Rising Trend of "Confrontational" User Interfaces

General
#1

Hey all,
Have you experienced what I am calling “Confrontational” user interfaces? It started on the web after GDPR made every web page more annoying with the Confrontational message that you must agree to cookies or you can’t access the site. It will block you from interacting with the page and some pages will blur the page’s contents so you can’t even read the info you’re looking for quickly and exit out of the site.

Then Microsoft got on board and started adding these “confrontational” messages to Outlook and Teams, for example “Hey you updated the app…before I’ll let you use it, I insist you take a tour of the app!”

I’ve seen it in Smartphone apps often too…Recently I opened YouTube expecting to quickly find and load a song I was interested in, but no…Instead of just loading the app interface, the YouTube App took over the entire screen, displayed an ad for YouTube Premium, and demanded that I tap a teeny tiny X to close out. Now imagine if I had done this while driving…a simple command that should have taken 1/2 a second is now a full-blown pull-over-the-car-and-figure-this-out situation. Sure, they are allowed to advertise their business so this one bothers me less than other apps that have no such Premium.

I have OnStar so I’m paying for some services including an app that I can use to turn on the car remotely. You might think, since Chevy’s getting my money already, they wouldn’t feel the need to turn a app created for the convenience of the driver into a an app to to sell Chevy accessories, but you’d be wrong. Again, during a critical moment where time was of the essence, the Chevy app refused to cooperate until I read the full page of new updated terms, then read about the updates the app, then read about new merchandise in the Chevy Store, then took a tour of the new interface.

A “sure, I can unlock the car real quick”, turned into a “ah…wait a minute, it’s updating…ah, I need to sign-in again…humm…what was the password…guess I’ll have to reset it…which email did I use?..ah, looks like I need to 2FA into that email account…where’s my token…ah, just send me a text…darn, looks like I don’t have service in this area, can’t get the 2FA code…oh wait, it just loaded, guess I don’t have to do any of that.”

Anyway…this is more of a rant I guess. Anyone else feel frustrated by this kind of thing?

#2

Well, there’s your problem :rofl:

No, seriously, I hate this too, and there’s definitely been an uptick in this sort of thing.

Also seriously, I don’t think you/we have much leverage as a consumer. I consider it a win for consumers that someone/thing has finally forced most of them to allow you to choose how much tracking you want done by them, but the interface is passive-aggressive, and very clearly comes with the subtext of “Oh, so you don’t want us to track you, well then, we’ll annoy you”

With regards to the car apps, I haven’t found a good one yet, due to the fact that they’re all bad and it doesn’t pose a competitive advantage for anyone to have a good one yet. I assume they’ll get better, but I also assume their “betterness” will go hand in hand with their ability to track you/charge you money to use your own car, and your your inability to not use them (the apps). Sorry, I’m ranting too…

1 Like
#3

I know right!? I am so done with YT now.

1 Like
#4

This topic was automatically closed 54 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.