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Material UI

material-ui.com

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Re: Material UI

#151
post #72
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'd love to hear specifics about where you think these designs fail? I actually like the 'flat' look, but one thing I hate is the drop-down menu in Chrome for Android. Here's what I'm talking about: http://goo.gl/41iRZk When the menu is displayed it takes about half a second to display. Every menu item is...slowly...faded...in...one...after..the...other. Give me Windows 3.1 where you click and the menu displays ins…

I know it is very difficult for professional users to understand this, but from a design perspective this is actually very well done. These animations are really helpful for people who aren't spending their whole day in front of a computer and rely on cues to help their orientation.

I've done usability tests where these "issues" came up, whenever a dropdown or any other form of interaction suddenly popped up and the user had to spend valuable time to re-focus to find out what exactly happened and if this was indeed the right control. Additionally animations are also very useful for transition purposes. Guiding the user from one screen to another can be quite stressful when it's done in an instant and the user has to understand what's happened. This is why Apple's guidelines to transition the screens in a horizontal motion were so damn good, because they allowed users to spatially recognize their "position" in the UI. And I'm glad that the MD guidelines now also state that transitions have to be spatially correct and a screen transition isn't just a window jumping out from the center of the screen. [0]

Of course these animations are only temporary and can only help you so much, but they're very good for consumers when they are noticed. And that's all they really are: helpers, not the sole messenger of the meaning of the UI.

But of course I understand the plight of delayed interactions. UI lag that is caused by hardware aside, they're really annoying. But I see that more of a problem of customization. The OS should allow to switch off any animation.

[0] http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/meaningful-trans...

"Best practices - Support spatial relationships through consistent motions for incoming and outgoing elements."

Re: Material UI

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the down votes?

Your comment had zero content and no value for anyone other than you. I'm happy you're excited about your launch, but, unless you're linking a technical, or at least informative, blog post or similar that describes ways you're solving the problem the person you replied talked about, Hacker News isn't the right place to brag.

Fair enough. The user mentioned that no one seems to be rethinking the file system so I just wanted to say that we were, but obviously we don't have the materials ready to link to pre-launch.

Re: Material UI

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We launch next month. Just wait :)

Why the down votes?

> Why the downvotes?

Who are 'we'? What do you do? Why should I care?

Your post contains no useful information, and thus contributes nothing to the discussion. Ergo, downvotes. The only way to work out what you're talking about is to go through your comments (which I did) and synthesise based on founder bios and a job posting. Even then there is little to no concrete information about empiric.al that I could find in the few minutes I spared for this.

Here's a post that might have worked better, and maybe even could have got you some marketing/interest. I didn't downvote you the first time, but I would be far less likely to downvote this:

--- I agree completely. File management is still an unsolved problem and existing solutions are not optimal by any stretch of the imagination. It's really only getting worse as more and more user data moves to various independent and unconnected online services. Even if you manage your local files in a satisfactory manner you can't use the same system everywhere.

I'm actually actually working on a product that should help alleviate that problem. It does $ACTUAL_DETAILS and works by $IMPLEMENTATION. Our site is barebones for now (empiric.al if you want to read more about founders or sign up for information), but we're really excited about what we've built so far and aim to launch next month. Hit me up on $EMAIL if you'd like to discuss it!

Re: Material UI

#154
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike print, computer user interfaces are interactive. When you adopt a print-like design language you remove cues that indicate how to interact with the interface. For examples of how Apple's new UI is less usable than their old UI see: http://uxcritique.tumblr.com

I have to echo this sentiment. Comparisons to print design do not hold up to event he most casual scrutiny.

Simplifying the design ethos of Material down to 'print design' without understanding how it works is unhelpful, IMHO.

Re: Material UI

#155
post #47

Bug report: If I follow the "Demo" link from the homepage, the first demo ("Buttons") works but clicking on any of the others (via the left hand menu) e.g. "Dialog" doesn't do anything. No obvious errors in the console. I'm using FF 33.0.3 on Win7. Edit: looks promising though - just get them bugs ironed out! :)

Don't know if the author pushed out a fix or the problem was with Firefox but the navigation links on the left now work after FF auto-updated to v33.1

Re: Material UI

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet-another-software-as-a-service-dont-own-your-own-data-startup. Great.

Not sure where you got that assumption from. We don't own your data anymore than Dropbox does.

So what you're saying is, you own it entirely.

Dropbox has:

- Access to everyone's data.

- Control over everyone's data.

- Control over the clients used to access that data.

What is actually private? Nothing.

What do users "own"? None of their tools.

SaaS makes the world a worse place, one rent-seeking product at a time.

Re: Material UI

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

The "Folder" metaphor is something I've been considering a lot lately. It seems so ingrained in modern computing. Apple has started to move away from it tags and "All my Files." I struggle to think of a better way to solve organizing and collecting items than into nested groups.

Well the fundamental flaw is that the view presented to the user is rooted in the representation the filesystem implementor chose, the user should effortlessly be able to switch between different views and add additional ones, Apples' "All My Files" together with the ability to filter and save those filters is brilliant and very much in the right direction, although it should support some form of join operation.

One idea would be, that in addition it should be possible to execute computations on the current view of the filesystem and the possible computational primitives are selected by the "type" of the files (essentially find a way to lift a typed version of the unix shell with pipes to the GUI level).

Another idea would be to emphasise versioning and time based information more. For example with the current storage capability it makes little sense for the default save operation when working on a document to be "destructively replace the old one". Obviously as a programming one is aware of that and uses version control systems, but so far I had multiple occasions when working on a collaborative project not involving code, where the versioning was done by appending suffixes to folder names.

Re: Material UI

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With flat design, sometimes it's really hard to know what you are suppose to click on. I enjoy its simplicity, but it does have some usability problems that come with it. I think we went way overboard with it and the pendulum swung to far to the side of flat design. Hopefully we start moving away from super trendy flat design, much like we moved away from those crazy web 2.0 design styles.

flat design is trending because we have so many "designers" who can't design.

What do you think separates a "designer" from a designer?

Re: Material UI

#159

Nicely done. Material design looks great on Android. I'm not sure if I'm sold on material design for desktop use. I started building a material design look and feel for a new web app we're building and besides the fact that it lacked all the subtle animations no one really was digging the vibrant colors, flat buttons, and drop shadows. We ditched it for a more conservative theme and so far we've had no complaints. An…

Inbox user chiming in: I actually like the desktop interface, and it's nice to not have to change mental context when using Inbox on mobile vs the desktop (probably the best, if more subtle, benefit to the Material overhaul of Google's services). My biggest gripe is the more restrictive keyboard shortcuts compared to Gmail, which basically necessitates using a mouse for some operations. But I imagine that will be rem…

I tried Inbox in Chrome on OS X Yosemite on rMBP 13'' last year's model and it stutters and freezes when scrolling, and takes a minute to load all dependencies. I tried in Safari too, but it does not work with Safari yet, and in Chrome it's a disaster.

Re: Material UI

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to echo this sentiment. Comparisons to print design do not hold up to event he most casual scrutiny.

Simplifying the design ethos of Material down to 'print design' without understanding how it works is unhelpful, IMHO.

I think we were talking about the print paradigm in general. I agree that it would be a false dichotomy where material is concerned.
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