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(I'm not a UX designer , I'm only a user).I might be the only one , but I think that I'm the weird one , because I just can't see how UI component are being released without further thinking :

Example #1

Take for example , the sorting arrow :

enter image description here

The arrow says it is sorted ascending , but the arrow points to top. I know that it shows bottom to top which is their way of showing A->Z. but the arrow doesn't points to the direction of data flow.

This makes the user perform some brain activity to translate buttom to top as ascending order.

I mean , What if the arrow was to the other direction ( V , not ^) , this way it will be both visually correct and flowy correct.

Example #2

enter image description here

Honestly , I don't understand how Apple allowed this to happen.

Fact : Airplane mode is off. But the circle is pushed to the place where "1" is found , so one can treat this as "it's on 1 which is on. if you want to shut the mode off , go to the zero location , which is right". What is going on here? This is very non-intuitive !

of course you might say : but you see a zero which shows it is off. And I can answer , NO! I see a zero which is on the right side in case when i want to shut it off.

Not to mention that they added green background when I set it to the right, which completely makes you to cancel your intuitive response.

Am I right ?

Royi Namir
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1 Answers1

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Actually, I pretty much disagree, at least with the examples you've given.

The little sorting arrow is basically showing that the 'lower' value is at the top and the larger value is at the bottom (think: 1..2..3..4..5..and so on). If you click it, then it sorts the other way around. The point is that the lowest values in alphanumeric order (e.g. '1' is before '2' and 'a' is before 'b') are at the pointier smaller end and the higher values at the bigger end.

As for the Airplane Mode example, I've checked all my iOS devices and none of them actually have the circle (but I digress). Regardless, green is often used for 'on' or 'go' so it only makes sense that the green is indicating that Airplane Mode is on etc.

All that said, I do think that many UI elements are implemented in a counter-intuitive way. In some cases, the 'double negative' or 'false positive' approaches are quite confusing.

Monomeeth
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  • Well :-) , You describe the facts. of course when I click the arrow , the flow of data changes. But again , this forces me to think that ^ is from bottom to top , while the same time , I see the flow of data as top to bottom. I think that V direction would have been CONSISTENT with the flow of data both visually and flowly. – Royi Namir Feb 14 '16 at 12:17