The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world-60713dc86950

by andsoitis • 4 months ago

234 117 4 months ago

uxdesign.cc

jibal7• 4 months ago

I just want to be able to get to 11.

pseudohadamard4• 4 months ago

Here you go, https://store.thodio.com/products/new-anodized-aluminum-a-bo...

jibal7• 4 months ago

whoosh

bigfishrunning• 4 months ago

Just 1 more loud

socalgal24• 4 months ago

I just want it to be able to be set between 0 and 1, because on iPhone

    0 = off
    1 = 30% volume
    10 = 100% volume

You are not allowed to set it between 0 and 1.

+ Mud flaps

sota_pop3• 4 months ago

I really hope this is a TiST reference.

jibal7• 4 months ago

Of course.

sph• 4 months ago

Beautiful, forgot about this one. The precursor to some of neal.fun's creations.

- https://neal.fun/not-a-robot/

- https://neal.fun/password-game/

aa-jv• 4 months ago

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.

sillywalk• 4 months ago

I'd add the volume control for Quicktime 4. A dial that you had to use a mouse to use.

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

pseudohadamard4• 4 months ago

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.

ndr42• 4 months ago

I agree, but boy does it look beautiful!

flyinghamster2• 4 months ago

And the silly thing is, as ridiculous as they are for mouse click/drag or touch use, those kind of dial controls are actually reasonable when coupled to a scroll wheel (like you can do in GNURadio). But Apple has never wavered from "one mouse button and nothing else is good enough for everybody," and scroll wheels aren't really an option for a touch interface.

nico• 4 months ago

Every now and then I get these hilarious volume control videos on TikTok. They show the most horrible ways for doing volume control

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

sanjosanjo• 4 months ago

Tic Tac Toe is hilarious

gzread• 4 months ago

Since it's on TikTok it should be renamed Tik Tok Toe

RiskScore• 4 months ago

I've seen this same thing like 100 times. I do not mind.

harvey9• 4 months ago

I liked the one where you make a noise at the level you want to set the volume.

efebarlas• 4 months ago

I feel like that one’s actually pretty good, why should the ear calibrate to the device when it can be vice versa?

semolino• 4 months ago

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!

db48x• 4 months ago

That’s actually a really common implementation failure across all platforms. It crops up again and again, in virtually every new thing that people implement. It’s very common to see this problem when you activate a submenu of a menu, and want to move the mouse diagonally to pick some item from the submenu.

fainpul2• 4 months ago

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/steering-law/

vntok• 4 months ago

See here for how Amazon's mega menu was designed around this problem:

https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...

Sohcahtoa82• 4 months ago

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.

mananaysiempre• 4 months ago

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.

terribleperson2• 4 months ago

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.

dylan6046• 4 months ago

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.

vintagedave• 4 months ago

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.

dylan6046• 4 months ago

"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.

pbhjpbhj• 4 months ago

"We can create our own implementation of a drop-down box"

Have been using MS "Dynamics" and wanted to add custom styling as a user. Even small lists/tables have all the off-screen elements destroyed so you can't copy stuff from the page, but also you might have to scroll things into view before they get styled (:has gets broken).

They re-implement tables as a swamp of elements which now lack semantic relationships.

They give the same elements random ids, they're non-deterministic. You can only really style by hierarchy, but for every property they seem to add at least one new element.

Everything about it is slow and cumbersome, and no wonder a simple table has hundreds of elements.

It's so Microsoft, the "don't bake your own widgets" taken to the n-th degree.

himata41132• 4 months ago

Have seen this every single time, the iPhone one is my favorite. If you know, you know.

busymom0• 4 months ago

Can you explain that one?

himata41132• 4 months ago

in early versions of iOS apple used additional logic to "understand" what the user wanted instead of just doing what the user wanted.

Also it wasn't linear, it was more of a smiley face of sensitivity

socalgal24• 4 months ago

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

shreddit• 4 months ago

The same with brightness. I have a shortcut to lower the white point because the lowest brightness level is still far to bright in complete darkness.

m463• 4 months ago

brightness should go the other way too.

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.

hombre_fatal• 4 months ago

My gen1 kindle backlight is so bright at the lowest level that I angle it away from me to read at night.

Just typing this out makes me realize I should get a different ereader than wait for it to die since it’s clearly never going to die. It’s been like 15 years

bdavbdav• 4 months ago

There’s an accessibility option in iOS to reduce white point that can be mapped

reaperducer• 4 months ago

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.

hedora• 4 months ago

It definitely deserves a place on the list.

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.

userbinator• 4 months ago

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".

dylan6046• 4 months ago

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

IntrepidPig• 4 months ago

If you long press the volume bar in control center then it opens a larger version you can drag to adjust more precisely.

socalgal24• 4 months ago

You are my hero! Does this get added to the list of worst controls though since it's so buried?

Obscurity43402• 4 months ago

Also if you pull down the today center or whatever it is on iOS, it has a music player interface you can drag the volume there too

oneeyedpigeon3• 4 months ago

I upvoted you - at least, I hope I did. HN's vote buttons have such poor UX that a) it's difficult to hit the right button b) it's impossible to know, after doing so, whether you even hit the right button!

shric2• 4 months ago

There is either an unvote or undown option once you’ve hit one

Obscurity43402• 4 months ago

HACK is a fantastic reader, highly recommended

wkjagt• 4 months ago

On my phone I always zoom in on the vote buttons as far as it will let me so each is as big as my thumb.

kakacik• 4 months ago

I face the same situation on Android, there is no way to play music really quiet on Sennheiser TW4. Isn't this also plugs manufacturer's fault? (not valid for apple obviously)

soopypoos• 4 months ago

"Disable absolute volume" setting (in Developer options) might help. It separates the phone volume control from the headphones volume control so it's like a preamp.

roelschroeven• 4 months ago

This is an issue in many audio players. Maybe not as bad as in iOS (I don't know, can't compare), but the steps when the volume is low are nearly always too large. I like to play audio on low volumes, especially in quiet environments, and it seems designers/developers don't cater to that use case. One step is too low are even complete silent, one step louder is too loud.

hn_throwaway_99• 4 months ago

Yeah, the default Android volume control had (has?) the same problem. I remember when I got an early Pixel model that I thought there wasn't a low enough volume - this issue was filed in 2015 and is still marked as open: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37035441

c4pt0r• 4 months ago

i know they will have alsamixer in this list.

Dwedit• 4 months ago

Is there a list of these that are actually in real shipped software and not created as a joke?

neya• 4 months ago

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.

dylan6046• 4 months ago

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.

lostlogin• 4 months ago

What would be better?

When I search the Android UI, it looks very similar, but horizontal.

terribleperson2• 4 months ago

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.

dylan6046• 4 months ago

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.

svelle• 4 months ago

That would be bandcamp, where the free/preview player doesn't have a volume control but the library player does.

lend000• 4 months ago

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.

user3939382• 4 months ago

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.

maest• 4 months ago

This "article" just rehashes the top submissions from the reddit thread and then adds some surface level musings about UX.

It also blasts you with a full screen subscribe popup, ostensibly in case you want to see more rehashed content.

Freak_NL• 4 months ago

That wasn't part of the show? The popup (no idea what was on it, no one reads those of course) shows up and you think 'Ah. Yes, that would be very annoying if that happened while interacting with a volume slider.'

iinnPP• 4 months ago

The popup also scrolled down for me and I had to scroll back up to hit the X.

flyinghamster2• 4 months ago

Seriously, why not just link to the Reddit thread instead of this? It seems like every damn site has become a Torment Nexus.

kibwen2• 4 months ago

In defense of this blogspam, the original posts were each individual submissions to /r/programmerhumor, so there's no easy way to link to a collection of them on reddit itself.

extraduder_ire• 4 months ago

That popup is typical of blogs hosted on Medium. I don't know if the author even has control over if it pops up or now.

joe_the_user2• 4 months ago

It works fine with javascript blocked, thankfully.

smoghat• 4 months ago

Also, the post is on Medium.

lzhgusapp• 4 months ago

macOS has its own share of UI quirks too. The volume slider is fine, but app management is surprisingly bad for a platform that prides itself on UX. There's still no native way to quit all apps at once, and Activity Monitor feels stuck in 2005. Small UI tools that just get one thing right tend to stick around.

pasc1878• 4 months ago

MacOS requires there to be an App as First Responder - what app should be that if you quit all apps?

The nearest that makes sense is Log Out.

Traubenfuchs• 4 months ago

I feel like it‘s in bad taste to turn a reddit thread into a blog post with zero added value instead of just linking to the thread.

noisy_boy• 4 months ago

I think the one with 100 checkboxes with each for a given volume gives direct access to the level of volume you want. Mad, but usable.

chuckadams• 4 months ago

It should make you manually check and uncheck every checkbox between 0 and the target volume. Miss one and it silently dismisses the dialog without changing the volume.

wiether• 4 months ago

Too bad the article is from 2017 because it's missing a major one: Sonos iOS app.

nubg• 4 months ago

I don't get the iOS one?

zelphirkalt• 4 months ago

When I read the heading, I thought: "This must surely be about Windows volume control." But I didn't take into account, that this is a UX design website, so it mostly deals with UX and not with what happens after setting a specific numeric value for the volume.

rixed• 4 months ago

I thought that would be about alsamixer.

moffkalast• 4 months ago

Haha, and it's Alsa's best feature by far.

dev1ycan• 4 months ago

I have my sennheiser bluetooth headphones connected to windows 11, for whatever reason, 90% of the time, I move the slider on Windows 11 and it ignores completely the sound on my headphones, just great working products. I have to use the physical buttons on my headphones like a caveman

afcool83• 4 months ago

I still contend that the worst volume control UX is asking your teenager to turn it down…

tiltowait• 4 months ago

As I scrolled down, one of the animations started and brought up a subscription modal. "Okay, that one would be enraging," I thought, delighted, as I waited for the animation to loop.

It didn't. It was the site's real subscription modal.

I feel like there's a lesson in there.

driftnode• 4 months ago

The circular drag ones are genuinely worse than most of the joke submissions. At least the joke ones fail immediately. The knob UI works just well enough that you keep trying for 30 seconds before giving up.

neoCrimeLabs• 4 months ago

One of the worst volume controls I have run across is when the UI tries to simulate a physical knob. More often than not I see this on VST Plugins and I have yet to find one that I actually like - they are all equally terrible.

They appear to fall into 3 buckets:

1) Worst: Direction of the cursor has move in a circular pattern as if dragging a physical knob with a cursor.

2) Annoying, but least common: You have to move the cursor horizontally to move the knob

3) Most common, but still annoying: You have to move the cursor vertically to move the knob.

joe_the_user2• 4 months ago

Yeah, your 1 option is actually worse than some of parody submissions. What makes it truly horrific is that it works just enough to get you to put your thumb into muscle spasms trying to do it.

the_biot• 4 months ago

Common in desktop software for controlling measurement gear like oscilloscopes. Those have actual knobs on the equipment, so the software does the same thing and it's the worst thing ever.

wishfish• 4 months ago

I have a mechanical keyboard with a metal roller for controlling volume. On my Mac, it works haphazardly. Rapidly rolling it downwards should mute almost immediately. But around 30-40% of the time, it'll just set it to a low volume instead. At least I work from home so this isn't an annoyance to anyone but myself. But it is annoying.

Oh well. From the UI's shown, I kinda like the 0-100 radio buttons. Yes, it's incredibly ugly. But I like the immediate precision of it.

sota_pop3• 4 months ago

Single pushbutton: roll to set volume to random number.

clean, concise, single button

sota_pop3• 4 months ago

Or actually good (for smartphones…): radial drag so my thumb can slide ergonomically. Have the entire phone UI/UX have a left/right hand setting.

The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

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