Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

material.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 163 posts

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

Mindwipe wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this point of view - that designers are inferior to developers - to be incredibly condescending and yet very typical of HN. I'm a developer, and I would hate to work with you or someone who holds this view point. You seem like poison in a development team. It's not about skills, it's about goals. There are roughly two main conflicting goals when building a product. One, make a product that delivers value to…

> UI/UX design as it is today is almost entirely about sacrificing utility to boost sales. I don't think this is true. Many undesirable qualities in modern design are due to a cult like belief in them by designers rather than just listening to users. Excessive use of white space in virtually all design being the most obvious one. That's not generally because it boosts sales. It's because they've really drunk the kool…

> Many undesirable qualities in modern design are due to a cult like belief in them by designers rather than just listening to users. Excessive use of white space in virtually all design being the most obvious one.

IIRC, negative space is one of those things that lay users tend to think is unimportant or even undesirable as a design element, but every empirical study of usability/reasability shows that it is important, and that lacking it produces negative reaction to the end product even if users don't attribute the reaction to the missing negative space, and that this result has held up with online design but was well-known even in older studies of print design.

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#102

Post by cam_l »

spectramax wrote: post #26
cam_l wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it when people make authoritative statements about design. Because everyone has an opinion about design, it must mean everyone is expert. Dieter Rams designs were absolutely based on trends, and trends which very much fell or of favour for twenty or thirty years. The fact that they are on trend again does not invalidate that. Nor does the fact that his designs in particular are remembered and copied because he…

"Dieter Rams designs were absolutely based on trends" - based on what observation? The trend at the time Mid-Century design with some influence from 30 year old Bauhaus movement. "He was one of the best because he used an approach which was exploratory, multi-disciplined and human focused. (Tellingly, he was educated in interior design and architecture.)" - I agree, and that is my take as well. "To suggest that graph…

>not the tone I'd like to see on HN.

Fair cop, though my comment was in direct response to yours. To be honest, the bile against design is an opinion I see voiced quite a lot here and elsewhere and it riles me a bit, so I did not take your comment as tongue in cheek.

>The trend at the time Mid-Century design with some influence from 30 year old Bauhaus movement.

Absolutely! You don't think this was a trend? Art Deco was a trend for 30 or 40 years, Art Nouveau maybe a hundred. The Bauhaus was an expression of renewal against the old world of decorative arts, and for a functional, scientific aesthetic. But maybe only true to this until Mies took over.. and he was more an aesthete than functionalist, and perhaps the one responsible for its dissemination across the world as the international style - at least in architecture. Anyway, point was the Rams trend was a revival of the Bauhaus style, clean, modern, healthy, wealthy, and white, against the skeumorphic timberwork of his contemporary's electronic product design. All at the height of the popular dissemination of modernism to the world.

>I think the correct take on this is that there are no major gaps to fill in International style.

I took your use of "solved" to mean precisely this. I just disagree. Perhaps I am a little biased by my field (international style was less successful for architecture than graphic design, though far more widespread).

The thing is, sure, design is partially about the possibilities for composition afforded by the medium and the physical, ergonomic and responsive characteristics of the user, but it is mostly about humanity. A chaotic mess of social feedback effects, a constantly shifting base of understanding and recognition, a wide variety of sizes, shapes, outlooks and interaction patterns. Most of design is manipulating an unseen virtual world of the senses, experiences, social interactions and virtuality in the minds of the users. Small wonder when faced with the scale of the actual problem (not to mention the leanness of economic incentives), lesser designers occasionally lose track of some of the harder rules of design. Even excluding the issue of taste, or as I like to think of it, prejudice ;)

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#103

Post by anoncake »

hulahoof wrote: post #99
spectramax wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we looking at the same posters? https://i.imgur.com/BJzS7aw.jpg No way you can say this is 50’s, can you? If so, what gives it away?

The colour palette for me has a bit of a dated feel, although I assume these are scans of the originals and would probably look right at home if freshly printed.

I think it's the writing too. All-lowercase writing was more common in the 60s and the font[1] is not that common today.

[1] https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/castletype/standard/medium/ according to Whatthefont

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#104

Post by fells »

jhoh wrote: post #66
pcl wrote: post #51

Doesn't load for me in Safari, but works in Chrome. From the JS console: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: IntersectionObserver

That's just Apple not implementing modern web standards. Just wait a couple months or years and they might implement the IntersectionObserver. Until then you'll have to use polyfills to support Safari which Google obviously didn't do here.

Or travel back in time a month. It was added in Safari 12.1.

https://webkit.org/blog/8718/new-webkit-features-in-safari-1...

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#105

Post by atomi »

hbosch wrote: post #56
spectramax wrote: post #2

I have a deep rooted issue with design and designers. In 90’s, skeuomorphic trend was picking up steam reaching a climax in mid-2000’s. Web 2.0 design elements were springing up, taking advantage of css; while UI elements sought transparency and blur (Windows Vista). That trend passed and then we had the whole Material design boom in 2012-2015, the entire web was sabotaged by Bootstrap. Color themes and palettes were…

I have a deep rooted issue with development and developers. In 90’s, ActionScript trend was picking up steam reaching a climax in mid-2000’s. Flash websites were springing up, taking advantage of animations and sound; while UI elements sought transparency and blur (Windows Vista). That trend passed and then we had the whole ES6 boom in 2012-2015, the entire web was sabotaged by JavaScript frameworks. Frontend librari…

I do not envy frontend designers. Their code is transient by nature.

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#106

Post by pault »

atoav wrote: post #70
spectramax wrote: post #2

I have a deep rooted issue with design and designers. In 90’s, skeuomorphic trend was picking up steam reaching a climax in mid-2000’s. Web 2.0 design elements were springing up, taking advantage of css; while UI elements sought transparency and blur (Windows Vista). That trend passed and then we had the whole Material design boom in 2012-2015, the entire web was sabotaged by Bootstrap. Color themes and palettes were…

Beeing a designer is not easy. Other than in programming or e.g. in sound mixing, everybody has (strong) opinions on design. Ever met a boss who came into the room looked at you code and told you to use library x instead of the thing you used the past three weeks? Stuff like this only happens to designers, because everybody believes they can judge design. The client that makes a design in MSWord and wants you to do e…

I started my career as a designer and this is why I migrated to software engineering. If you're a designer, everyone with a pair of eyeballs thinks they know how to do your job. If you're a developer, everyone thinks you're a genius if your code doesn't crash.

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#107

Post by titzer »

madeofpalk wrote: post #59
titzer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately this triggers my rant mode: When branding hits hammers, I think I might quit the human race. Designers fundamentally do not understand that software is a tool that people use to get things done. Constant reorganization and redesign for trends literally robs people of their skills in learning to use software to accomplish their goals. I've been using computers since the early 90…

> Designers fundamentally do not understand that software is a tool that people use to get things done. I find this point of view - that designers are inferior to developers - to be incredibly condescending and yet very typical of HN. I'm a developer, and I would hate to work with you or someone who holds this view point. You seem like poison in a development team. Regardless of whether you meant or not, that's what…

> that designers are inferior to developers

My comment was ranty, but I did not say that.

But fundamentally, it is not about who is inferior. It's about who's subjecting whom to constant change, and who is not listening to whom.

The problem is that it isn't "the designers" versus the developers anyway. We're all a little of both. The problem is that the sum total of all the little changes, both cosmetic and fundamental causes a drift over time. You don't see it until the timescale is long enough. Eventually you drift so far that nothing is familiar. (case in point: last time I used Windows was Win2k. Windows 10 is nothing like it. I have no clue how to do anything, and it is hard as fuck to learn, because there isn't much in the way of all that ugly "text" to help me out. There's no manual, no printed documentation. You gotta google everything, or use the built in searches. )

I find all this really frustrating. I'm worse than a novice. I used to be good at this. Now I'm a dinosaur. I literally cannot use the tools that I was good at 10-20 years ago. While change is constant in modern life, software, and particularly The Web, have accelerated change to a point where we are, as I say in my OP, robbing ourselves of skillsets when using software as a tool.

I mean, talk to someone who used Excel for 15 years, like friends of mine in marketing positions. Every revision. Changes. New functionality, but scrambling the old. And then one day their corporate overloads mandate a switch to Google docs, which not only has way less functionality, but is also all different. It's constantly changing too. The damn thing scrambles itself every 6 months. Eventually, the unconscious brain unlearns what it knew. And, worse it learns that how it is now is not how it will be. The brain won't bother learning anymore. So we stop actually becoming experts. Because what's the point if it's gonna get scrambled in > You're literally just making stuff up. Apple, probably the most infamous capricious design company, hasn't changed their File manager, settings menu, dock, or toolbar in 19 years.

Mac is relatively stable in the core things (thank god for that!) but Windows definitely not, Linux definitely not, and the web is a total other animal. Mac also drifts a lot. Look at iTunes. But the one MacOS example in a sea of drifting, changing, usually breaking and getting worse, crapass apps isn't really worth much.

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#108

Post by the_gipsy »

gnicholas wrote: post #31

The author suggests using dark gray instead of black, but then also says that when pixels are completely deactivated on OLED, it saves energy. These seem to be contradictory pieces of advice. What am I missing?

They also suggest to another reason to avoid black: it makes scrolling laggy on OLED screens, from turning pixels on and off.

Perhaps instead the UI could just slightly bump everything from black to the darkest gray, until the scrolling has finished?

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#109

Post by jhoh »

fells wrote: post #104
jhoh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just Apple not implementing modern web standards. Just wait a couple months or years and they might implement the IntersectionObserver. Until then you'll have to use polyfills to support Safari which Google obviously didn't do here.

Or travel back in time a month. It was added in Safari 12.1. https://webkit.org/blog/8718/new-webkit-features-in-safari-1...

Wow, just two years after Chrome, Firefox, Opera and even Edge added it!

https://caniuse.com/#feat=intersectionobserver

Re: Material Design Guidelines for Dark Mode

#110

Post by titzer »

madeofpalk wrote: post #59
titzer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately this triggers my rant mode: When branding hits hammers, I think I might quit the human race. Designers fundamentally do not understand that software is a tool that people use to get things done. Constant reorganization and redesign for trends literally robs people of their skills in learning to use software to accomplish their goals. I've been using computers since the early 90…

> Designers fundamentally do not understand that software is a tool that people use to get things done. I find this point of view - that designers are inferior to developers - to be incredibly condescending and yet very typical of HN. I'm a developer, and I would hate to work with you or someone who holds this view point. You seem like poison in a development team. Regardless of whether you meant or not, that's what…

> A bunch of developers telling designers that their bad at their job, that the devs know better than them

Another view on this is that a new set of designers suddenly deciding that the old set of designers were bad at their job and just doing it over can end up pretty terrible for users. Some stuff doesn't need to be disrupted, dammit!

Post reply on HN