years ago

Should turn that into a tiny CSS extension that relabels all "maybe later"s into a fuck off.

keepamovin• 3 years ago

tricks users into performing work for the system they’re using.

Yeah, I mean we have been doing work for these systems. We’re all basically data entry for a giant database that ends up I suppose getting mined for value and maybe producing AI.

That was Larry pages Initial goal with Google anyway, his goal was to create an AI not a search engine, and the search engine was simply a means to that, I feel sad for him as seems like openai got there first.

DontchaKnowit• 3 years ago

I know ux/ui design is super important, but as an outsider, articles like this always seem like insane navel gazing

azubinski• 3 years ago

Ted Kaczynski would love this headline

layer8• 3 years ago

The name "Button Pushes You" explains why I hate those.

chrisjj• 3 years ago

BPY represents a shift to turning user interfaces into a decision theatre that, by redefining long established elements, tricks users into performing work for the system they’re using.

Spot on.

A good example is Credit Karma UK's email alerts for credit score rise or fall, offering a button "Find out why". A click doesn't find out why. It lands you on a page of credit record info which might allow you to find out why, with considerable work and upsell-dodging.

As here, much BPY is simply false advertising at the UI core.

samplenoise• 3 years ago

A particularly intriguing (to me) version of this kind of user-centered copy is not uncommon on sites in French and uses first-person verbs: “I accept,” “I start”. As opposed to the infinitive “Comment,” “Sign in,” etc.

Mordisquitos• 3 years ago

That reminds me of a noticeable difference in button UI wording traditions between Spanish and Catalan where the original English uses verbs, for instance Open, Edit, Save and Delete.

Specifically, Spanish translations interpret these as representing an impersonal description of the action, and thus the buttons are labelled using the infinitive: Abrir, Editar, Guardar and Borrar. Catalan versions, on the other hand, have interpreted the verbs as instructions aimed at the computer, and translate them in the imperative: Obre, Edita, Desa and Esborra.

Button Pushes You (2022)

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