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LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

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Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#91

Post by gyomu »

pjmlp wrote: post #89
chrismorgan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, explanations that are treated as justifications without actually justifying anything. “Vertical rhythm” in website layout. Utter nonsense. Valuable in print layout (for adjacent columns or double-sided paper), completely useless in digital (unless you have side-by-side columns with headings or pictures mixed in, but this is seldom seen outside print, partly because the web doesn’t support it well). “Modular scale…

You only have to watch the WWDC videos from the designers regarding Liquid Glass, and appreciate how much "improved" the macOS with Tahoe experience feels like in practice. Same applies to sessions on Fluent or Material designs, and how they end up on the respective OSes.

The whole design rhetoric of the recent years is just so bad. It's all vague feel-words that are straight out of a marketing playbook and don't communicate anything concrete.

The Liquid Glass guidance is so emblematic of this. What in the slop is "providing a more dynamic and expressive user experience that elevates the content" even supposed to mean when we're talking about an app that shows a scrollview with a tab bar and a few buttons?

Reading the early 2010s HIGs is such a breath of fresh air in comparison, where it's just a succession of clear statements like "Controls should look tappable. iOS controls, such as buttons, pickers, and sliders, have contours and gradients that invite touches".

Just two entirely different schools of thought. One based on research, evidence, clear actionable items; the other is just pure vibes. Something of value's been truly lost along the way.

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#93

Post by gmurphy »

chrismorgan wrote: post #76
gmurphy wrote: post #70

When we designed Chrome, since minimalism was our thing and screens used to be small, A LOT of time was spent on the total vertical space - thin titlebar, slightly bigger tabstrip, and a large toolbar. Lots of discussion, lots of questions Telling people the height ratios between them followed the golden ratio was a very convenient way to shortcut the bikeshedding and get to "aha, very nice" The trick was it didn't f…

Ah, explanations that are treated as justifications without actually justifying anything. “Vertical rhythm” in website layout. Utter nonsense. Valuable in print layout (for adjacent columns or double-sided paper), completely useless in digital (unless you have side-by-side columns with headings or pictures mixed in, but this is seldom seen outside print, partly because the web doesn’t support it well). “Modular scale…

I agree with your criticism of design dogma - it drives me nuts too - people saying something bad is good because it follows the rules. But since I'm also responsible for the Android icon shape-change you talked about, let me waffle for a bit in case it helps provide a perspective on the other side of that decision:

I agree with that the non-uniform icons are easier to find, and that uniform shapes make it harder (I also agree that uniform colors are awful, but that was after my time so I have no stake in that).

However, usability is not about pure efficiency - a huge amount of it is approachability - people have to _want_ to use the UI. If they don't want to use it, no amount of pure-usability work will mean anything - it will just be "shitty computers" in their heads. In Android's case, the developer-provided weirdly shaped icons were a major sticking point - people would take one look at an Android homescreen with all kinds of mismatched splatters of icons, mentally lump it with Windows and Linux in the must-be-for-geeks bucket, and walk off to the Apple store.

It drove us nuts - in actual tests, people would often find Android easier and more efficient to use, but would still pick iPhone as the "easier" product, because that's the one that was inviting, that fit their style, that looked easy to use.

So we did a lot of work nudging Android to a place where real people would find it desirable, easy, and powerful - making really difficult tradeoffs - sometimes breaking expectations, sometimes sacrificing a little bit here and there to gain a lot somewhere else, sometimes just taking a chance.

It took a lot of effort from a lot of wonderful people, and it involved a stupidly large amount of arguing against "just copy iPhone" laziness and pressure (a major reason I left), but I am still deeply proud of what the team was able to do. We couldn't please everyone, but I think more people were pleased afterwards than before.

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#94

Post by stevage »

Garrett_Mack wrote: post #66
stevage wrote: post #53

>In LiftKit, everything derives from the golden ratio, I don't think the authors realise the extent to which their product, which looks well made and useful, is being completely undermined with this nonsensical pseudoscience.

Hi, I'm the author, it me. You're right, I need to be clearer that golden ratio doesn't automatically equal beautiful. It's not sacred geometry. It's just pretty. I like it. And studies show people at large tend to find the proportions pleasing. It's just a rule of thumb, that's all. I just went crazy on the copywriting because I thought I'd need to in order to get the kit to stand out. I have now been extremely info…

> And studies show people at large tend to find the proportions pleasing.

I don't think that's the case - or at least, not well-designed studies. There's nothing to suggest that people prefer 1.618 more than 1.61 or even 1.6, and probably not 1.5. It's like if we found people like the colour blue and then claimed that people like the shade of Mary's veil or something.

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#95

Post by re-thc »

Garrett_Mack wrote: post #88
re-thc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rebuilding with radix primitives Check out Base UI (or React Aria) instead.

Unfortunately I've already ported in all the radix primitives. I actually found out about Base literally the exact day I finished it. Then I saw shadcn just upgraded to Base. So it looks like shad once again proves the gary oak in the completely one-sided rivalry that lives entirely in my own head. except instead of Ash I'm like youngster joey with a copilot subscription

> So it looks like shad once again proves the gary oak

Shad did this way late AFTER everyone said Radix was unmaintained though.

Quite a few of the original Radix devs moved to work on Base.

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#96

Post by voidUpdate »

With the optical correction none/top thing, is that manually measuring the height of capital letters to correctly space everything, or just relying on the height of the font to be correct and respected in the glyphs? Because having worked with the internals of fonts, a lot of them just make up numbers for stuff and then don't actually respect them. You can see how the glyphs don't have to actually abide by any of the numbers from the h in "Checklist", which extends above the capital letters. It makes the font look better, but it makes them a nightmare to work with

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#97

Post by 75w »

Garrett_Mack wrote: post #31

Hi everyone, I'm the creator of LiftKit. This project is EXTREMELY early and, as everyone has pointed out, not ready for production use. It's a solo project I work on in my free time. I'm a self-taught, so a lot of the weird choices you're seeing can be attributed to the decisions of someone who had never built something like this before. LIFTKIT IS FREE AND OPEN SOURCE. The website's just out of date. https://github…

This is a great idea and satisfying is the correct word to describe the homepage. Have you written about your process at all? I’ve been trying to use the golden ratio in iOS apps for a while and any insight might help

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#98

Post by pjmlp »

gyomu wrote: post #91
pjmlp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have to watch the WWDC videos from the designers regarding Liquid Glass, and appreciate how much "improved" the macOS with Tahoe experience feels like in practice. Same applies to sessions on Fluent or Material designs, and how they end up on the respective OSes.

The whole design rhetoric of the recent years is just so bad. It's all vague feel-words that are straight out of a marketing playbook and don't communicate anything concrete. The Liquid Glass guidance is so emblematic of this. What in the slop is "providing a more dynamic and expressive user experience that elevates the content" even supposed to mean when we're talking about an app that shows a scrollview with a tab…

Fully agree, feels like listening to some modernism artists in some avant guard gallery exposition, on the symbolism of an empty room with a single shoe inside.

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#99

Post by dbdoskey »

gmurphy wrote: post #93
chrismorgan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, explanations that are treated as justifications without actually justifying anything. “Vertical rhythm” in website layout. Utter nonsense. Valuable in print layout (for adjacent columns or double-sided paper), completely useless in digital (unless you have side-by-side columns with headings or pictures mixed in, but this is seldom seen outside print, partly because the web doesn’t support it well). “Modular scale…

I agree with your criticism of design dogma - it drives me nuts too - people saying something bad is good because it follows the rules . But since I'm also responsible for the Android icon shape-change you talked about, let me waffle for a bit in case it helps provide a perspective on the other side of that decision: I agree with that the non-uniform icons are easier to find, and that uniform shapes make it harder (I…

Thank you for sharing, this was very insightful.

Do you have another example of something like this that your team had to deal with that was not as easy, but "looked easier" for the users?

Re: LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio"

#100

Post by esperent »

Garrett_Mack wrote: post #90
esperent wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the ui comparisons, making the shadcn/materialui elements darker/low contrast is highly dishonest. Compare like with like, not a badly colored and low contrast version of the competition against yours.

But my versions are the lower contrast ones. edit: wait are you on light mode or dark mode? I work in light mode where mine are lower contrast but i swapped to dark and now it's reversed.

I'm on dark mode. Maybe this is my error. But still, just compare them side by side with the exact same colors for a fair comparison.
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