8 ms·

Flat UI is not the only way forward

103 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

ballard 14y ago
The "leather" on iCal, FMF is distracting and should be eliminated. An user-selectable UI stylesheet similar Pixate and Teacup for RubyMotion would allow the user to select a view most comfortable for them: be it plain or fancy, retro or modern, or even accessibility-enabled.
dsr_ 14y ago
That's far too reasonable and moderate an attitude to enrage, goad or inspire a new Movement. I hope more people adopt it.
camus 14y ago
flat ui is a design trend and like all trends it'll go away.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  Basically, but it can still be a good one. Dieter Rahms had a pretty good design trend going for instance. :) All design is going to feel dated somehow, even though we can't imagine it in the moment, but I think the flat design is going to age very gracefully compared to a lot of the design memes today.
  - TorbjornLunde 14y ago
    I disagree, there is a lot of design that still feels quite modern, especially within furniture (Dieter Ram’s famous shelving system holds up quite well for instance). If you go for a timeless style it’s usually the technology limitations (size for the product for instance) that gives away the design.
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      I meant design within software is always going to feel dated eventually, because we don't have finalized hardware products like Ive's and Rams's products. There isn't really an idea of software design that's extricable from the viewport, and that what I mean is going to make it look dated eventually.
    - currysausage 14y ago
      And that "Regalsystem" is from 1960. Claude Garamond's typeface from ~1550 [1] still is the high standard for book typefaces. This is excellent design. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Original-CG.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Original-CG.gif
  - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
    Wrong. Good design is timeless.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - nikster 14y ago
      True, and very interesting. None of the software currently out could be called timeless. Maybe timeless user interface design has simply not been found yet? Closest are probably the first apps that came out with the Macintosh. But everything since then... Nah. This is in stark contrast with Apple hardware which is pretty much universally timeless designs. Particularly the iPhone 4 and 5 - I am willing to bet they will still look great 20 years from now.
      - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
        > I am willing to bet they will still look great 20 years from now. Good design is timeless because it holds inherent characteristics that are not subject to time, it's not exactly about how great it looks or think it would look years from now, this is a side-effect. I'll give an example. If you compare an IKEA spoon and a renaissance spoon, you'll notice quite a few differences besides the 1800 one looking dated. The recent ones handle better, have better weight, avoid spills, use materials that don't tarnish, etc. Now contrast this with the japanese hashi (chopsticks). It consists of a pair of bamboo sticks cut at a certain angle and it's design hasn't changed for centuries. It has been perfected, reduced to the essentials, and does it's job still to this day. It's timeless, good design, and by consequence looks great - it's form and shape unconsciously emanate all these characteristics to us. > True, and very interesting. None of the software currently out could be called timeless. Maybe timeless user interface design has simply not been found yet? UIs are relatively new, but I would argue command prompts are one example of UI that withstood the test of time, while the WIMP metaphor seems to be fading away with touch devices.
- tope 14y ago
  I totally agree. But as design trends define the look of a decade, apps kind of need to adapt too or risk looking "old-school"
kmfrk 14y ago
"Flat UI" seems like an immense reluctance to give Microsoft credit for their work on Metro. I am reminded of this definition of Microsoft's Metro aesthetic by Andrew Kim: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37559/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37f83/1341178875001/1000w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e.... ~ http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft.html http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-micro...
- publicfig 14y ago
  Semi-off topic, but I find it interesting that Kim actually just took a job with Microsoft this week. I'd like to see what they are going to do with him.
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    His forté is in hardware, and he's been hired to work in the Xbox division, so I hope his touch will affect the look of the next Xbox console/controller and other peripheral products. I really dislike what Microsoft did with the Xbox design in general, and a combination of Kim and the Metro aesthetic seems like the perfect antidote to that. EDIT: Kim also shares my views on the Xbox design, it looks like: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37559/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37f72/1341178812167/1000w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e....
- nikster 14y ago
  As a UX person I still give MS a fail on Windows 8. Yes it has a clean, aesthetic look. But it lacks usability. And any design that is not primarily focused on usability is best described as Kitsch. Even if it has all square angles. That does not mean I think Apples god-awful "tape deck" interface or the horrors that are games center or find my friends are any good. I am sick of designey people calling everything good that has a straight line. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, design is how it works.
  - kmfrk 14y ago
jstsch 14y ago
Another point to consider: I think regular users prefer a bit of textures, gradients and real-life counterparts. It gives the UI a more friendly appearance. Never forget we're just monkeys.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  Yes - if you watch non-techie people use tech, often the biggest obstacle is just starting to use the thing. Then when they do, their persistent fear clouds their ability to learn/use the thing well. This makes me think that approachability is one of the biggest problems to overcome in UI.
- rimantas 14y ago
  Those thing give UI something called affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    It's pretty much the modern equivalent of the argument for always underlining links to communicate that it can be clicked. Dustin Curtis's flat approach to buttons and links is to use rounded borders: http://svbtle.com http://svbtle.com. This will probably be how buttons will - and should - work in a flat design.
    - hayksaakian 14y ago
      On the underline thing. While its not a need to have, it helps me recognize links without thinking.
      - kmfrk 14y ago
        It's always a great rule of thumb. Especially with touch devices that obviate :hover-based signalling.
    - snogglethorpe 14y ago
ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
"[textures and ui effects like shadows and gradients] help you understand behavior from looking at a static screen" The winner. I wish designers would stop pursuing styles & fads and instead pursue results. Stop worrying what's best for looks or minimalism and start caring about usability and predictability.
- rdtsc 14y ago
  From a non-designer's simple point of view, this flat thing is insanity. Designers I find are very willing to follow latest fads and trends without really evaluating or thinking about it. Someone rebelled and wrote a blog how skeuomorphs are bad, put some pictures of leather textures up for everyone to laugh at. The next thing you know, you get OS UIs (Windows 8), websites and a whole bunch of other interfaces where you have no freakin' idea what to click. It all looks flat and so I end up mousing around elements on the screen like a drunk person stumbling in the dark trying to find how this thing works. How about a little drop shadow on that button so it looks like, you know, a button? "Oh but it looks like a real world button and we shouldn't have to mimic the real world...blah blah.." -- I don't care about the philosophy of design or whatever the latest thing came from Apple labs, I want to get my stuff done and just knowing what is clickable is helpful.
  - danieldk 14y ago
    I completely agree. I have been using a Windows Phone 8 for a month and while I still like live tiles, but the whole experience is annoying. The flatness makes applications difficult to navigate and read after a long work day. Text, buttons, and other widgets are not clearly demarcated and applications tend to become 'text and squares soup'. I have now put my SIM card back in my two year old iPhone 4 since, although the interface looks a bit daft these days, it has good usability. (On live tiles: they are cute and give a personal touch to your phone, but they are to small to be informative for many applications.)
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      Yeah, it's like communism for interfaces: all tiles are equally important and get the same amount of real estate. :) It makes it impossible to create a taxonomy, because the only thing you can do to organize them is put them in groups. In Microsoft's defence, Apple haven't done anything to fix the problem of people with several screens of apps, which is basically impossible to navigate enjoyable. I almost always use Spotlight to open apps that aren't in the first two screens nowadays.
ameen 14y ago
What I'd really like to see in iOS UI in the future would be uniformity in design choices. Many of Apple's own apps adopt different design styles instead of adopting a single design language. Also, cleaning up "over-designed" skeuomorphic interfaces might help a lot.
- danso 14y ago
  I would love to read a short history of how the current skeuomorphic interfaces came to be on iOS. There are a few good ones, but others are so amateurish in comparison that it's as if an entirely separate company pushed it out. I'm thinking of GameCenter, which even though I know is a major part of official iOS, I sometimes disable because my reflexive action is to disable spammy-looking apps. I'm not against all skeuomorphic designs....in Game Center's, the design is just bizarrely tacky.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    It gets worse. The contacts app on an iPad doesn't use all vertical space in order to keep the aspect ratio of the booklet it imitates believable. Very amateurish indeed, I'm baffled people praise Apple for UIs.
rglover 14y ago
I've always looked at it from the perspective of who I'm designing for. From a functional standpoint, certain users respond to certain affordances in a design. For some, gradients and shadows are helpful when trying to discover points of interaction. For others, a flat colored element with a certain shape and hover color dictates the same thing. The fight between styles is unnecessary. Think about who is using what you make and their level of understanding. More importantly, though, never let aesthetics inform functionality. Rather, let functionality inform the aesthetics.
dakimov 14y ago
Aren't corporations and designers in them just "design fascists"? "This is the ultimate design that is only good for everybody in the world, for a little girl and a brutal middle-aged man, you are not allowed to have your own taste". Maybe everybody must also wear the same gray-colored minimalistic clothes?
jarjoura 14y ago
Ahh, well said. I think you nailed exactly the thinking inside Apple design. Most everyone agrees that Calendar and Find My Friends UI adornments are way over the top. Still, their target market is grandma and not us, so the kitschy-ness of it all isn't as dramatic when you keep that in mind.
dwoldrich 14y ago
I love these design discussions on HN, brings out many different specialties. I know this isn't specifically a Microsoft thread, but I can't help myself... I find myself wishing Microsoft would return to its hardcore productivity app roots, and I don't feel Windows 8's Metro design serves me. Give me desktop apps with multiple child windows and allot only a single, thin button bar and the menu bar for the mouse clickers. Let me Ctrl-Tab/Ctrl-Shift-Tab between my stack of child windows and Alt-Tab between my stack of processes. Isn't this a form of minimal? To focus one's app and UI design on keyboard accelerations and freeing up a maximum amount of screen real estate for editors/data presentment? A throwback productivity-focused design like that would demonstrate real bravery. Microsoft has already committed to balancing touch with a keyboard and touchpad with their tablet design, so this could be possible.
tope 14y ago
Yes, Flat UI has its place and not the only way forward. One thing everyone is missing is the author's statement about all knowing Jonny Ive being and an expert in industrial design. UI design is a whole new beast.... That means having a UI with only 10 shades of grey will be the best look

103 points by co_pl_te 14y ago

The "leather" on iCal, FMF is distracting and should be eliminated. An user-selectable UI stylesheet similar Pixate and Teacup for RubyMotion would allow the user to select a view most comfortable for them: be it plain or fancy, retro or modern, or even accessibility-enabled.

dsr_ 14y ago

That's far too reasonable and moderate an attitude to enrage, goad or inspire a new Movement. I hope more people adopt it.

camus 14y ago

flat ui is a design trend and like all trends it'll go away.

kmfrk 14y ago
Basically, but it can still be a good one. Dieter Rahms had a pretty good design trend going for instance. :) All design is going to feel dated somehow, even though we can't imagine it in the moment, but I think the flat design is going to age very gracefully compared to a lot of the design memes today.
- TorbjornLunde 14y ago
  I disagree, there is a lot of design that still feels quite modern, especially within furniture (Dieter Ram’s famous shelving system holds up quite well for instance). If you go for a timeless style it’s usually the technology limitations (size for the product for instance) that gives away the design.
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    I meant design within software is always going to feel dated eventually, because we don't have finalized hardware products like Ive's and Rams's products. There isn't really an idea of software design that's extricable from the viewport, and that what I mean is going to make it look dated eventually.
  - currysausage 14y ago
    And that "Regalsystem" is from 1960. Claude Garamond's typeface from ~1550 [1] still is the high standard for book typefaces. This is excellent design. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Original-CG.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Original-CG.gif
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  Wrong. Good design is timeless.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - nikster 14y ago
    True, and very interesting. None of the software currently out could be called timeless. Maybe timeless user interface design has simply not been found yet? Closest are probably the first apps that came out with the Macintosh. But everything since then... Nah. This is in stark contrast with Apple hardware which is pretty much universally timeless designs. Particularly the iPhone 4 and 5 - I am willing to bet they will still look great 20 years from now.
    - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
      > I am willing to bet they will still look great 20 years from now. Good design is timeless because it holds inherent characteristics that are not subject to time, it's not exactly about how great it looks or think it would look years from now, this is a side-effect. I'll give an example. If you compare an IKEA spoon and a renaissance spoon, you'll notice quite a few differences besides the 1800 one looking dated. The recent ones handle better, have better weight, avoid spills, use materials that don't tarnish, etc. Now contrast this with the japanese hashi (chopsticks). It consists of a pair of bamboo sticks cut at a certain angle and it's design hasn't changed for centuries. It has been perfected, reduced to the essentials, and does it's job still to this day. It's timeless, good design, and by consequence looks great - it's form and shape unconsciously emanate all these characteristics to us. > True, and very interesting. None of the software currently out could be called timeless. Maybe timeless user interface design has simply not been found yet? UIs are relatively new, but I would argue command prompts are one example of UI that withstood the test of time, while the WIMP metaphor seems to be fading away with touch devices.
tope 14y ago
I totally agree. But as design trends define the look of a decade, apps kind of need to adapt too or risk looking "old-school"

kmfrk 14y ago

"Flat UI" seems like an immense reluctance to give Microsoft credit for their work on Metro. I am reminded of this definition of Microsoft's Metro aesthetic by Andrew Kim: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37559/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37f83/1341178875001/1000w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e.... ~ http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft.html http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-micro...

publicfig 14y ago
Semi-off topic, but I find it interesting that Kim actually just took a job with Microsoft this week. I'd like to see what they are going to do with him.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  His forté is in hardware, and he's been hired to work in the Xbox division, so I hope his touch will affect the look of the next Xbox console/controller and other peripheral products. I really dislike what Microsoft did with the Xbox design in general, and a combination of Kim and the Metro aesthetic seems like the perfect antidote to that. EDIT: Kim also shares my views on the Xbox design, it looks like: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37559/5028140ee4b0195d2ee37f72/1341178812167/1000w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5e....
nikster 14y ago
As a UX person I still give MS a fail on Windows 8. Yes it has a clean, aesthetic look. But it lacks usability. And any design that is not primarily focused on usability is best described as Kitsch. Even if it has all square angles. That does not mean I think Apples god-awful "tape deck" interface or the horrors that are games center or find my friends are any good. I am sick of designey people calling everything good that has a straight line. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, design is how it works.
- kmfrk 14y ago

jstsch 14y ago

Another point to consider: I think regular users prefer a bit of textures, gradients and real-life counterparts. It gives the UI a more friendly appearance. Never forget we're just monkeys.

glhaynes 14y ago
Yes - if you watch non-techie people use tech, often the biggest obstacle is just starting to use the thing. Then when they do, their persistent fear clouds their ability to learn/use the thing well. This makes me think that approachability is one of the biggest problems to overcome in UI.
rimantas 14y ago
Those thing give UI something called affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
- kmfrk 14y ago
  It's pretty much the modern equivalent of the argument for always underlining links to communicate that it can be clicked. Dustin Curtis's flat approach to buttons and links is to use rounded borders: http://svbtle.com http://svbtle.com. This will probably be how buttons will - and should - work in a flat design.
  - hayksaakian 14y ago
    On the underline thing. While its not a need to have, it helps me recognize links without thinking.
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      It's always a great rule of thumb. Especially with touch devices that obviate :hover-based signalling.
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago

"[textures and ui effects like shadows and gradients] help you understand behavior from looking at a static screen" The winner. I wish designers would stop pursuing styles & fads and instead pursue results. Stop worrying what's best for looks or minimalism and start caring about usability and predictability.

rdtsc 14y ago
From a non-designer's simple point of view, this flat thing is insanity. Designers I find are very willing to follow latest fads and trends without really evaluating or thinking about it. Someone rebelled and wrote a blog how skeuomorphs are bad, put some pictures of leather textures up for everyone to laugh at. The next thing you know, you get OS UIs (Windows 8), websites and a whole bunch of other interfaces where you have no freakin' idea what to click. It all looks flat and so I end up mousing around elements on the screen like a drunk person stumbling in the dark trying to find how this thing works. How about a little drop shadow on that button so it looks like, you know, a button? "Oh but it looks like a real world button and we shouldn't have to mimic the real world...blah blah.." -- I don't care about the philosophy of design or whatever the latest thing came from Apple labs, I want to get my stuff done and just knowing what is clickable is helpful.
- danieldk 14y ago
  I completely agree. I have been using a Windows Phone 8 for a month and while I still like live tiles, but the whole experience is annoying. The flatness makes applications difficult to navigate and read after a long work day. Text, buttons, and other widgets are not clearly demarcated and applications tend to become 'text and squares soup'. I have now put my SIM card back in my two year old iPhone 4 since, although the interface looks a bit daft these days, it has good usability. (On live tiles: they are cute and give a personal touch to your phone, but they are to small to be informative for many applications.)
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    Yeah, it's like communism for interfaces: all tiles are equally important and get the same amount of real estate. :) It makes it impossible to create a taxonomy, because the only thing you can do to organize them is put them in groups. In Microsoft's defence, Apple haven't done anything to fix the problem of people with several screens of apps, which is basically impossible to navigate enjoyable. I almost always use Spotlight to open apps that aren't in the first two screens nowadays.

ameen 14y ago

What I'd really like to see in iOS UI in the future would be uniformity in design choices. Many of Apple's own apps adopt different design styles instead of adopting a single design language. Also, cleaning up "over-designed" skeuomorphic interfaces might help a lot.

danso 14y ago
I would love to read a short history of how the current skeuomorphic interfaces came to be on iOS. There are a few good ones, but others are so amateurish in comparison that it's as if an entirely separate company pushed it out. I'm thinking of GameCenter, which even though I know is a major part of official iOS, I sometimes disable because my reflexive action is to disable spammy-looking apps. I'm not against all skeuomorphic designs....in Game Center's, the design is just bizarrely tacky.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  It gets worse. The contacts app on an iPad doesn't use all vertical space in order to keep the aspect ratio of the booklet it imitates believable. Very amateurish indeed, I'm baffled people praise Apple for UIs.

rglover 14y ago

I've always looked at it from the perspective of who I'm designing for. From a functional standpoint, certain users respond to certain affordances in a design. For some, gradients and shadows are helpful when trying to discover points of interaction. For others, a flat colored element with a certain shape and hover color dictates the same thing. The fight between styles is unnecessary. Think about who is using what you make and their level of understanding. More importantly, though, never let aesthetics inform functionality. Rather, let functionality inform the aesthetics.

dakimov 14y ago

Aren't corporations and designers in them just "design fascists"? "This is the ultimate design that is only good for everybody in the world, for a little girl and a brutal middle-aged man, you are not allowed to have your own taste". Maybe everybody must also wear the same gray-colored minimalistic clothes?

jarjoura 14y ago

Ahh, well said. I think you nailed exactly the thinking inside Apple design. Most everyone agrees that Calendar and Find My Friends UI adornments are way over the top. Still, their target market is grandma and not us, so the kitschy-ness of it all isn't as dramatic when you keep that in mind.

dwoldrich 14y ago

I love these design discussions on HN, brings out many different specialties. I know this isn't specifically a Microsoft thread, but I can't help myself... I find myself wishing Microsoft would return to its hardcore productivity app roots, and I don't feel Windows 8's Metro design serves me. Give me desktop apps with multiple child windows and allot only a single, thin button bar and the menu bar for the mouse clickers. Let me Ctrl-Tab/Ctrl-Shift-Tab between my stack of child windows and Alt-Tab between my stack of processes. Isn't this a form of minimal? To focus one's app and UI design on keyboard accelerations and freeing up a maximum amount of screen real estate for editors/data presentment? A throwback productivity-focused design like that would demonstrate real bravery. Microsoft has already committed to balancing touch with a keyboard and touchpad with their tablet design, so this could be possible.

tope 14y ago

Yes, Flat UI has its place and not the only way forward. One thing everyone is missing is the author's statement about all knowing Jonny Ive being and an expert in industrial design. UI design is a whole new beast.... That means having a UI with only 10 shades of grey will be the best look