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

The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

applypixels.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 193 posts

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#171

Post by spiralganglion »

SebastianKra wrote: post #167
dehrmann wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> early human interface guidelines were wary of the concept of lighting Someone needs to go out and patent using multiple ambient light sensors to detect where light sources are relative to a screen, then shade skeuomorphic elements accordingly.

I remember seeing that implemented somewhere, but I cant find it. Maybe someone can help...

Some pre-7 versions of iOS would adjust the sheen on certain graphics (like one of the Settings icons, if memory serves) based on the gyroscope, so as you rotated the device the specular highlights would appear to move. Not exactly the same, but similar spirit.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#172

Post by gnramires »

chefandy wrote: post #168
HeckFeck wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've hit the nail perfectly with most of those points. For all its faults, the older styles of UI and icons made better use of screen space and conveyed much more information to the user. That should always have priority over a "designer" or "artist" imposing a "style" on the system. Any UI is meant to facilitate work, not create work in trying to understand whatever new trend. It's quite an uphill struggle, but I'…

Designer rant. I've been a computer user for 35 years, developer for 25 years (10 full-time professionally), *nix user for 20 years, and am currently in a degree program as a designer, and I've got to say that I disagree entirely. I think you're conflating your personal taste with functional design, and then again conflating functional design with styling and decoration. Interface design principles— as a subset of in…

It wouldn't surprise me if the periodic stylistic changes are analogous to fashion industry periodic makeovers, apparently a tool to keep users engaged and purchasing gadgets (plus a lot of sociological reasons) -- not necessarily for superiority to what came before in any absolute sense.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#173

Post by artsyca »

kkarakk wrote: post #127
artsyca wrote: post #33

Let me be the only leperous pariah in this thread to mention that the same rationale can be applied to the way we dress, as a culture of design professionals and engineers. Because UI trends can come in and out of fashion but hoodies and T's are for life I get it. Any ex-military in this thread understand the importance of dressing up to pass muster?

Except even hoodies are going in multiple directions fashion design wise. techwear,leisurewear,exercisewear(as seen in avengers infinity war) etc

Total bullshit. The hoodie went out with the tonsure in the middle ages. How about rope belts, are they making a comeback too?

Ok. I'll concede the hoodie has some utility for beach culture but in the office? C'mon.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#174

Post by artsyca »

unethical_ban wrote: post #63
artsyca wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've certainly given this a lot of careful consideration. Edit! First off I appreciate the hate keep it coming. Secondly it's like this dude had this list in his back pocket just waiting for this post to show up so he could get it off his chest. Now back to your regularly scheduled death march

Your edit shows that your original post was as ill-meaning and vague as they thought, which is why it was downvoted.

The original comment was just the first sentence, I felt like it spoke for itself but apparently the hive was of a different opinion. I utterly hate this place it's like a stalinist gulag.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#175

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jdhn wrote: post #152
dmitriid wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all your points. However, Big Sur is going to be very, very, very bad accessibility-wise. The entire interface is washed out. There's little to no distinction between selected items. Translucency breaks readability of text. And so on and so forth. Some examples: - https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1275469783488696323 - https://twitter.com/lunasorcery/status/1275237073625198592 - https://twitter.co…

There's no way that second screenshot is WCAG 2.0 contrast compliant.

I'm sure Apple's response is that you can turn on high contrast mode in accessibility settings.

...and my problem with that argument is that high contrast mode looks aesthetically terrible. So basically, only people with great eyesight get to appreciate aesthetically-pleasing UIs.

Obviously, some people just have very bad eyesight, and there comes a point when you need to say "screw aesthetics, here's something you can actually see." But, the less people who need to resort to that, the better.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#176

Post by chefandy »

gnramires wrote: post #172
chefandy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designer rant. I've been a computer user for 35 years, developer for 25 years (10 full-time professionally), *nix user for 20 years, and am currently in a degree program as a designer, and I've got to say that I disagree entirely. I think you're conflating your personal taste with functional design, and then again conflating functional design with styling and decoration. Interface design principles— as a subset of in…

It wouldn't surprise me if the periodic stylistic changes are analogous to fashion industry periodic makeovers, apparently a tool to keep users engaged and purchasing gadgets (plus a lot of sociological reasons) -- not necessarily for superiority to what came before in any absolute sense.

Absolutely. As is the case with architectural styles, features and forms in footwear, clothing materials, popular branding color pallets and all sorts of other things like that, graphical interface norms certainly follow trends. Skeuomorphism, for example.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#177

Post by on_and_off »

fladd wrote: post #163
on_and_off wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not hovering everything for five minutes until I can figure out what I can click I really like the way material addresses this : any clickable element should use the primary color of your app. This way, no guesswork. Button, switches, icons, links, they all use the same action color so if something uses it, you know it has to be clickable.

Except that every app can have its own "primary" colour, so you have to learn as many rules as you have apps, instead of one if a button would just look like a button.

it is not exactly hard to spot what the primary color of an app is...

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#178

Post by jiofih »

neididipp wrote: post #89
Pxtl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I was actually excited by flat design when I first saw it, but that was on Windows Phone 7. And WP7 had an exceptionally rigid and consistent approach to flat design. If something was colored, it was a button. If you wanted to color something that wasn't a button? Too bad for you. Basically, on WP7 you didn't get to "design" at all - the UI framework basically said "this is what your widgets look like, if y…

Can’t wait for the flat design trend to return in 4-5 years after this light nudge towards flat + a little depth, leads us right back to yellow legal pads with faux leather binding, but all the elements look flatter. There’s precious little “new frontier” to chase for 2D screens design. Small touches like expanded drag, swipe, etc would be nice. Designing towards doing not fostering emotional attachment to design. Th…

If you look deeper it’s the exact opposite. “Non-flat” design is utilitarian. Win2k, NextStep, Amiga, OS9, all used skeuomorphism and visual affordable in a very straight-forward fashion.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#179

Post by lioeters »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #132
dmitriid wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all your points. However, Big Sur is going to be very, very, very bad accessibility-wise. The entire interface is washed out. There's little to no distinction between selected items. Translucency breaks readability of text. And so on and so forth. Some examples: - https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1275469783488696323 - https://twitter.com/lunasorcery/status/1275237073625198592 - https://twitter.co…

One would think hundreds of thousands of dollars per year would buy people with a few critical thinking skills. The second example is unforgivable.

Oof, that was painful. Not only is the low contrast bad for accessibility, the unbalanced X paddings are just wrong.. Something must be amiss in their QA if this was allowed to reach public release.

Re: The Comeback of Fun in Visual Design

#180

Post by untoreh »

karaterobot wrote: post #26

People sometimes forget that the move to flat design was not entirely arbitrary and driven by fashion, it was driven by shifting technology and usage. Sure, fashion played a role, but in this case the main driver was the need to support devices of different resolutions. Scalability implies vectors, which implies shapes, fills, and strokes rather than bitmap assets. As a designer who made "skeuomorphic" interfaces bef…

From a CSS perspective, shadows, opacity, round borders, and other transformations are very expensive, so flat design is also a matter of resources constraint, they might look fluid, because with time the rendering backend got GPU speed ups, but they would still consume more power/ run a device hotter; this is probably less relevant on native guis..
Post reply on HN