The sins of our UIs

If you can’t explain it to a 70-year-old, you‘ve got work to do.

There are a few things about UIs that I have come to appreciate (and strongly dislike) through various means.

The first is through my own experience in what I’ll call “visual dissonance” (the technical term may not directly apply here). Attention to detail is crucial, and when the visuals/actions I expect to see are not there, it really bothers me.

Second, have you ever tried to explain iOS to a pair of lovely 70-something grandparents? If you do, you’ll realize things that you never noticed before.

#1 — Spotify, and the lack of desktop to web to mobile symmetry

Preface: I’m happy to report that in the time between writing this and finally hitting publish, Spotify has rectified the main thing that disturbed me so much about using it. Well done, Spotify!

The primary thing that bothers me about Spotify is the lack of symmetry between the mobile app, web app, and desktop app. And it falls around one primary thing — the action menu is not the same between the three.

For whatever reason, this throws me for a loop. I seemed to have trouble grasping that the menu item would have the exact same action, because it didn’t look the same! You’ll see below that between the three platforms, the action to place a song to play next is not the same between the three.

On mobile, it says “Add to Up Next,” desktop says “Add to Queue,” and web says “Add to Play Queue.” Uh…

You can also see that other menu items that do the same thing read and appear differently (radio, add to playlist among them).