What happens when you delete ~/.Trash folder on macOS

Tue, 15 May 2018 13:00:00 +0200

I have done some stupid stuff and managed to delete the ~/.Trash folder on my Mac. The result was surprising:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

To fix this you can type this in the shell:

mkdir ~/.Trash

This is clearly bad user experience. Somebody not knowing how to fix this will just assume that the trash stopped working. Even worse, they might miss the message and just click on Delete.

What should macOS do in this case, is to silently restore the trash folder and keep on humming.

10 Laws of UX, digested

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 15:43:59 +0100

After reading the article on 10 Laws of UX and the associated comments on Hacker News, I have decided to try a shot at reformatting the page to a more legible format. In the form of a blog post—because I do not think that every idea on the internet needs its own domain.

I provide my own interpretation of the laws in the titles, they are not in the original article.

1. If a function needs to be accessed often and/or quickly, make the button big

The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

– Paul Fitts

Fitt’s Law on Wikipedia

2. Only provide choices when a good default does not exist

The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

– William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman

Hick’s Law on Wikipedia

3. Respect the platform’s conventions and interface guidelines

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

– Jakob Nielsen

Jakob’s Law on Nielsen Norman Group

4. Do not stuff too much detail into a small space

Law of Prägnanz:

People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible, because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us.

The Laws of Figure/Ground, Prägnanz, Closure, and Common Fate on Interaction Design

5. Put actions that do similar things together

Law of Proximity:

Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.

N.B.: The recent missile alert fiasco is a good example of why this is important

6. Reduce the number of things your users have to remember

The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.

– George Miller

Miller’s Law on Wikipedia

7. Make tasks short, simple and with set deadlines

Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.

– Cyril Northcote Parkinson

Parkinson’s Law on Wikipedia

8. Put the important things at the beginning or at the end

Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.

Serial Position Effect on Wikipedia

9. Removing features from your product may result in users not being able to achieve some goals

Tesler’s Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.

Larry Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity on Wikipedia

10. Make the most important thing stand out

The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.

Von Restorff Effect on Wikipedia

Alternatively: If you want to stand out from competition, find a feature which is always the same and make it different.

Bonus law

Do not put a leading zero on numbers that do not have to be aligned.

UX on yozy//NET