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This is getting cliche. With any modern UI redesign you can immediately guess what's changed: * Removed/reduced visual separation between elements * Fl

This is getting cliche. With any modern UI redesign you can immediately guess what's changed: * Removed/reduced visual separation between elements * Flattened things more * More padding Modern UI designers are strikingly unoriginal.

knoebber 6y ago
Don't forget: * Added dark mode
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  I think dark mode was a harbinger of dumbed down UI. Instead of spending time on one good UI, designers and developers were forced to make 2 mediocre ones instead. Plus dark mode is easier if you remove all detail and depth from control elements.
  - ericmcer 6y ago
    I don’t think they built the dark mode version as an entirely new UI, it’s just some css and a class you toggle on the body, making it perfect would require some elbow grease but it’s not a complex feature really.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      It's not a complex feature because most UIs have already been simplified and flattened into oblivion. If buttons and controls still had depth you might need two complete sets of assets. E.g. consider what implementing dark mode in iOS 6 might look like. That's kind of my whole point. Dark mode features are a symptom of UIs that no longer communicate anything significant with color and shade so just changing color with CSS tweaks doesn't break them.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    There isn't a color scheme you can pick where you won't get users asking you for a dark-on-light vs light-on-dark version, whatever is the opposite of whatever color scheme you thought would be one-size-fits-all. Though you seem to be suggesting that's somehow a bad thing and I'm not sure why. Dark mode is so popular that operating systems have even started supporting a native toggle.
  - swilliamsio 6y ago
    But designers and developed don't support one UI, or even two. They support anywhere between three (desktop, mobile, tablet) and effectively infinite (all resolutions between and around those + dark modes + apps which use the same data + all different browsers). UIs can't be very good one on platform without either making each platform's UI separate or sacrificing functionality on other platforms. New GitHub looks alright on low resolutions, but looks kinda awful on big screens. This is the opposite problem old GitHub had.
  - swebs 6y ago
    You don't have to redo the entire UI to implement dark mode. Just change the color scheme.
- baq 6y ago
  I always look for the light mode button in this new hipster software. Next thing I know, books will printed white-on-black.
sidpatil 6y ago
There should be a Wirth's Law for UI: UI design is getting whitespace padding more rapidly than screen resolution is increasing.
spenczar5 6y ago
I want UI designers to be unoriginal. I wish they were less original. I don't like learning new visual languages every 5 years; I want intuitive interfaces, which mostly means familiar interfaces.
- seumars 6y ago
  I agree, but there's levels to it though. A redesign almost never means learning new visual languages, whatever that means. Low-level elements like hyperlinks will always be presented as underlined text, buttons as boxes with centered text, and so on. Then there's low-level structures such as sidebars, tabs, collapsible menus, etc. which again rarely change and that's a good thing. I wouldn't call it unoriginal but conventional. A "proper" redesign then becomes finding the right and intuitive structure for the right type of content. Changing the appearance of the same content in the same structure is more of a reskin, which is what we see most of the time. And yes, sadly in the last years the trend has been: low contrast body text against an obligatory bright color for elements/illustrations/icons, rounded corners, and padding everywhere.
- verdverm 6y ago
  I want boring interfaces that work, make information easy to find, and help me get my job done. Designers have boring jobs under this regime, this their need to create unnecessary work and pain for users.
- eyerony 6y ago
  I never thought trendy modern GUI design would get so bad that looking at screenshots of programs running on Windows 98 would feel instantly and overwhelmingly relaxing, like settling into a warm bath, as if parts of my brain being taxed for no reason could finally just chill. Yet, here we are.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    One of the arguments by Designers is that they make the UI more approachable - they don't realize that they are biased by their personal aesthetic taste, their friends like the same type of flat sleek modern UI designs, and they like going to minimal galleries, subscribe to itsnotthat and read the colossal blog. This is a cultural imposition, not something a professional would do. Yet, we have modern designers injecting their personal taste of modernism into UIs, in this case, Github developers are not the average Joe - they are familiar with complexity, highly dense information screens (code!) and don't need any of this non-sense. Non-designers I've met actually have a better more grounded and functional approach to design, which is what I think design is. Yet the general opinion amongst designers is that the engineers are like Milton from Office Space - they don't understand fashion, current trends and aesthetics.

knoebber 6y ago

Don't forget: * Added dark mode

AlexandrB 6y ago
I think dark mode was a harbinger of dumbed down UI. Instead of spending time on one good UI, designers and developers were forced to make 2 mediocre ones instead. Plus dark mode is easier if you remove all detail and depth from control elements.
- ericmcer 6y ago
  I don’t think they built the dark mode version as an entirely new UI, it’s just some css and a class you toggle on the body, making it perfect would require some elbow grease but it’s not a complex feature really.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    It's not a complex feature because most UIs have already been simplified and flattened into oblivion. If buttons and controls still had depth you might need two complete sets of assets. E.g. consider what implementing dark mode in iOS 6 might look like. That's kind of my whole point. Dark mode features are a symptom of UIs that no longer communicate anything significant with color and shade so just changing color with CSS tweaks doesn't break them.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  There isn't a color scheme you can pick where you won't get users asking you for a dark-on-light vs light-on-dark version, whatever is the opposite of whatever color scheme you thought would be one-size-fits-all. Though you seem to be suggesting that's somehow a bad thing and I'm not sure why. Dark mode is so popular that operating systems have even started supporting a native toggle.
- swilliamsio 6y ago
  But designers and developed don't support one UI, or even two. They support anywhere between three (desktop, mobile, tablet) and effectively infinite (all resolutions between and around those + dark modes + apps which use the same data + all different browsers). UIs can't be very good one on platform without either making each platform's UI separate or sacrificing functionality on other platforms. New GitHub looks alright on low resolutions, but looks kinda awful on big screens. This is the opposite problem old GitHub had.
- swebs 6y ago
  You don't have to redo the entire UI to implement dark mode. Just change the color scheme.
baq 6y ago
I always look for the light mode button in this new hipster software. Next thing I know, books will printed white-on-black.

sidpatil 6y ago

There should be a Wirth's Law for UI: UI design is getting whitespace padding more rapidly than screen resolution is increasing.

spenczar5 6y ago

I want UI designers to be unoriginal. I wish they were less original. I don't like learning new visual languages every 5 years; I want intuitive interfaces, which mostly means familiar interfaces.

seumars 6y ago
I agree, but there's levels to it though. A redesign almost never means learning new visual languages, whatever that means. Low-level elements like hyperlinks will always be presented as underlined text, buttons as boxes with centered text, and so on. Then there's low-level structures such as sidebars, tabs, collapsible menus, etc. which again rarely change and that's a good thing. I wouldn't call it unoriginal but conventional. A "proper" redesign then becomes finding the right and intuitive structure for the right type of content. Changing the appearance of the same content in the same structure is more of a reskin, which is what we see most of the time. And yes, sadly in the last years the trend has been: low contrast body text against an obligatory bright color for elements/illustrations/icons, rounded corners, and padding everywhere.
verdverm 6y ago
I want boring interfaces that work, make information easy to find, and help me get my job done. Designers have boring jobs under this regime, this their need to create unnecessary work and pain for users.
eyerony 6y ago
I never thought trendy modern GUI design would get so bad that looking at screenshots of programs running on Windows 98 would feel instantly and overwhelmingly relaxing, like settling into a warm bath, as if parts of my brain being taxed for no reason could finally just chill. Yet, here we are.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  One of the arguments by Designers is that they make the UI more approachable - they don't realize that they are biased by their personal aesthetic taste, their friends like the same type of flat sleek modern UI designs, and they like going to minimal galleries, subscribe to itsnotthat and read the colossal blog. This is a cultural imposition, not something a professional would do. Yet, we have modern designers injecting their personal taste of modernism into UIs, in this case, Github developers are not the average Joe - they are familiar with complexity, highly dense information screens (code!) and don't need any of this non-sense. Non-designers I've met actually have a better more grounded and functional approach to design, which is what I think design is. Yet the general opinion amongst designers is that the engineers are like Milton from Office Space - they don't understand fashion, current trends and aesthetics.