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> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the

> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the page. > "How old are you?" I asked. > "Twenty-five." > "Of course you are." You will never, ever, ever do good design while holding your audience in contempt. They are fully and completely entitled to their aesthetic preferences and those preferences have absolutely no bearing on their worth or right to enjoy the products they use in whatever way they choose to use them. If you can't have enough compassion for your users to design something they love respecting who they are then you shouldn't be designing for them.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
As much as I would like to agree in principle, I am slowly starting to see author's POV. Modern web is a clusterfuck and modern UI, to me, is not even meeting the needs of the current generation ( what with the A/B testing and dark pattern galore ). It is prettier, but that is only thing it has going for it.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Whenever I need to help someone on their phone/PC or answer a question it's a UI problem in 80% of cases. On phones button icons are an inconsistent mess with no visible way to find out what they mean. The menu bar on Android is at the top, the hardest to reach place on the whole display. Fast list scrolling and other details on phones/tablets are ignoring left-handed people. Phones have 6 inch screens but maximum font sizes are still too small for some users. Interacting with Android's notification list while it's being updated is simply impossible if an app shows and hides progress updates multiple times per second when fetching new content, making the whole list jump up and down. All those problems affect not just one generation and were solved at least a decade ago. And it feels like all I can do is press a few buttons for them or say "turn it off and on again", and yell at clouds inbetween.
croes 5y ago
One is rather small sample size for what users want.
awb 5y ago
I’d argue you should always design for yourself and build products you want. When your needs aren’t in alignment with your user’s needs then you’re the wrong person for the job anyway. User feedback is important for getting additional insights, but the implementation of the feedback should always feel correct to you too.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  That's a little bit like saying a barber should only cut hair the way he'd want to wear it. Being part of a professional, maybe the defining feature is to be able to understand what customers want and to do it without bringing personal preference into it, unless that's asked for.
- falcor84 5y ago
  I like your sentiment, but I think this only works at the start. After the initial MVC phase, you discover additional potential target audiences, and often (but not always) it makes more sense to apply empathy and adapt the software to also benefit their needs, rather than just abandoning then as "not the intended audience".
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    MVC phase? That's where my projects end, not start... Betting that was MVP! (Actually they start there, too, to be honest)
    - paledot 5y ago
      My projects seem to end at MVP. (Which might have been the joke you were attempting to tell, while we're being pedantic.)
    - falcor84 5y ago
      D'oh, yes, I meant to write "MVP", and editing is already locked
- munificent 5y ago
jjoonathan 5y ago
This person wrote an entire blogpost on how to understand and compassionately design for Gen-Z aesthetics and your response is to slam them for... not understanding and compassionately designing for Gen-Z aesthetics? Come on.
- munificent 5y ago
  The post I read was a person defensively justifying their choice to not design for Gen-Z aesthetics.
  - willmorrison 5y ago
    The author did design for Gen-Z aesthetics. At the end of the post, he says they may even complete the feature.
    - LeonidasXIV 5y ago
      They did design it but in the whole post he was making fun of it. This Gen-Z mode that he designed is not made out of compassion for the users but rather as a parody of Gen-Z aesthetic. I had fun reading it but I feel it is a bad business move to attack your user base, and I assume that they have more users around the 18yo of the spectrum than 75. Would he also make fun of a boomer mode, with large buttons everywhere and "get me out of the app and just call person" feature?
      - jjoonathan 5y ago
        Why do you think it was parody or an attack? It fully admits that millennial design is intentionally boring and sterile and it tries to figure out what Gen-Z wants instead.
        LeonidasXIV 5y ago
        From the "You are unique. You are different." in the screenshot which is parodying the style so hard, but also the random clap emoji. It feels like googling "Gen-Z tropes" and then applying every single of them. But also the "Of course you are." which is extremely dismissive. There is a way to design a more "fun" experience but just slapping the biggest tropes on like your users are 5 year olds is probably not it.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

As much as I would like to agree in principle, I am slowly starting to see author's POV. Modern web is a clusterfuck and modern UI, to me, is not even meeting the needs of the current generation ( what with the A/B testing and dark pattern galore ). It is prettier, but that is only thing it has going for it.

alpaca128 5y ago
Whenever I need to help someone on their phone/PC or answer a question it's a UI problem in 80% of cases. On phones button icons are an inconsistent mess with no visible way to find out what they mean. The menu bar on Android is at the top, the hardest to reach place on the whole display. Fast list scrolling and other details on phones/tablets are ignoring left-handed people. Phones have 6 inch screens but maximum font sizes are still too small for some users. Interacting with Android's notification list while it's being updated is simply impossible if an app shows and hides progress updates multiple times per second when fetching new content, making the whole list jump up and down. All those problems affect not just one generation and were solved at least a decade ago. And it feels like all I can do is press a few buttons for them or say "turn it off and on again", and yell at clouds inbetween.

croes 5y ago

One is rather small sample size for what users want.

awb 5y ago

I’d argue you should always design for yourself and build products you want. When your needs aren’t in alignment with your user’s needs then you’re the wrong person for the job anyway. User feedback is important for getting additional insights, but the implementation of the feedback should always feel correct to you too.

Barrin92 5y ago
That's a little bit like saying a barber should only cut hair the way he'd want to wear it. Being part of a professional, maybe the defining feature is to be able to understand what customers want and to do it without bringing personal preference into it, unless that's asked for.
falcor84 5y ago
I like your sentiment, but I think this only works at the start. After the initial MVC phase, you discover additional potential target audiences, and often (but not always) it makes more sense to apply empathy and adapt the software to also benefit their needs, rather than just abandoning then as "not the intended audience".
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  MVC phase? That's where my projects end, not start... Betting that was MVP! (Actually they start there, too, to be honest)
  - paledot 5y ago
    My projects seem to end at MVP. (Which might have been the joke you were attempting to tell, while we're being pedantic.)
  - falcor84 5y ago
    D'oh, yes, I meant to write "MVP", and editing is already locked
munificent 5y ago

jjoonathan 5y ago

This person wrote an entire blogpost on how to understand and compassionately design for Gen-Z aesthetics and your response is to slam them for... not understanding and compassionately designing for Gen-Z aesthetics? Come on.

munificent 5y ago
The post I read was a person defensively justifying their choice to not design for Gen-Z aesthetics.
- willmorrison 5y ago
  The author did design for Gen-Z aesthetics. At the end of the post, he says they may even complete the feature.
  - LeonidasXIV 5y ago
    They did design it but in the whole post he was making fun of it. This Gen-Z mode that he designed is not made out of compassion for the users but rather as a parody of Gen-Z aesthetic. I had fun reading it but I feel it is a bad business move to attack your user base, and I assume that they have more users around the 18yo of the spectrum than 75. Would he also make fun of a boomer mode, with large buttons everywhere and "get me out of the app and just call person" feature?
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      Why do you think it was parody or an attack? It fully admits that millennial design is intentionally boring and sterile and it tries to figure out what Gen-Z wants instead.
      - LeonidasXIV 5y ago
        From the "You are unique. You are different." in the screenshot which is parodying the style so hard, but also the random clap emoji. It feels like googling "Gen-Z tropes" and then applying every single of them. But also the "Of course you are." which is extremely dismissive. There is a way to design a more "fun" experience but just slapping the biggest tropes on like your users are 5 year olds is probably not it.