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"Flat design is bad because it gives up visual cues that convey information in return for conformance to a monotonous style." So make a flat design that doesn'
by KirinDave 14y ago
"Flat design is bad because it gives up visual cues that convey information in return for conformance to a monotonous style."
So make a flat design that doesn't give up these visual cues? All these complaints are just farts in the wind, and I only single your post out because it was pithy. Not only is the term "flat design" horrendously vague and difficult to pin down, but the very idea that there is some kind of absolute scale by which to judge design–clearly implicit in your judgement–should raise a few eyebrows.
Ultimately what matters is communicating to the user how to interact with the product in question. Everything else is marketing and will be subject to trends. But you could make a delightful and useful skeuomorphic interface or a delightful and useful flat interface or any one of a million variations on those spectrums and many others.
- ericb 14y agoThe cues are a result of depth. You have given them up, by-definition when you use a flat design. edit: To enumerate some of the affordances you lose and problems: -What is a button? What can I interact with? A raised button used to be a good cue. -Is that toggle on or off (depressed or no)? -What is clickable? -What is important? Closer things used to be more important. -Is this a "thing" or a word? Shadows used to hint at this. -Is this a banner or a button? -What did I click? I don't even know! Non-flat designs work because they use real world metaphors to build a natural vocabularly that is almost universally understood by our common experiences living in a 3D world. Now, perhaps you can re-define this naturally shared design vocabulary in the flat world. But the point is, you are redefining something which people intuitively already know, and when you have to teach users your interface, that is never as friendly as when they know how to use it intuitively.
- mbrock 14y agoWhat about hyperlinks? Menus? OS X dock icons? Terminals? Folder icons? Highlighted text? I don't think the affordance of raised buttons is really such a crucial issue.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yareally 14y agoI agree with hyperlinks and probably menus & the terminal (unless you consider it a representation of the old school console terminal PCs of the 70s and 80s) having no real life equivalent. However, folder icons would be symbolic of a real world example though. Even a dock is sort of a facsimile of having things laid out in front of you on an actual desk.
- mbrock 14y agoThe OS X deck is 3D since Leopard, but it used to just be a rectangular array of clickable pictures. With little triangles under the "open" ones. Humans adapt. People who grew up with console terminal interfaces find them more usable than point-and-click interfaces. The assumption that common people will be all confused and miserable if you take away the bevels from buttons seems kind of unimaginative.
- lotso 14y agoHackerNews is pretty flat and still usable to me.
- KirinDave 14y ago"The cues are a result of depth. You have given them up, by-definition when you use a flat design." Except that flat designs aren't defined as eliminating depth cues. The simply do not rely on them so much or demand additional cues. The Flat Design Church does tolerate depth, and many "flat designs"include some notion of planar layout. It's just that depth cues aren't supposed to be primary cues in a flat design. And for good reason. Depth cues are often very subtle and increasingly UX needs to be good even when looking at a dim screen under bright sunlight. The advent of mobile is demanding designers start going high contrast, and so flat design is an obvious choice. It is, ultimately, a phase. People have reverted to the simplest solutions for more visually rugged UIs, but we're starting to see a new and more nuanced set of visual grammars emerge.