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Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

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Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#291

Post by alpaca128 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #204
munificent wrote: post #182

> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the page. > "How old are you?" I asked. > "Twenty-five." > "Of course you are." You will never, ever, ever do good design while holding your audience in contempt. They are fully and completely entitled to their aesthetic preferences and those preferences have abs…

As much as I would like to agree in principle, I am slowly starting to see author's POV. Modern web is a clusterfuck and modern UI, to me, is not even meeting the needs of the current generation ( what with the A/B testing and dark pattern galore ). It is prettier, but that is only thing it has going for it.

Whenever I need to help someone on their phone/PC or answer a question it's a UI problem in 80% of cases. On phones button icons are an inconsistent mess with no visible way to find out what they mean. The menu bar on Android is at the top, the hardest to reach place on the whole display. Fast list scrolling and other details on phones/tablets are ignoring left-handed people. Phones have 6 inch screens but maximum font sizes are still too small for some users.

Interacting with Android's notification list while it's being updated is simply impossible if an app shows and hides progress updates multiple times per second when fetching new content, making the whole list jump up and down.

All those problems affect not just one generation and were solved at least a decade ago. And it feels like all I can do is press a few buttons for them or say "turn it off and on again", and yell at clouds inbetween.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#292

Post by munificent »

awb wrote: post #257
munificent wrote: post #182

> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the page. > "How old are you?" I asked. > "Twenty-five." > "Of course you are." You will never, ever, ever do good design while holding your audience in contempt. They are fully and completely entitled to their aesthetic preferences and those preferences have abs…

I’d argue you should always design for yourself and build products you want. When your needs aren’t in alignment with your user’s needs then you’re the wrong person for the job anyway. User feedback is important for getting additional insights, but the implementation of the feedback should always feel correct to you too.

Designing for yourself is definitely the easiest way to have good affinity for your users. But it also limits the set of products you can create.

People that aren't software developers and designers deserve to have good software designed for them too.

All you really need is genuine compassion for others to do good design for them.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#293

Post by jjoonathan »

munificent wrote: post #182

> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the page. > "How old are you?" I asked. > "Twenty-five." > "Of course you are." You will never, ever, ever do good design while holding your audience in contempt. They are fully and completely entitled to their aesthetic preferences and those preferences have abs…

This person wrote an entire blogpost on how to understand and compassionately design for Gen-Z aesthetics and your response is to slam them for... not understanding and compassionately designing for Gen-Z aesthetics?

Come on.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#295

Post by gotaquestion »

Finnucane wrote: post #240
gotaquestion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bauhaus and Midcentury Modern have incredible staying power. There hasn't been this kind of movement yet in web design. I think it is because we still don't know how we use it yet.

We got Modernism because Beaux Arts and Art Deco were too much fun, and then the Germans were like, Nein! No more fun! Only grids!

Haha! But which would you rather clean: a living room done in Beaux Arts style, or one done in modernist style? Assuming you cannot afford a housekeeping staff, that is. :)

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#296

Post by rexpop »

Counterpoint: The Babysitters Club [0]

> Apps like Seamless and Yelp listen in on our adult lives, then speak to us like children

> In the face of the overwhelming question — “What’s it for?” — a strain of avant-garde art responds by playing up its inutility, she argues. It magnifies its impotence until “it begins to look silly.”

> We cannot find food on our own, or choose a restaurant, or settle a tiny debt. Where that dependency feels unseemly in the context of independent adult life, it feels appropriate if the user’s position remains childlike, and the childlikeness makes sense when you consider that Yelp depends on us to write reviews, and therefore must, like a fun mom, make chores feel fun too.

> There is no better example of cuteness applied in the service of power-concealment than Pokémon Go, which is a large data-collection and surveillance network devised by the former Google Earth engineers at Niantic and then candy-coated with Nintendo IP.

0. https://reallifemag.com/the-babysitters-club/

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#297

Post by asciimov »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #283
asciimov wrote: post #137

Millennial here, I welcome anything to break up the current design aesthetics. I never liked material design and designs from Apple and Google both look tired. I did dark modes before it was cool, but now that I'm getting older, I want some kind of grey mode. Something that doesn't feel like I'm looking down the barrel of a flashlight nor something that's gonna cause eyestrain. As for all the flashy doodads and movem…

Why does dark mode cause eye strain?

Your eyes dilate more to see dark mode than light mode. This causes a softer image requiring you to work harder to see it clearly.

Ideally you want there to be a balance between the brightness of the room and the brightness of the display.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#298

Post by LordDragonfang »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #283
asciimov wrote: post #137

Millennial here, I welcome anything to break up the current design aesthetics. I never liked material design and designs from Apple and Google both look tired. I did dark modes before it was cool, but now that I'm getting older, I want some kind of grey mode. Something that doesn't feel like I'm looking down the barrel of a flashlight nor something that's gonna cause eyestrain. As for all the flashy doodads and movem…

Why does dark mode cause eye strain?

I suspect GP may have astigmatism. A girlfriend of mine had it and constantly would complain about my devices being in dark mode whenever she had to use them. She eventually showed me an article on how it does actually make text harder to focus on for them.

https://medium.com/@h_locke/why-dark-mode-causes-more-access...

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#299

Post by vagabund »

jmmcd wrote: post #290
cptcobalt wrote: post #253

As a product manager, I read this and found a founder clinically dismissive of user perspectives and feedback that doesn't align with their own internal viewpoints. Confirmation bias to the n-th degree. His quote of her feedback ("It's so exciting. Every time I open it, it makes me happy. Sometimes they have doge pop up!") is almost certainly embellished and is a non-empathetic take on a genuine user perspective. The…

I thought the exact opposite. The narrator thinks the gen-z site is ugly, busy, whatever, and then realised that's what a segment of the market wants. You left out the "and then" part of the story.

To me, it's more like he begrudgingly admits that her views are probably representative of "Gen Z", and then makes a mock(ery) of what he thought he heard her say -- which ends up as a cheap caricature of her legitimate feedback. FWIW, I agree with her comments: it does feel sterile, in the sense that it looks like an app I'd schedule a doctor's appointment through, and it has a dorky, "safe" appearance, that evokes nothing of the spontaneity or playfulness that people associate with good dates. More broadly though, I think the author's kidding himself if he believes he can make a dating app that appeals to 75 year olds and 18 year olds alike, especially by prioritizing the design preferences of the former over the latter.

Re: Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?

#300

Post by marcosdumay »

awb wrote: post #257
munificent wrote: post #182

> I stare at the page for a second. My brain hurts. I hate it. It felt... distracting, maximal, cluttered, weirdly transparent. Little sparkles animate over the page. > "How old are you?" I asked. > "Twenty-five." > "Of course you are." You will never, ever, ever do good design while holding your audience in contempt. They are fully and completely entitled to their aesthetic preferences and those preferences have abs…

I’d argue you should always design for yourself and build products you want. When your needs aren’t in alignment with your user’s needs then you’re the wrong person for the job anyway. User feedback is important for getting additional insights, but the implementation of the feedback should always feel correct to you too.

I don't think professional designers have the option of only designing for themselves.

It's a bit like only programming for one's own problems. Sure, some people can do that, but most need to solve other people's problems to pay their bills.

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