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"[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 pur

"[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.
    - revscat 14y ago
      > 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. Those two sentences contradict each other.
      - DigitalJack 14y ago
        From a number-of-interactions required point of view, having to type the app's name is the worst solution I've seen. But it is a solution.
        revscat 14y ago
        If you are wanting a single screen with access to all of your apps... I'm not sure there is a way to that. iOS provides three ways of opening an app: springboard, spotlight, and Siri. Springboard is pretty good, and when combined with folders you can store quite a lot on just the first page. I am not aware of a UI idiom that would provide access in a way you imply.
        NoPiece 14y ago
        I'd like a single folder for each application type, then an alphabetical list of apps - maybe working something like the contact list. As it is I am stuck with dozens of folders (for each letter of the alphabet, and because of 12 app per folder limit, I have four "Games S" folders. http://i.imgur.com/aTacOlU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aTacOlU.jpg
- kruipen 14y ago
  This very page has over a dozen different click-able targets, and only one is a button with a shadow. Yet we seem to be able to find our way around just fine...
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    With due respect to pg, HN's UI is not something to aspire to, though it has subtle things that make the difference between "meh, but usable" and "omgwtf". The problem I've found with Windows 8 is that there is no visual difference between clickable text/icons and nonclickable text icons. The whole experience comes one of trial and error where you tap on random things like an idiot to see what elicits a response and what doesn't. The web's way of solving this problem is by underlining text that can be clicked. HN violates this in many places, but at the very least text links underline when moused over - not ideal, but works, and is something that doesn't exist in touch-land. Ditto, we've been using rollover effects for years to demarcate clickable icons from the unclickable. This entire strategy is now kaput thanks to touch. We don't necessarily have to have drop shadows, but what we do need is a consistent and unambiguous language that clues the user into how the UI operates. Windows 8 currently lacks this in a really, really bad way. We can do this without skeumorphs, but we still need to do it. And therein lies the greatest problem with this flat design trend - many designers are going flat without remembering that skeumorphs carry a lot of user hinting that you have to replicate.
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      Hn is also aimed at an audience who's HTML heuristics are perfectly honed to detect a link, whatever it may look like.
  - rdtsc 14y ago
    > This very page has over a dozen different click-able targets, and only one is a button with a shadow. I remember initially HN didn't strike as a particularly intuitive site. It worked and I am using it because of the community and the content, I am used to it by now. Ok maybe there some value in having users slowly discover cool features by randomly trying to click things. I don't know. But at least it, seems, the core functionality should be somewhat obvious. Buttons on the web for every link don't work, but I like some special markup to show links (traditionally it is the underlining but anything else can work as well). To me there is often a tension between making something looking cool and making it functional. I'll admit the look of the flat interfaces maybe cleaner (whatever that means...) but unless it is meant to just be looked at, it also has to be functional.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > 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. Thank you! I feel like nobody is allowed to say it on the internet, because Microsoft finally released a phone UI that isn't objectively terrible, but I find Metro goddamn confusing on a phone. The "People" app is a disaster. Little bits of text hanging off the side of the screen, no indication about what's clickable anywhere. My mom is supposed to use this?
- nikster 14y ago
  It may be important to remember that flatness is not something that came out of Apples labs. To the contrary, the 'clickable' look on buttons was invented at Apple (Xerox had flat buttons). And the reason, surprise, surprise, was and always has been usability. I don't see them reversing that any time soon. That skeumorphism has seriously gotten out of hand in iOS 6 is a different debate. Ive will fix this.
- mark_integerdsv 14y ago
  What aggravates my particular swimsuit area is that no one who rattles very loudly on this topic seems to realise that there is more to skeumorphism than flat and textured. By way of example: one of my favourite skeumorphs is Apples "head shake" when you enter the wrong password to unlock a Mac. Flawless execution. I know that something went wrong, I know what went wrong without ever reading a manual, it's friendly and gets the point across without big red Xs and intrusive DONGGG!! noises. The fake leather stitcing stuff is dumb. I think that there are many designers who are guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater though.
ameen 14y ago
This is a well established paradigm among designers. Different textures to represent different states. Designing Actionable buttons requires gradients and shadows.
ed209 14y ago
It may surprise you, but a part of design is fashion [trends]. My Ski jacket from about 10 years ago still works really well. At the time it looked great, but now it's outdated in style, although it still works great. So as a designer, yes I worry about trends, because if I don't then you'll end up picking a jacket that works and is on trend over a jacket that just works (other things being equal like price etc). Design is not a single input discipline. Many factors go into making a design for a product... including trends and fads.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  > Design is not a single input discipline. Many factors go into making a design for a product... including trends and fads. The problem is that sometimes (usually?) it's 99% fashion, 1% usability studies....
- awakeasleep 14y ago
  That is the argument by which design becomes regarded as frivolous. Frivolity has it's place in life. But it is only a subset of design. Therefore, I think it's ok to disparage articles on the silly aspects of design, when posted to HN, especially when they're met with religious battle type fervent loyalty.
  - ed209 14y ago
    Ignoring any aspect of design will make you look frivolous. Yes, exploring trends are a subset of design but they are just as important as any other aspect of design. When I'm asked to design something of course I test and make sure it's functional. But I equally make sure it's current and appeals to whoever it should be selling to. Both are important - neither are frivolous.

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.
  - revscat 14y ago
    > 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. Those two sentences contradict each other.
    - DigitalJack 14y ago
      From a number-of-interactions required point of view, having to type the app's name is the worst solution I've seen. But it is a solution.
      - revscat 14y ago
        If you are wanting a single screen with access to all of your apps... I'm not sure there is a way to that. iOS provides three ways of opening an app: springboard, spotlight, and Siri. Springboard is pretty good, and when combined with folders you can store quite a lot on just the first page. I am not aware of a UI idiom that would provide access in a way you imply.
        NoPiece 14y ago
        I'd like a single folder for each application type, then an alphabetical list of apps - maybe working something like the contact list. As it is I am stuck with dozens of folders (for each letter of the alphabet, and because of 12 app per folder limit, I have four "Games S" folders. http://i.imgur.com/aTacOlU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aTacOlU.jpg
kruipen 14y ago
This very page has over a dozen different click-able targets, and only one is a button with a shadow. Yet we seem to be able to find our way around just fine...
- potatolicious 14y ago
  With due respect to pg, HN's UI is not something to aspire to, though it has subtle things that make the difference between "meh, but usable" and "omgwtf". The problem I've found with Windows 8 is that there is no visual difference between clickable text/icons and nonclickable text icons. The whole experience comes one of trial and error where you tap on random things like an idiot to see what elicits a response and what doesn't. The web's way of solving this problem is by underlining text that can be clicked. HN violates this in many places, but at the very least text links underline when moused over - not ideal, but works, and is something that doesn't exist in touch-land. Ditto, we've been using rollover effects for years to demarcate clickable icons from the unclickable. This entire strategy is now kaput thanks to touch. We don't necessarily have to have drop shadows, but what we do need is a consistent and unambiguous language that clues the user into how the UI operates. Windows 8 currently lacks this in a really, really bad way. We can do this without skeumorphs, but we still need to do it. And therein lies the greatest problem with this flat design trend - many designers are going flat without remembering that skeumorphs carry a lot of user hinting that you have to replicate.
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    Hn is also aimed at an audience who's HTML heuristics are perfectly honed to detect a link, whatever it may look like.
- rdtsc 14y ago
  > This very page has over a dozen different click-able targets, and only one is a button with a shadow. I remember initially HN didn't strike as a particularly intuitive site. It worked and I am using it because of the community and the content, I am used to it by now. Ok maybe there some value in having users slowly discover cool features by randomly trying to click things. I don't know. But at least it, seems, the core functionality should be somewhat obvious. Buttons on the web for every link don't work, but I like some special markup to show links (traditionally it is the underlining but anything else can work as well). To me there is often a tension between making something looking cool and making it functional. I'll admit the look of the flat interfaces maybe cleaner (whatever that means...) but unless it is meant to just be looked at, it also has to be functional.
rayiner 14y ago
> 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. Thank you! I feel like nobody is allowed to say it on the internet, because Microsoft finally released a phone UI that isn't objectively terrible, but I find Metro goddamn confusing on a phone. The "People" app is a disaster. Little bits of text hanging off the side of the screen, no indication about what's clickable anywhere. My mom is supposed to use this?
nikster 14y ago
It may be important to remember that flatness is not something that came out of Apples labs. To the contrary, the 'clickable' look on buttons was invented at Apple (Xerox had flat buttons). And the reason, surprise, surprise, was and always has been usability. I don't see them reversing that any time soon. That skeumorphism has seriously gotten out of hand in iOS 6 is a different debate. Ive will fix this.
mark_integerdsv 14y ago
What aggravates my particular swimsuit area is that no one who rattles very loudly on this topic seems to realise that there is more to skeumorphism than flat and textured. By way of example: one of my favourite skeumorphs is Apples "head shake" when you enter the wrong password to unlock a Mac. Flawless execution. I know that something went wrong, I know what went wrong without ever reading a manual, it's friendly and gets the point across without big red Xs and intrusive DONGGG!! noises. The fake leather stitcing stuff is dumb. I think that there are many designers who are guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater though.

ameen 14y ago

This is a well established paradigm among designers. Different textures to represent different states. Designing Actionable buttons requires gradients and shadows.

ed209 14y ago

It may surprise you, but a part of design is fashion [trends]. My Ski jacket from about 10 years ago still works really well. At the time it looked great, but now it's outdated in style, although it still works great. So as a designer, yes I worry about trends, because if I don't then you'll end up picking a jacket that works and is on trend over a jacket that just works (other things being equal like price etc). Design is not a single input discipline. Many factors go into making a design for a product... including trends and fads.

snogglethorpe 14y ago
> Design is not a single input discipline. Many factors go into making a design for a product... including trends and fads. The problem is that sometimes (usually?) it's 99% fashion, 1% usability studies....
awakeasleep 14y ago
That is the argument by which design becomes regarded as frivolous. Frivolity has it's place in life. But it is only a subset of design. Therefore, I think it's ok to disparage articles on the silly aspects of design, when posted to HN, especially when they're met with religious battle type fervent loyalty.
- ed209 14y ago
  Ignoring any aspect of design will make you look frivolous. Yes, exploring trends are a subset of design but they are just as important as any other aspect of design. When I'm asked to design something of course I test and make sure it's functional. But I equally make sure it's current and appeals to whoever it should be selling to. Both are important - neither are frivolous.