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> The vintage Flash UI is great. Buttons have edges. Icons look like things. Space is well-used. It's amazing! Using old UIs makes me feel like an archaeologist

by alxlaz 4y ago

> The vintage Flash UI is great. Buttons have edges. Icons look like things. Space is well-used. It's amazing! Using old UIs makes me feel like an archaeologist discovering some sort of forgotten Roman technology. The lost art of UI design. It's neat. This was one my favourites parts in the article. An the real piece of the pie comes right after it: there's a screenshot with like thirty icons and they're different enough that you can tell one from the other.

ilyt 4y ago
It's like entire industry at one point decide to optimize UIs for the first 30 minutes of usage and not the years of users using apps once they get familiar with them. "oooh let's not put too many buttons to scare users away", "they got 22 inch screens, let's just waste space for no good reason, it looks modern and airy"
- fallat 4y ago
  Yes. What we see in UI design today is a consequence of game theory at work. It's to optimize business. In fairness you don't want to scare users away. I think though many people equated it all to "clean looking", without realizing removing micro-interactions is a net negative....
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    I think touch screens are a bigger factor. You can't have small buttons in a touch-screen UI, because they must be targets for your finger. (OTOH, swipes in a touch UI are a lot easier than mouse drag-and-drop. So the optimal touch UX probably has lots of drag-activated pie menus. And confirmation flows for potentially destructive actions, to cope with the lower accuracy of touch interactions.)
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Yes, and that is one of the reasons why your touchscreen UI must be radically different from your mouse and keyboard UI.
    - hansworst 4y ago
      Yeah, if my memory serves a lot of UI design started to get more airy around the time smartphones became more popular. Even on desktops, which I think may just be because large buttons and text became trendy and although some may deny it, I think a lot of ui design is just following trends. It takes a good designer to not just blindly copy things because they look cool.
      - rhn_mk1 4y ago
        Large buttons and text were trendy already in the 20th century. There's only so small you can go on an 800x600 14' screen. The crucial difference between then and now is the amount of whitespace.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      The problem is these "designers" bring those touch-optimised UIs to desktop. And so you end up with hamburger menus on 4k-screens, tall narrow alert dialogs on MacOS etc.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    One of the early attempts to balance those two goals was an option in the settings to switch between Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced mode. Never really see that anymore.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  Spot on. And I would add "let's make every GUI either web based or mobile based just to further annoy PC users".
- dkarl 4y ago
  That's the discipline of data-driven business. If 20 people use your app and despise it and are depressed by it, that's better than 19 people using it and loving it. No sentimentality allowed.
  - sosborn 4y ago
    How could anyone possibly measure that an app is despised and depresses people (or vice versa)? Usage can't be it, because I use a ton of software that I despise and get depressed by, but only because I get paid to do so, or the app is so niche there isn't a viable replacement.
    - layer8 4y ago
      They don’t. They just measure that the more “modern” design gets 5% more users, so clearly it must be better.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      > How could anyone possibly measure that an app is despised and depresses people (or vice versa)? You'd have to actually talk to your users. But that requires genuine human investment, so it doesn't scale. It doesn't come in the form of a third-party SaaS with a pretty dashboard, generous free plan, and integration via single <script> tag. In short: they could measure this, they just don't bother to.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  UI is now optimized for PowerPoint. The #1 goal of all UI work is so the designer and/or product manager can get an "oh, that looks nice!" showing off screenshots to an interviewer or to someone higher-up who'll help them get a promotion. Trendy (you don't want to look outdated, do you?) and pretty are what matter, not usability. I seriously think that's what's going on.
indymike 4y ago
> The lost art of UI design. This sounds like a great title for a really good book.
- isametry 4y ago
  I find it somehow intriguing how you already pre-destined this imaginary book to be great… That stood out to me for some reason. How about a great title for a shitty book? Funnily enough, The Lost Art Of UI Design sounds like a potentially very mediocre book to me. One of those stretched-out "self-teaching" design guides that listicles will recommend you. It chooses a couple of very specific rules of thumb, it gives way too much importance to them, and somehow manages to water them down to 250 pages. Probably written either by someone who's a skilled writer but barely knows enough about the industry, or an experienced specialist in the field who unfortunately can't write for life.
  - indymike 4y ago
    Ah… soon the publishers will just have chatgpt write it.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
I get (and agree with) this idea in general, but these buttons are still present in any Adobe apps (esp. Photoshop) and they're not going anywhere. Hell, I don't think they're original to Flash to begin with, more like borrowed from Photoshop when Adobe bought Macromedia (this is purely my speculation; but Photoshop is much older).
legohead 4y ago
I am still clicking on Gmail on accident because I think it's Maps. The icons are horrible.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Classic HTML gmail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en (final link on that page)
- hbn 4y ago
  For years I've had a "Google" folder on my phone which links to all the obligatory things - Drive, Maps, Calendar, Meet, etc. Ever since they made this move to every icon being a minimal shape with the 4 Google colors, I haven't been able to quickly differentiate between app icons. I have to read the labels half the time now cause they're so non-indicative of the app's purpose.

by alxlaz 4y ago

ilyt 4y ago

It's like entire industry at one point decide to optimize UIs for the first 30 minutes of usage and not the years of users using apps once they get familiar with them. "oooh let's not put too many buttons to scare users away", "they got 22 inch screens, let's just waste space for no good reason, it looks modern and airy"

fallat 4y ago
Yes. What we see in UI design today is a consequence of game theory at work. It's to optimize business. In fairness you don't want to scare users away. I think though many people equated it all to "clean looking", without realizing removing micro-interactions is a net negative....
- zozbot234 4y ago
  I think touch screens are a bigger factor. You can't have small buttons in a touch-screen UI, because they must be targets for your finger. (OTOH, swipes in a touch UI are a lot easier than mouse drag-and-drop. So the optimal touch UX probably has lots of drag-activated pie menus. And confirmation flows for potentially destructive actions, to cope with the lower accuracy of touch interactions.)
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Yes, and that is one of the reasons why your touchscreen UI must be radically different from your mouse and keyboard UI.
  - hansworst 4y ago
    Yeah, if my memory serves a lot of UI design started to get more airy around the time smartphones became more popular. Even on desktops, which I think may just be because large buttons and text became trendy and although some may deny it, I think a lot of ui design is just following trends. It takes a good designer to not just blindly copy things because they look cool.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      Large buttons and text were trendy already in the 20th century. There's only so small you can go on an 800x600 14' screen. The crucial difference between then and now is the amount of whitespace.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    The problem is these "designers" bring those touch-optimised UIs to desktop. And so you end up with hamburger menus on 4k-screens, tall narrow alert dialogs on MacOS etc.
- Izkata 4y ago
  One of the early attempts to balance those two goals was an option in the settings to switch between Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced mode. Never really see that anymore.
squarefoot 4y ago
Spot on. And I would add "let's make every GUI either web based or mobile based just to further annoy PC users".
dkarl 4y ago
That's the discipline of data-driven business. If 20 people use your app and despise it and are depressed by it, that's better than 19 people using it and loving it. No sentimentality allowed.
- sosborn 4y ago
  How could anyone possibly measure that an app is despised and depresses people (or vice versa)? Usage can't be it, because I use a ton of software that I despise and get depressed by, but only because I get paid to do so, or the app is so niche there isn't a viable replacement.
  - layer8 4y ago
    They don’t. They just measure that the more “modern” design gets 5% more users, so clearly it must be better.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > How could anyone possibly measure that an app is despised and depresses people (or vice versa)? You'd have to actually talk to your users. But that requires genuine human investment, so it doesn't scale. It doesn't come in the form of a third-party SaaS with a pretty dashboard, generous free plan, and integration via single <script> tag. In short: they could measure this, they just don't bother to.
yamtaddle 4y ago
UI is now optimized for PowerPoint. The #1 goal of all UI work is so the designer and/or product manager can get an "oh, that looks nice!" showing off screenshots to an interviewer or to someone higher-up who'll help them get a promotion. Trendy (you don't want to look outdated, do you?) and pretty are what matter, not usability. I seriously think that's what's going on.

indymike 4y ago

> The lost art of UI design. This sounds like a great title for a really good book.

isametry 4y ago
I find it somehow intriguing how you already pre-destined this imaginary book to be great… That stood out to me for some reason. How about a great title for a shitty book? Funnily enough, The Lost Art Of UI Design sounds like a potentially very mediocre book to me. One of those stretched-out "self-teaching" design guides that listicles will recommend you. It chooses a couple of very specific rules of thumb, it gives way too much importance to them, and somehow manages to water them down to 250 pages. Probably written either by someone who's a skilled writer but barely knows enough about the industry, or an experienced specialist in the field who unfortunately can't write for life.
- indymike 4y ago
  Ah… soon the publishers will just have chatgpt write it.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

I get (and agree with) this idea in general, but these buttons are still present in any Adobe apps (esp. Photoshop) and they're not going anywhere. Hell, I don't think they're original to Flash to begin with, more like borrowed from Photoshop when Adobe bought Macromedia (this is purely my speculation; but Photoshop is much older).

legohead 4y ago

I am still clicking on Gmail on accident because I think it's Maps. The icons are horrible.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Classic HTML gmail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en (final link on that page)
hbn 4y ago
For years I've had a "Google" folder on my phone which links to all the obligatory things - Drive, Maps, Calendar, Meet, etc. Ever since they made this move to every icon being a minimal shape with the 4 Google colors, I haven't been able to quickly differentiate between app icons. I have to read the labels half the time now cause they're so non-indicative of the app's purpose.