Please note that this response is only in the context of your home page desktop design on Firefox. I'd need to spend some additional time doing analysis on mobile and other browsers.
In your case, my main problem with the design is two pieces, my scrollbar is missing until after the slide show and the animated pieces of the slide show don't move using the same "physics" principals as a bare html page in the same browser. The lack of a scroll bar (I have an optional setting on so it is always visible if present) means that I don't expect there to be additional content on the page. Then when I do try scrolling, ot feels like nothing is happening at all and then I hit some invisible threshold and the page scrolls _for_ me. This feels a little bit like lag, which in any other case would mean that my computer is breaking. That's a bad feeling.
In most cases I would suggest a medium scale redesign - save the font choices, the colors, and some of the layouts but go back to the drawing board on the user interactions. However I know that designs like this continue to be popular and so I'm going to have to keep working on them. I've found that there are some decent compromises out there. So here's what I would suggest:
1) For the transition between the final slide (pip 3) and the actual page content drop the fixed animation entirely. That content should simply be at the bottom of the page the entire time.
2) For the transitions between the 3 images of Venice (or wherever?), I think you're going to need to do a bit of playing around. Ideally the largest object on the screen should move in direct relation (and with a 1 to 1 ratio) to the scrollbar without any delay. The absolutist in me wants to say that you should just place the 3 images in a stack and be done with it, but I realize that's not eye catching enough for the audience you're targeting. In your case one option would be to consider the "largest object" to be the horizontal scan line where one image stops and the other image starts. But the problem there is that you're still going to have to do significant scroll jacking to get that transition point to move...
However, I think you can get an effect like this using transparency or opacity settings and some complex positioning. You might need JavaScript for slide transitions after the first, but I would have to actually build the thing to figure it out. I'll think about it overnight and let you know if I come up with anything! (No promises though!)
Another option might be to use background-clip: content-box; for the transitions and then some JS magic in-between slide transitions to change which image is in the foreground and which is in the background.
The text at the bottom would continue to switch in a slide show style I think. You would have to try it and see.
If you want to preserve the delay between slides, you'll need to add a somewhat large visual element to the design that continues to move as the user scrolls even while the image stays in place, but in this case, I'm not sure if that will be necessary.
None of those solutions will completely remove scroll event listeners, but they will bring the experience back significantly toward being in line with normal system interactions.
This feeling of lack of control vs perfect control is something I look for in the video games I play. I've come to believe that it is the single most important part of game design for me. Games like QWOP and Getting Over It play with this idea intentionally, while historical successes like Mario 64 and Soul Calibur have made waves in the gaming world specifically because their controls are so refined and fluid.
Sorry I wrote so much! I appreciate the work you're doing with this site and I wish you much success!
I did the native version of this after someone mentioned it in one of the general articles on phone addiction that have been making their rounds on HN since the start of the year. So far I don't feel like it has had much of an effect. I've only noticed two direct behavioral changes for me so far:
1) It is forcing me to wait to watch YouTube videos until I get to a computer because I want to see them in color. That seems like it should be a big gain, but I still find myself scrolling through my YouTube recommendations anyway. Habits die hard I guess.
2) It is also delaying my reading of the couple of web comics I follow since, again, I want to see them in full color.
So I guess my phone usage overall has dropped considerably since YouTube takes up most of my time. I'm already off Reddit starting a couple of months ago and I've been off of Facebook (except Messenger) and Twitter for over a year. So maybe I'm not really the target of all of this, but I definitely spend more time than I would like on YouTube.
I also made a change to my settings so that my phone screen no longer wakes up when a notification arrives. So it is less distracting when sitting on a table.
In addition I saw a couple of other pieces of advice on here to curb phone use: One of them mentioned putting only fast utility apps on your home screen and removing notifications that don't come directly from people (basically every notification except for personal e-mail, human texts, and Slack messages I guess?). I haven't tried either of those things yet but I'm definitely considering it. They both require a bit more thought and planning than simple settings changes.
In regards to the site linked, I have only one additional piece of input: Please stop with the scroll jacking. This is a well known web design anti-pattern. I don't understand why this fad has persisted as long as it has. It literally feels like the site is broken when interacting with it using a click wheel.
It is not scifi, but I think some mention of Tuck Everlasting should be made. The book was really important to my understanding of death when I was growing up.
Unfortunately it looks like the author, Natalie Babbitt, passed away last year. So they can't interview her.
I'm not sure if your counter example holds up. Wikipedia indicates that Edward Gibbon wrote way more than just The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1]. And those are the works we know about that he didn't just burn immediately (or whatever). The successful stuff sticks around and holds up, but that can create inaccurate views for how many failures came before (and after) the success.
As a side note, I also find it amusing that you expect Churchill's "aura" to fade. If current trends are any indication, he's moving toward folk tale hero status rather than the slow march toward obscurity (with multiple appearances in Doctor Who and other fictional media). In my opinion, the only thing that potentially stands in the way is a possible upheaval of the Western power base or an Alexandria style purge of knowledge. I say this as a US citizen who is much too young to remember the fall out of the war, much less the war itself.
Can we add a unit to the title here on HN? The only reason I clicked through was to see what unit the 25M was in. 25 million grams? 25 million milligrams? 25 million rupees?
If your rent is more than 30% of your income and you are between the ages of 25 and 34, you are normal (46% of the renting population). Even at above 50% your rent to income ratio is still fairly common (23%). Having a rent to income ratio above 30% is also correlated with having an income that is very low [1].
If you are at 30%, you are also meeting one of the most common recommendations in personal finance (regardless of whether that recommendation is _good_ or not).
It seems obvious to me that recommendations of either moving or finding additional housemates both can have significant short and long term negative impacts on financial stability, emotional, and physical health (I didn't bother looking for a source for this because this is hacker news not a dissertation).
I'm not the parent, but the new Pokemon game has been amazing for me. I'm 28 and single though. So obviously the target market. I've done more walking since the game came out than I had done in years. I've seen a lot of nature too. I found an owl in the park near my house. It was so close I could almost reach out and touch it.
In the context of the article, Kaphan is talking about technologies that isolate versus technologies that connect people. For the examples he gives:
1 seems to be neutral to me (people talking robotically to voice recognition systems). This is neither isolating nor connecting. It is just a different means of interfacing with a computer. I'm sure someone somewhere made a similar argument when the typewriter was invented.
1 seems isolating. Looking at your phone instead of being mentally present at your current location can be isolating. But then it depends on what you are doing. If you are participating in a text message communication, that's connecting you to someone else while isolating you from the physical world.
But Pokemon seems like it falls in the "connecting" category. I have something new in common with random strangers that we can discuss. I go out with my friends to play the game. The downside for some people seems to be that I am now physically present connecting with them and they would really rather I didn't. They liked the park empty and quiet.
Of course there are the incidents of people playing while driving or the one guy who walked off a cliff that one time (99% of the articles I've read slamming Pokemon Go mention the same 3 Reddit posts without attribution). But for me personally, I'm more present and walking around when I play Pokemon than I am when I'm posting on HN.
I think the majority of the Impossible Project's marketing is already aimed at the fine art community and instant photography enthusiasts. Many people in those groups had been spending excessive amounts on expired Polaroid film prior to the project's creation.
I'm hoping this is a high-end camera. They already have the low-end market covered by the decades of old Polaroids lying around. I have an excellent 600 Business Edition ($30 ebay) and don't really feel the need to upgrade.
Please note that this response is only in the context of your home page desktop design on Firefox. I'd need to spend some additional time doing analysis on mobile and other browsers.
In my opinion, the main thing you want to do is not change responses to the user's systems native controls. This is an essential part the principal of least surprise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
In your case, my main problem with the design is two pieces, my scrollbar is missing until after the slide show and the animated pieces of the slide show don't move using the same "physics" principals as a bare html page in the same browser. The lack of a scroll bar (I have an optional setting on so it is always visible if present) means that I don't expect there to be additional content on the page. Then when I do try scrolling, ot feels like nothing is happening at all and then I hit some invisible threshold and the page scrolls _for_ me. This feels a little bit like lag, which in any other case would mean that my computer is breaking. That's a bad feeling.
In most cases I would suggest a medium scale redesign - save the font choices, the colors, and some of the layouts but go back to the drawing board on the user interactions. However I know that designs like this continue to be popular and so I'm going to have to keep working on them. I've found that there are some decent compromises out there. So here's what I would suggest:
1) For the transition between the final slide (pip 3) and the actual page content drop the fixed animation entirely. That content should simply be at the bottom of the page the entire time.
2) For the transitions between the 3 images of Venice (or wherever?), I think you're going to need to do a bit of playing around. Ideally the largest object on the screen should move in direct relation (and with a 1 to 1 ratio) to the scrollbar without any delay. The absolutist in me wants to say that you should just place the 3 images in a stack and be done with it, but I realize that's not eye catching enough for the audience you're targeting. In your case one option would be to consider the "largest object" to be the horizontal scan line where one image stops and the other image starts. But the problem there is that you're still going to have to do significant scroll jacking to get that transition point to move...
However, I think you can get an effect like this using transparency or opacity settings and some complex positioning. You might need JavaScript for slide transitions after the first, but I would have to actually build the thing to figure it out. I'll think about it overnight and let you know if I come up with anything! (No promises though!)
Another option might be to use background-clip: content-box; for the transitions and then some JS magic in-between slide transitions to change which image is in the foreground and which is in the background.
The text at the bottom would continue to switch in a slide show style I think. You would have to try it and see.
If you want to preserve the delay between slides, you'll need to add a somewhat large visual element to the design that continues to move as the user scrolls even while the image stays in place, but in this case, I'm not sure if that will be necessary.
None of those solutions will completely remove scroll event listeners, but they will bring the experience back significantly toward being in line with normal system interactions.
This feeling of lack of control vs perfect control is something I look for in the video games I play. I've come to believe that it is the single most important part of game design for me. Games like QWOP and Getting Over It play with this idea intentionally, while historical successes like Mario 64 and Soul Calibur have made waves in the gaming world specifically because their controls are so refined and fluid.
Sorry I wrote so much! I appreciate the work you're doing with this site and I wish you much success!