5 ms·

UI affordances have been going away for a long time. FlatUI was the first nearly universal obviously-user-hostile movement. It happened out of boredom and the

UI affordances have been going away for a long time. FlatUI was the first nearly universal obviously-user-hostile movement. It happened out of boredom and the slow intrusion of the contempt-for-the-audience attitude of art and architecture into web design. Unfortunately, unlike art, we can't ignore architecture or UI design.

gherkinnn 5y ago
I don’t think flat design is inherently hostile. The same way I don’t think heavy skeuomorphism is inherently patronising. We went from a violent explosion of visuals to ambiguous interactive elements. Both shite, both a pain to use, both bad design. Both can be avoided within their respective philosophy. As OP shows, iOS hinting at more content by partially showing the next item is a good example. You can very well create depth and hierarchy with minimal visual cues. However, what has increased since flat design became the hottest shit ever (2013/2014) are downright malicious interaction patterns, no understanding of the platform (e.g button vs link), and an ever increasing lust for engagement. The design flavour is merely coincidental.
- handrous 5y ago
  I think it takes a lot of work to ensure that removing depth and shading doesn't remove information, too. I think flat design inherently "wants" to be, if not user hostile, at least less user-friendly than what preceded it. It's a win if the depth and shading was just noise, before. If it was signal, well, now you've got to find something to replace that with, or you're harming UX. And you've got less "bandwidth", if you will, to work with.
  - layer8 5y ago
    Exactly. Flat design removes signals in order to let the UI appear simpler. But the removal of meaningful signals makes the UI more more ambiguous and harder to use. Flat design is an obfuscation, trying to cover up the actual complexity behind a visual semblance of simplicity.
    - failwhaleshark 5y ago
      Flat design is the definition of art because it creates something without the intention of usability. Functionality that is hidden isn't usable by definition. It always annoyed me in early Mac UX that there wasn't a specific affordance for additional interactive behavior. Option this, Ctrl that. Yes, they can be discovered socially and informationally, but that goes against intuitiveness.
      - kps 5y ago
        The original Mac or Lisa was good in some ways, but it also problems with faux minimalism. In particular, Jobs insisted on a single-button mouse for 'simplicity', but that required inventing the entirely undiscoverable double click, which had to be taught, and still causes confusion today.
        failwhaleshark 5y ago
        Yes. I agree. Also, the insistence on a "single task at a time" notion when real work required context switching. Simplicity goes too far on the balance of, and in search for, advancement of design. Form + Function. Not an industrial beige box bucket of parts and not a confusing 2001 monolith, but something in the middle.
    - teucris 5y ago
      But going back to the comment above, I don’t think that flat design is inherently to blame here. Flat design doesn’t require the removal of shadows etc. in order to favor aesthetics over usability. That removal of signal is just bad design. If the designers of flat systems did better at replacing the lost affordances and visual cues, flat design has the potential to be incredibly powerful at making clear, accessible user experiences. Now that I’ve said that, I do want to make it clear that I haven’t seen an excellent exemplar of flat design. I remain optimistic though.
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        Just to add, Android's material design is full of shadows and 3D encoding, while still being flat. It's not a great design by any means, but it's proof that flat design does not imply on a 2D UI (despite its name). The single largest problem is that when we took 3D buttons away, we got no icon for the idea that you some object is clickable. An icon does not need to be skeuomorphic, just unambiguous and easy to recognize, besides, it needs to exist to be useful. Flat design uses a high-contrast background to encode that, what is extremely ambiguous, but there's nothing prohibiting people from creating a better icon.
- mook 5y ago
  Windows 3.1 in EGA mode was fine — it had no depth (can't afford that when you had 16 colours for the whole screen) but it was fine, because it had consistent button borders and things along those lines.
  - biofox 5y ago
    Consistency is key, I think. Part of the problem now is that every app tries to redesign the entire interface from scratch, meaning there are no general interaction principles that a user can rely on anymore. I hate it.
bluescrn 5y ago
So are those vast swathes of wasted whitespace in modern UI design an attempt to turn a UI into a gallery wall on which to display those intricately crafted icons?
- recursivedoubts 5y ago
  And, as with the yale box[1], all icons will eventually converge on the same exact design. Finally, the perfect UI (and modernist building) will have no differentiation at all. An exercise in pure, platonic intellectual/aesthetic navel gazing. You are starting to see the post-modernist reaction in some places in web design, but, as with architecture, I anticipate it will play with forms out of boredom rather than do the hard, self-abgenating work of drawing out the good ideas of the past and humbly driving them forward. Perhaps I am too cynical. [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Ou...
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Revell (Japanese) model kit instructions: We will show you every necessary step clearly and precisely using line drawn actions to provide as much accessibility to all people as possible. Only for very complicated concerns will we use language. Windows 95 UI: It might be fuggly, but you know where the bodies are buried. IKEA: We will show you how to assemble this sawdust into a crappy bookcase that doesn't sit square or level using line drawings and language inconsistently. FlatUI: Physical products should delivered as a white box inside another white box without instructions. Tech support is an unnecessary expense.
- lozenge 5y ago
  This light sometimes blinks green. Sometimes it blinks orange. What does it mean? Who knows.
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    It's either an Ethernet port light or one of those cryptic things from AliExpress without a manual. ---- There was once someone who knew. It did have a useful purpose at one point for expert users, technicians, and engineers. A large group came along chanting "What does it mean?" louder and louder until it was a thunderous war-cry. The one who knew was trying to shout the answer but he was whispering in a tornado. Then, someone else said loudly: "I don't understand. Let's just get rid of it." Most everyone said: "Yeah! It's useless!" No one listened and now that that understanding is lost like the Antikythera mechanism and Damascus steel to the sands of time.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    What does everything need to have a little blue or red LED now? <engage grumpy old man>... I am pretty strict about not letting any electronic devices into my bedroom because when I turn the lights out to go to sleep I don't want to see a constellation of LEDs, some blinking. The blue ones are the worst, for lots of reasons. My phone goes face down or in the nightstand drawer. I got a new window a/c unit a couple of years ago and it has LEDs and a remote control with an LED that blinks. Stop it already.
makecheck 5y ago
I think the saddest thing about “flat” designs is that technology is incredibly capable of delivering so much more. Sure, in 1988 we only had a few colors available in hardware so maybe a button had no choice but to be one boring solid color. In 2021, though?!? Ultra-high resolutions, massive color palettes, photo-realism has never been easier to achieve (even in 3D!!!), all this computing power, and then these overpaid “designers” give us: boring square buttons with one color with unreadable contrast. We deserve so much better from modern UIs. UIs should not be so plain and spartan that they are literally unusable sometimes. Every Single Button should look like a button, with way more detail than UI buttons have ever had before (why not have a ridiculous number of colors in gradients to make buttons truly beautiful?). When something is highlighted, I want it to be obvious and, again, beautiful (why not glow with photo-realistic lighting effects, for example, since we clearly have the ability and can spare the processing power?).
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I have been wishing for a return to monochrome (green and orange) so that we can from our UIs again. You know it's bad when people are fantasizing about mainframe terminals.
cududa 5y ago
My personal theory is a lot of universities got into “UI design” but basically just had print design teachers teaching the courses. Plus UI design with depth and complex elements requires more talent than flat design. IMO it’s a generation of lowering the bar so people with less technical ability can participate in design
datavirtue 5y ago
It happened out of an explosion of pretentious eccentricity flowing out of people who never sat with a user.
- RedShift1 5y ago
  This 1000x over. Lots of times I think to myself, there is absolutely no way whoever designed this, has actually tried to use it.
bitwize 5y ago
Never thought I'd see the day when libXaw would be at the cutting edge of UI design again, but here we are.

gherkinnn 5y ago

I don’t think flat design is inherently hostile. The same way I don’t think heavy skeuomorphism is inherently patronising. We went from a violent explosion of visuals to ambiguous interactive elements. Both shite, both a pain to use, both bad design. Both can be avoided within their respective philosophy. As OP shows, iOS hinting at more content by partially showing the next item is a good example. You can very well create depth and hierarchy with minimal visual cues. However, what has increased since flat design became the hottest shit ever (2013/2014) are downright malicious interaction patterns, no understanding of the platform (e.g button vs link), and an ever increasing lust for engagement. The design flavour is merely coincidental.

handrous 5y ago
I think it takes a lot of work to ensure that removing depth and shading doesn't remove information, too. I think flat design inherently "wants" to be, if not user hostile, at least less user-friendly than what preceded it. It's a win if the depth and shading was just noise, before. If it was signal, well, now you've got to find something to replace that with, or you're harming UX. And you've got less "bandwidth", if you will, to work with.
- layer8 5y ago
  Exactly. Flat design removes signals in order to let the UI appear simpler. But the removal of meaningful signals makes the UI more more ambiguous and harder to use. Flat design is an obfuscation, trying to cover up the actual complexity behind a visual semblance of simplicity.
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    Flat design is the definition of art because it creates something without the intention of usability. Functionality that is hidden isn't usable by definition. It always annoyed me in early Mac UX that there wasn't a specific affordance for additional interactive behavior. Option this, Ctrl that. Yes, they can be discovered socially and informationally, but that goes against intuitiveness.
    - kps 5y ago
      The original Mac or Lisa was good in some ways, but it also problems with faux minimalism. In particular, Jobs insisted on a single-button mouse for 'simplicity', but that required inventing the entirely undiscoverable double click, which had to be taught, and still causes confusion today.
      - failwhaleshark 5y ago
        Yes. I agree. Also, the insistence on a "single task at a time" notion when real work required context switching. Simplicity goes too far on the balance of, and in search for, advancement of design. Form + Function. Not an industrial beige box bucket of parts and not a confusing 2001 monolith, but something in the middle.
  - teucris 5y ago
    But going back to the comment above, I don’t think that flat design is inherently to blame here. Flat design doesn’t require the removal of shadows etc. in order to favor aesthetics over usability. That removal of signal is just bad design. If the designers of flat systems did better at replacing the lost affordances and visual cues, flat design has the potential to be incredibly powerful at making clear, accessible user experiences. Now that I’ve said that, I do want to make it clear that I haven’t seen an excellent exemplar of flat design. I remain optimistic though.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Just to add, Android's material design is full of shadows and 3D encoding, while still being flat. It's not a great design by any means, but it's proof that flat design does not imply on a 2D UI (despite its name). The single largest problem is that when we took 3D buttons away, we got no icon for the idea that you some object is clickable. An icon does not need to be skeuomorphic, just unambiguous and easy to recognize, besides, it needs to exist to be useful. Flat design uses a high-contrast background to encode that, what is extremely ambiguous, but there's nothing prohibiting people from creating a better icon.
mook 5y ago
Windows 3.1 in EGA mode was fine — it had no depth (can't afford that when you had 16 colours for the whole screen) but it was fine, because it had consistent button borders and things along those lines.
- biofox 5y ago
  Consistency is key, I think. Part of the problem now is that every app tries to redesign the entire interface from scratch, meaning there are no general interaction principles that a user can rely on anymore. I hate it.

bluescrn 5y ago

So are those vast swathes of wasted whitespace in modern UI design an attempt to turn a UI into a gallery wall on which to display those intricately crafted icons?

recursivedoubts 5y ago
And, as with the yale box[1], all icons will eventually converge on the same exact design. Finally, the perfect UI (and modernist building) will have no differentiation at all. An exercise in pure, platonic intellectual/aesthetic navel gazing. You are starting to see the post-modernist reaction in some places in web design, but, as with architecture, I anticipate it will play with forms out of boredom rather than do the hard, self-abgenating work of drawing out the good ideas of the past and humbly driving them forward. Perhaps I am too cynical. [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Ou...

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Revell (Japanese) model kit instructions: We will show you every necessary step clearly and precisely using line drawn actions to provide as much accessibility to all people as possible. Only for very complicated concerns will we use language. Windows 95 UI: It might be fuggly, but you know where the bodies are buried. IKEA: We will show you how to assemble this sawdust into a crappy bookcase that doesn't sit square or level using line drawings and language inconsistently. FlatUI: Physical products should delivered as a white box inside another white box without instructions. Tech support is an unnecessary expense.

lozenge 5y ago
This light sometimes blinks green. Sometimes it blinks orange. What does it mean? Who knows.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  It's either an Ethernet port light or one of those cryptic things from AliExpress without a manual. ---- There was once someone who knew. It did have a useful purpose at one point for expert users, technicians, and engineers. A large group came along chanting "What does it mean?" louder and louder until it was a thunderous war-cry. The one who knew was trying to shout the answer but he was whispering in a tornado. Then, someone else said loudly: "I don't understand. Let's just get rid of it." Most everyone said: "Yeah! It's useless!" No one listened and now that that understanding is lost like the Antikythera mechanism and Damascus steel to the sands of time.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  What does everything need to have a little blue or red LED now? <engage grumpy old man>... I am pretty strict about not letting any electronic devices into my bedroom because when I turn the lights out to go to sleep I don't want to see a constellation of LEDs, some blinking. The blue ones are the worst, for lots of reasons. My phone goes face down or in the nightstand drawer. I got a new window a/c unit a couple of years ago and it has LEDs and a remote control with an LED that blinks. Stop it already.

makecheck 5y ago

I think the saddest thing about “flat” designs is that technology is incredibly capable of delivering so much more. Sure, in 1988 we only had a few colors available in hardware so maybe a button had no choice but to be one boring solid color. In 2021, though?!? Ultra-high resolutions, massive color palettes, photo-realism has never been easier to achieve (even in 3D!!!), all this computing power, and then these overpaid “designers” give us: boring square buttons with one color with unreadable contrast. We deserve so much better from modern UIs. UIs should not be so plain and spartan that they are literally unusable sometimes. Every Single Button should look like a button, with way more detail than UI buttons have ever had before (why not have a ridiculous number of colors in gradients to make buttons truly beautiful?). When something is highlighted, I want it to be obvious and, again, beautiful (why not glow with photo-realistic lighting effects, for example, since we clearly have the ability and can spare the processing power?).

datavirtue 5y ago
I have been wishing for a return to monochrome (green and orange) so that we can from our UIs again. You know it's bad when people are fantasizing about mainframe terminals.

cududa 5y ago

My personal theory is a lot of universities got into “UI design” but basically just had print design teachers teaching the courses. Plus UI design with depth and complex elements requires more talent than flat design. IMO it’s a generation of lowering the bar so people with less technical ability can participate in design

datavirtue 5y ago

It happened out of an explosion of pretentious eccentricity flowing out of people who never sat with a user.

RedShift1 5y ago
This 1000x over. Lots of times I think to myself, there is absolutely no way whoever designed this, has actually tried to use it.

bitwize 5y ago

Never thought I'd see the day when libXaw would be at the cutting edge of UI design again, but here we are.