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

Material UI

material-ui.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 166 posts

Re: Material UI

#81

Post by chongli »

tomelders wrote: post #44

I had a talk with myself at the weekend about making a concerted effort to cut out the snark when I comment on the web.... And I'm about to fall at the first hurdle. Being "on trend" isn't good UI design. But I can see how we got here. Through OS X and iOS, Apple's UI ethos became the gold standard in UI design. It was so well designed that it was easy to imitate and by simply adopting the core elements of Apples UI…

Apple's new UI language has a lot more to do with corporate politics (read: Scott Forstall) than any particular sound principle of design.

Re: Material UI

#82

Post by Mbvhfchffdsr »

xorcist wrote: post #45
colinramsay wrote: post #8

The comments thus far are disappointing. People go to the trouble of making a pithy comment on hackernews, but surely since many of us here are developers we understand the frustration of bad bug reports. Is it so hard to bottle up your negative comments and spend another two minutes doing something constructive - like heading over to github and adding an issue with your system specs?

It's not "negative comments" to point out to other people what works and what doesn't. Complain as much as you want about how I don't push fixes, but as long as I'm not paid those complaints are better kept to yourself. (I realize you are not one of the developers for this project. I only want to illustrate how negativity goes both ways. I'm a bit tired of "contribute or shut up". There's a big gray area inbetween.)

It's kind of strange how there's a whole generation of young developers who are supposedly «hurt» by perfectly valid criticism of objectively flawed or bad work.

This wasn't always the case. Before the whole «social justice» movement infected the software development industry and hobby, it was expected that bad work would get publicly criticized. This was a good thing, because it fostered improvement, and high quality work. But now that apparently all takes a back seat to making sure nobody has «hurt feelings».

Re: Material UI

#83

Post by calinet6 »

sucramb wrote: post #62
davedx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find this post snarky, but from a usability point of view I'd love to hear specifics about where you think these designs fail?

I feel like the same as OP. Change for the sake of change without any real benefits. But with plenty of draw-backs. For example the new Gmail App on Android now uses an almost unreadable font in the overview. It is "designy" but not good for usability - and I still have 100% eye sight. In general I feel like surrounded by the Microsoft paper clip. There is constantly something animating, popping up or popping with st…

I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but, your concrete flaws are that you believe it's just designed for the sake of change, it animates too much, and that a font is too small in one place?

For what it's worth, the underlying usability really is very well explained and pretty sound in the material (no pun intended) from Google on MD. Eg: http://www.google.com/design/ in the top 2 items.

Re: Material UI

#84

Post by currysausage »

robmccoll wrote: post #68
ThomPete wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary principle at least from the point of Apple is to turn the actual content into the UI by allowing for a different kind of visual depth. What you see right now is first steps towards a UI that will use animation to create a sense of depth and perspective rather than using static visual design to imitate the world around us. So think about Googles Material Design and Apples iOS design paradigm as a return to…

Relying on animation to provide depth and perspective may not be a great idea. Subtle static cues remain a constant reminder on the display even if you aren't focused entirely on the application. Animation is much more heavy handed and isn't always there. If the user misses the transition animation, how do they know how to interact with the resulting static page? Animation also has the potential to slow down users as…

> Animation also has the potential to slow down users as they become accustomed enough to the interface to know which elements they want to interact with before the animation completes.

Happens to me so often. When turning off all animations in Windows, the system feels so much more responsive and doesn't hold me back in well-trained workflows.

With Android 4, the default state is really bad. Fortunately, you can turn off most animations in the dev settings, but still, it feels like the OS wasn't optimized for low latency (especially when switching apps). I hope that Android 5 will still allow for animations to be turned off. I can't say that I'm very eager to try Android 5.

Worst thing is, even with the reasonably powerful Nexus 4 (and I hear the same is true even about the Nexus 9), under a little bit of load, animations tend to become even more sluggish; inaccurate animations let the user make mistakes. I have noticed that it is nearly impossible for me to quickly check something using the Nexus 4 while waiting at the lights, especially if it involves switching apps (go from navigation to messaging etc. and back), the phone just isn't responsive enough. This isn't entirely the fault of animations, but it's one more symptom of a lack of focus on low latency.

Re: Material UI

#85

Post by orbifold »

tomelders wrote: post #44

I had a talk with myself at the weekend about making a concerted effort to cut out the snark when I comment on the web.... And I'm about to fall at the first hurdle. Being "on trend" isn't good UI design. But I can see how we got here. Through OS X and iOS, Apple's UI ethos became the gold standard in UI design. It was so well designed that it was easy to imitate and by simply adopting the core elements of Apples UI…

The current trend is rooted in the fact that computer displays approach the visual fidelity of paper prints by now (> 300dpi). Consequently a more print like design language is adopted, which often features a small selection of colours and simple geometric shapes.

The large variety in print design demonstrates that this is not an unreasonable restriction. In my eyes the translucency of windows in Yosemite is a much nicer choice than "brushed aluminium" or "black with fake highlights", it does not pretend to be something it is not. Eventually I would prefer if the "Desktop" metaphor, including "Folders", was given up and replaced with something different. The faster the design language becomes more abstract to facilitate that change, the better. We are stuck with an overall UI design initially conceived in the 70s, alternative versions of personal computing like the Lisp Machine died unfortunately.

Re: Material UI

#86

Post by calinet6 »

paulojreis wrote: post #65
davedx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find this post snarky, but from a usability point of view I'd love to hear specifics about where you think these designs fail?

I don't know if he was talking about flatter designs, but (IMO) they might fail because the elements are less affordant. We know that affordances are important so, again IMO, the removal of graphical cues that afford action should be approached with care (and empirically validated).

That's one of the success marks of MD I think; it retracts a bit from total flatness and says, ok, even though this is on a screen and will appear flat, how can we give subtle cues that it's actually a thing (material) and you can do stuff with it?

And they decided to do it with shadow, animation, and contrast.

Maybe there are better ways as well, but the end goal is sound.

Re: Material UI

#87

Post by calinet6 »

clay_to_n wrote: post #46
colinramsay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the Google spec for this: http://www.google.co.uk/design/spec/components/menus.html#me... If you look at the menu with "All", "Family", "Friends", "Coworkers", initially it shows "All" and the arrow is immediately to the right of the text. I expect that if you select "Coworkers" then the arrow moves.

Yeah, I think standalone it should have the arrow right at the end. When the dropdown is used in a form, it should have an underline, like so from the Material spec: http://material-design.storage.googleapis.com/publish/v_1/qu...

Yeah, let's not consider every copycat that comes along a valid and complete implementation of good UI guidelines... This one surely is not.

Re: Material UI

#88

Post by calinet6 »

spain wrote: post #69

Doesn't seem to embody the principles of Material Design other than the flat design and use of colors. For example for the dialog[0] when you click it it just appears out of nowhere instead of sliding in or expanding out from the button. Material Design isn't only about everything being flat but there being good animations to make transitions clear. I wonder what Google's design team thinks of all these creations mas…

It highlights the fact that it actually takes a lot of work to do all of these details and get the UI right, and if you miss one or two, it really doesn't hold up. Something we should all take to heart. Not many design frameworks have such complete and irreducible properties. The Material design guidelines and (good) implementations so far are really very impressive.

Re: Material UI

#89

Post by jtollerene »

Thanks to everyone for checking out our little project. It is very much a work in progress. We released it because we are excited about it and knew that the open source community will only help to make it better. Let's make something awesome together!

Re: Material UI

#90

Post by ThomPete »

currysausage wrote: post #84
robmccoll wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on animation to provide depth and perspective may not be a great idea. Subtle static cues remain a constant reminder on the display even if you aren't focused entirely on the application. Animation is much more heavy handed and isn't always there. If the user misses the transition animation, how do they know how to interact with the resulting static page? Animation also has the potential to slow down users as…

> Animation also has the potential to slow down users as they become accustomed enough to the interface to know which elements they want to interact with before the animation completes. Happens to me so often. When turning off all animations in Windows, the system feels so much more responsive and doesn't hold me back in well-trained workflows. With Android 4, the default state is really bad. Fortunately, you can tur…

This is a well known design flaw in Windows. Apple on the other hand goes to great length to keep the illusion alive. They would rather de-priortize non-visual tasks if it means providing more power to finish ex. some animation.

Animation is a science in it's own and even small unobtrusive cues can mean a world of difference.

Post reply on HN