Young children, the elderly, the desktop-bewildered still use iPads and touchscreen phones more readily than they ever used desktop UIs. I think as experienced computer-users we easily miss that this has been a genuine revolution in UI reach.
I don't think we miss that. We're just paying attention to what that revolution cost us.
Part of the problem is the "winner takes all" dynamic of the computing sector. I'd be fine with simplified interface for children and elderly existing side by side with a properly deep interface for adults in full capacity. But currently, the market can only sustain one of these - and it chooses the one that can support more users, despite the total loss of utility this causes.
Porting an example I use in topics about accessibility: consider Braille. Everyone can learn to read Braille, but blind people can't learn to read regular, printed characters. But we don't try to replace print with Braille, because it would be ridiculously debilitating to the vast majority of the planet's population. We instead opt to run two interfaces side by side - we print both regular and Braille books.
I often hear this argument. It could be used to argue that comics are better than novels and overalls are better than regular clothes. Three year olds are three year olds - what is best for them is not necessarily best for adults.
Not necessarily, if it debilitates the majority of the user population (adults) - if it helps some people get more done, while making much more people get much less done.
Also, in some cases, we can make investments to get productive on the new UX.
I did that with Android. Have to be honest. I can fly on a reasonable Android phone. Apple, not so much. Didn't want to make two investments.
Content create, communications, programming, social media, all aren't a burden today. Function set is limited, but it's not as big of a deal as it was prior to really working the UX, just like many of us did with the other paradigms. And I often just do not need a deeper set of features / flows too.
Not saying it's better. It's not in my view. But, I am also saying, users can do better with it than they may think.
No, it's still a net gain. What you are talking about is a priority problem.
That problem is applying the right UX to more people more of the time. That costs more than just doing one size fits all, and we should be paying those costs more, in my view.
