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“I made an operating system UI within Unity”

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Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#21

Post by mikepurvis »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

Type-to-search is significant— Ubuntu has it, MacOS sort of has it (Spotlight), Windows 10 definitely has it. It wasn't until it mysteriously broke last week [1] that I suddenly realised how dependent upon it I had become; I felt like a caveman manually paging through the list of installed software or seeking out the proper icon on my desktop.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/09/windows-...

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#22

Post by SQueeeeeL »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

Couldn't agree more, especially with apps. Airbnb, Google Maps, Snapchat etc all have these fucking awful animations for each action. Makes the whole experience clunky on my mid level Moto phone. What was the point of all this advancing compute power if everything is still slow!!!

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#23

Post by outworlder »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

Lots of animations do serve a clear purpose. Humans are not used to things popping up into existence immediately out of nowhere. Yes, you may argue that you and me are tech savvy and trained our brains to not care as much. But that leaves everyone else.

I think a bunch of animations shown in this piece are over the top. But quick animations can help immensely with usability. The best ones are so subtle that most people don't even notice. Interestingly, lots of game UIs have subtle animations, I guess because they are easy to do. OSX, iOS and even Android have animations _everywhere_, but they barely register unless you are looking for them (exception for windows getting minimized, but that does serve a function).

> I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

If that's the bar, then we haven't seen any meaningful advancements ever since the Xerox PARC.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#25

Post by eberkund »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

My understanding is that animations came about as a way to make slow loading operations on web pages appear faster. Because they looked so elegant and fancy, designers started putting animations on software interfaces that should have otherwise been quick which leads to where we are today.

Users also started demanding "smoothness" over speed, smoothness simply being how consistently the UI interactions behaved. On Android I remember people would complain it was laggy compared to iOS, I think part of this reason was because of animation speeds. Increasing animation speeds allows you to make your interface more consistently slow.

I think animations are fine when they don't increase the time until I can do the next thing. If something takes around 1s to load and the UI shows an animation during that time, I am okay with that and I think it actually enhances the experience. But if something takes only 1ms and the designers display a 1s animation blocking me from doing the next thing until the animation has played then that is a major annoyance.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#27

Post by sixothree »

kstenerud wrote: post #9

From the comments: This is a remake of Project Glass, which is a simulated operating system UI, this time implemented in Unity. It's not a full OS, but every simulated app and widget inside is fully functional. There is currently only a Windows demo [1] available, and he's undecided whether he'll release on Github or not. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p3AACMd6KuRnHctsq42uJfMq3Bw...

What is Project Glass in this context? Forgive my ignorance, but search is confusing here.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#28

Post by whalesalad »

0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

They’re great when they’re done well and obnoxious when done poorly. It’s easy to do them poorly and it’s a very fine line.

I think this particular example could use some fine tuning but for the most part does a pretty killer job of delivering low latency effects with consistent easing.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#29

Post by sixothree »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #22
0xffff2 wrote: post #19

Am I the only one who hates most animation? If the animation doesn't serve a clear purpose in signalling something to the user, I want it gone. I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95.

Couldn't agree more, especially with apps. Airbnb, Google Maps, Snapchat etc all have these fucking awful animations for each action. Makes the whole experience clunky on my mid level Moto phone. What was the point of all this advancing compute power if everything is still slow!!!

It is 2020 and everything is slow even on current gen technology. That is the most disappointing fact about the current state of technology.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#30

Post by hokkos »

sixothree wrote: post #27
kstenerud wrote: post #9

From the comments: This is a remake of Project Glass, which is a simulated operating system UI, this time implemented in Unity. It's not a full OS, but every simulated app and widget inside is fully functional. There is currently only a Windows demo [1] available, and he's undecided whether he'll release on Github or not. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p3AACMd6KuRnHctsq42uJfMq3Bw...

What is Project Glass in this context? Forgive my ignorance, but search is confusing here.

Maybe a reference to Sun's Locking Glass project ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g

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