9 ms·

Every type of design has its up- and downsides. You propose to do away with flat design, what's the alternative? You're just reinitiating the cycle. Where are

Every type of design has its up- and downsides. You propose to do away with flat design, what's the alternative? You're just reinitiating the cycle. Where are we going, if anywhere?

peterlk 9y ago
I'm not really in the design universe that much any more, but the successor to flat design seemed to be material design. It lives somewhere between skeuomorphism and flat design. Any designers care to comment what the new/next hot thing is?
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  Brutalism > cough
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  I think that some kind of minimalism will come next, after the novelty of the current trend wears off. There are accessibility problems with Material Design (and maybe Fluent Design) due to animation overkill and over-saturated colors. I'm waiting for the study on how many types of animation can cause nausea in some people. https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technology_platform_id=11 https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technolo...
- jansho 9y ago
  There does seem to be a few brutalist articles knocking around lately but I think it'll stay a niche. Most designers are actually pretty lazy (or just prone to following trends, like other professions?) and would be happy to follow any good design docs (Material Design etc) then apply their own interpretation. But with brutalist UI, since it's usually accompanied by a sort of shock factor, it requires a bit more ingenuity than just choosing a unique colour palette. It also tends to be hit-or-miss, and that's risky. There's some noise about creating the next interface for flat screens and VR/AR (Microsoft again) which as long as VR isn't mainstream, I think it'll be more of a play (and fad.) I also think that the ideal UI doc (may not be the next trend) combine skeuomorphism and flat while leaving plenty of space for designers to express their own ingenuity through content. At this moment, you can feel UI dictating how the content should be created and organised; all those one-scroll container webpages and humble-braggy profiles bore me to death. But the best UI takes a back seat while content is the main performer, OR, at the very least there is a variable organic component - Google's doodly homepage fits the latter actually. This sounds so stupidly obvious to point out, but I feel that too much effort is being spent on innovating UI than the content itself. Content is far more exciting and challenging! Storytelling is often done in one medium, but what if you use several, one for each small part of the experience? What if you focus on creating multiple micro experiences? (Not necessarily animated micro-interactions.) That for me is the real task of UX designers - not just organise flow but how best to present content as a memorable story.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    Most designers are actually pretty lazy (or just prone to following trends, like other professions?) If it means more people's buttons and checkboxes look the same, I'd say that's a good thing.
    - jansho 9y ago
      Very true but it's just boring. I'm shooting myself in the foot! Reading back my older post, I haven't been very thoughtful about expressing it properly; I simply think that the current trends such as one-scroll webpages also dictate (unintentionally maybe) about what kind of content should be put on and how they should be presented, resulting in many websites that look the same and feel the same. This is a shame because the great differentiator should be content.
jackmott 9y ago
don't go anywhere, ui design is a random walk.
- chenster 9y ago
  Agreed. So much for a 15 years random experiment.
coldtea 9y ago
>Every type of design has its up- and downsides. You propose to do away with flat design, what's the alternative? You're just reinitiating the cycle. Or, you know, just went back to where we were, which was better.
- lmm 9y ago
  That's what flat was though. A return to the good old days of plain, simple UI that looked like what it was. I sure as hell hope we don't go back to rounded corners everywhere.
  - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
    It didn't "look like it was", though, that's the problem. Buttons that are flat look exactly the same as any bordered element, e.g. text inputs. Or, at the very least, they look a lot more like them than they otherwise would. Flat design was just a trend, partly as an overreaction to skeuomorphism. It was a case of 'looks' design overtaking 'usable' design, for no very clear reason; at least, no reason I can see. Buttons were 'best' when they were 3d and button-shaped. That still leaves a huge amount of customisation for designers to work with, but those two very simple factors should be maintained when producing buttons, IMO. There was a very common understanding that buttons looked that way.
    - lmm 9y ago
      Skeuomorphism ceases to be useful once people don't remember the physical thing you're trying to use. 3D buttons aren't actually that helpful to my generation: a lot of the buttons I've used in real life (e.g. those on my microwave) aren't 3D. On a computer the most common button-like thing is a web link and those don't (generally) use the 3D-effect. 3D is one way to hint that a particular element is clickable/tappable, but not the only one. Of course if you want a really scream-in-your-face button it should probably be 3D and a contrasting colour and larger and underlined and ... - but my feeling is that good UI doesn't mean making the call-to-action as attention-grabbing as possible, it's better to have a sense of proportion. (thinking about it more, the most important thing - and the thing that's backed up by solid science - is to use text rather than icons for button labels. I really hope that stays, even if we go back to 3D and rounding)

Every type of design has its up- and downsides. You propose to do away with flat design, what's the alternative? You're just reinitiating the cycle. Where are we going, if anywhere?

peterlk 9y ago

I'm not really in the design universe that much any more, but the successor to flat design seemed to be material design. It lives somewhere between skeuomorphism and flat design. Any designers care to comment what the new/next hot thing is?

King-Aaron 9y ago
Brutalism > cough
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
JoshMnem 9y ago
I think that some kind of minimalism will come next, after the novelty of the current trend wears off. There are accessibility problems with Material Design (and maybe Fluent Design) due to animation overkill and over-saturated colors. I'm waiting for the study on how many types of animation can cause nausea in some people. https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technology_platform_id=11 https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technolo...
jansho 9y ago
There does seem to be a few brutalist articles knocking around lately but I think it'll stay a niche. Most designers are actually pretty lazy (or just prone to following trends, like other professions?) and would be happy to follow any good design docs (Material Design etc) then apply their own interpretation. But with brutalist UI, since it's usually accompanied by a sort of shock factor, it requires a bit more ingenuity than just choosing a unique colour palette. It also tends to be hit-or-miss, and that's risky. There's some noise about creating the next interface for flat screens and VR/AR (Microsoft again) which as long as VR isn't mainstream, I think it'll be more of a play (and fad.) I also think that the ideal UI doc (may not be the next trend) combine skeuomorphism and flat while leaving plenty of space for designers to express their own ingenuity through content. At this moment, you can feel UI dictating how the content should be created and organised; all those one-scroll container webpages and humble-braggy profiles bore me to death. But the best UI takes a back seat while content is the main performer, OR, at the very least there is a variable organic component - Google's doodly homepage fits the latter actually. This sounds so stupidly obvious to point out, but I feel that too much effort is being spent on innovating UI than the content itself. Content is far more exciting and challenging! Storytelling is often done in one medium, but what if you use several, one for each small part of the experience? What if you focus on creating multiple micro experiences? (Not necessarily animated micro-interactions.) That for me is the real task of UX designers - not just organise flow but how best to present content as a memorable story.
- michaelt 9y ago
  Most designers are actually pretty lazy (or just prone to following trends, like other professions?) If it means more people's buttons and checkboxes look the same, I'd say that's a good thing.
  - jansho 9y ago
    Very true but it's just boring. I'm shooting myself in the foot! Reading back my older post, I haven't been very thoughtful about expressing it properly; I simply think that the current trends such as one-scroll webpages also dictate (unintentionally maybe) about what kind of content should be put on and how they should be presented, resulting in many websites that look the same and feel the same. This is a shame because the great differentiator should be content.

jackmott 9y ago

don't go anywhere, ui design is a random walk.

chenster 9y ago
Agreed. So much for a 15 years random experiment.

coldtea 9y ago

>Every type of design has its up- and downsides. You propose to do away with flat design, what's the alternative? You're just reinitiating the cycle. Or, you know, just went back to where we were, which was better.

lmm 9y ago
That's what flat was though. A return to the good old days of plain, simple UI that looked like what it was. I sure as hell hope we don't go back to rounded corners everywhere.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
  It didn't "look like it was", though, that's the problem. Buttons that are flat look exactly the same as any bordered element, e.g. text inputs. Or, at the very least, they look a lot more like them than they otherwise would. Flat design was just a trend, partly as an overreaction to skeuomorphism. It was a case of 'looks' design overtaking 'usable' design, for no very clear reason; at least, no reason I can see. Buttons were 'best' when they were 3d and button-shaped. That still leaves a huge amount of customisation for designers to work with, but those two very simple factors should be maintained when producing buttons, IMO. There was a very common understanding that buttons looked that way.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Skeuomorphism ceases to be useful once people don't remember the physical thing you're trying to use. 3D buttons aren't actually that helpful to my generation: a lot of the buttons I've used in real life (e.g. those on my microwave) aren't 3D. On a computer the most common button-like thing is a web link and those don't (generally) use the 3D-effect. 3D is one way to hint that a particular element is clickable/tappable, but not the only one. Of course if you want a really scream-in-your-face button it should probably be 3D and a contrasting colour and larger and underlined and ... - but my feeling is that good UI doesn't mean making the call-to-action as attention-grabbing as possible, it's better to have a sense of proportion. (thinking about it more, the most important thing - and the thing that's backed up by solid science - is to use text rather than icons for button labels. I really hope that stays, even if we go back to 3D and rounding)