> In many cases, we chose to exceed existing standards for tap target size, color contrast, and other important aspects that can make interfaces easier to use.
So now even more space is wasted, making interfaces harder to use, but yes, the less important metric "how much time does it take on first use to spot a button" will shoot through the roof of you make the button full screen width (10x faster!). Thought it will fail to capture the more important metric of time wasted scrolling since a simple message doesn't fully fit on screen
And of course there are no user customizations to rectify these usability errors...
PS A great example of this awesomeness in action: on https://m3.material.io/components/toolbars/guidelines they can't even fit 2 (two!) toolbar buttons fully because the huge left/right buttons and all the extra white space padding and margins prevent the button content from being seen.
But there is enough space to fit all 4 (or at least 3 depending on text size and icons) toolbar buttons, and even if one doesn’t fit fully you could show its partial text, so navigation would still be faster without having to press the scroll button first and then the toolbar button
In my view, peak design is the "density" setting in Gmail where you could select between 3 degrees of density and wasted space in the UI.
Even though I like somewhat denser interfaces, I know that lots of whitespace is GREAT for new users. Just like I know everything needs to be in the UI (~80-90% of users click the undo button instead of typing Ctrl+Z in many apps). There has to be space for a learning curve for any interface.
The ability to make things denser is important, but high density is usually only relevant for power users. It should not be the benchmark by which a UI is judged.
EDIT: Actual ctrl+z statistic is inaccurate. Details included in a further comment.
> Button instead of Ctrl+Z
This is rather different, this is ignorance, so button alternatives are helpful for ignorant users (although one of the reasons for such widespread ignorance is precisely because there isn't really much of a learning curve since interfaces don't actually teach you much if at all)
But for a lot of whitespace instead of content, what exactly does it teach new users? Consider the toolbar example, how would showing a new user 3 buttons (left, right, section name) help instead of showing 3 buttons with section name and a 4th partial text button with section name?
Also, gmail density mostly affects vertical density, the number of horizontal tabs doesn't change, so the control density doesn't change as much except for the left list of categories (but only if it's a big list otherwise it would still fit in sparse UI ), making this mostly an aesthetic choice (unless you often need to see a lot of emails in a list)
Wow, I understand using the button on a phone app, because where would you even find the "Ctrl" button, but if it's true that even digital natives are still using the button instead of a keyboard shortcuts when sitting at a keyboard, that boggles my mind.
The statistic is actually wrong, I misremembered. It is from Tantacrul, a designer overseeing the current design of MuseScore and the redesign of Audacity. It's a finding he had while working at microsoft on a revamped version of MS Paint (the man has since moved to greener pastures).
The actual moment is a few minutes into the section about shortcuts (of a long video trashing a piece of discontinued music software). The actual bit was that undo/redo was the most clicked button in the MS Paint interface, and that people overwhelmingly prefer the button over the shortcut. No actual number is specified.
https://youtu.be/Yqaon6YHzaU?si=uDFFQgrbZuYFifhS&t=1580
The correct statistic (which I associated with the other example in my mind) was that only 17% of users use more than 20 shortcuts.
> By making the Send button larger and more prominent, participants were able to spot the button four times faster.
By making the Back button larger and more prominent instead, participants would be able to spot the button four times faster. I suggest to reduce the size of the Send button.
The running joke was that the back button in Longhorn was bigger than the others to make it an easier target to get out of Goatse.
I actually have no idea what you mean with the example, all the toolbars on the page fit 4 or more buttons, I tried viewing it in various window widths, can you be a bit more specific?
Try with a smartphone, the very first toolbar "Overview/specs/guideline/accessibility", tap the specs to see both left/right buttons
Welcome to Idiocracy. Google engineers have thought you are now too stupid to use your device and have had to make the buttons giant big colorful flashy bits so you understand what you are trying to do with it.
Android is now a Fisher-Price toy in comparison to iOS.
You are being too harsh, not everybody is under 40 with perfect vision. My mother tends to struggle with her android phone with all the font sizes to the max and high contrast mode.
With font sizes to the max text often does not fit in its allocated space, and is off screen or chopped off altogether. It's a mess of oversized broken UI widgets, and indeed a struggle to use.
Most users cannot handle more than two buttons anyway, at least outside of professional tools for power users.
Of course they can, do "most users" fail when their browsers have more than 2 tabs?
Besides, in this toolbar example, thare are *more than 2 buttons", so even by your metric it's a fail. It's just that instead of actual content section buttons you get left/right ones