[HN Gopher] Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
___________________________________________________________________
Light mode, Dark mode, and Gen-Z mode?
Author : beweinreich
Score : 335 points
Date : 2022-03-15 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.getfilteroff.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.getfilteroff.com)
| [deleted]
| user_7832 wrote:
| I am a little surprised to see no one question the author's
| description or assumption of "Gen Z".
|
| As someone presumably from Gen Z, I find both interfaces either
| bad or terrible. The partiful design is outright tacky and looks
| terrible (nothing homogeneous, questionable design choices etc)
| but Filteroff has so much whitespace it feels like it was
| designed by soulless corps at Uber or Facebook who just studied
| from Pinterest.
|
| And as a GenZ who's immersed in tech (news), the fact that this
| is the first time I'm hearing of Gen Z design definitely raised
| my eyebrows.
| shreyamurthy wrote:
| sounds like u need to go to more parties friend
| mbesto wrote:
| > the fact that this is the first time I'm hearing of Gen Z
| design definitely raised my eyebrows.
|
| Isn't the author's description of GenZ essentially "Snap's UI"?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Eh. I agree with what you are saying, but also think the
| general trends they are pointing out do seem to sort of be
| preferred by Gen Z.. more "maximalist." Look at Depop, for
| example.
|
| --fellow gen Z-er
| josefx wrote:
| The samples on HN might be a bit skewed, its design is after
| all a bit on the boring side.
| oblio wrote:
| A bit boring? It's as dry as a bone :-))
| echelon wrote:
| > its design is after all a bit on the boring side.
|
| _Web 1.0 utilitarian design_
|
| You could even say it has fans.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can't speak to the Gen Z angle but...
|
| Design is somewhat of a fashion business and we've seen a
| period where simplicity and spareness has been the fashion.
| Apple's aesthetic by way of Jony Ive post-skeuomorphism is
| probably the most familiar example. But whether influenced by
| or part of the same fashion trend it's extremely widespread.
| It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find something of a
| backlash.
| dwmbt wrote:
| i agree with the rest of the comments in the thread. there
| are certainly generational stereotypes, i guess in the world
| of design ours are an overdose of gradients and rounded
| corners lol. personally, i'm a fan of a little bit of the
| maximalist vibe and some brutalist elements mixed in.
| everyone should try to cultivate their own "aura", that's why
| i make a shit ton of personal websites (at least one every
| year) and experiment with trends that i like.
|
| i'll go ahead and also point out where i see these trends are
| popping up all the time: web3 and crypto. notably, zora and
| the rainbow wallet do them well, i feel. i think you'll find
| that the design teams for these companies are pretty young. i
| even know of some high-schoolers that are part time employees
| for web3 companies (as designers).
|
| i guess it's a little tangential but it's something i rarely
| see talked about with web3 -> they will succeed not because
| of the legitimacy of the technology but largely because of
| their appeals to the young*. young people love anything with
| hints of counter-culture and feeling like we're a part of a
| revolution; it's a thing, i think. though, decentralized
| stuff isn't really all that punk anymore...
|
| --(another) fellow gen Z-er
|
| * s/o Kropotkin
| paulcole wrote:
| Reminds me of the Girls quote, "I think that I may be the voice
| of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation."
| andrewzah wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's just intentional flamebait to promote
| their product.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Welcome to what millennials have experienced for a couple
| decades: Older generations who think they know exactly what the
| younger generations want based on little more than a stereotype
| or maybe the feedback from one young person they spoke to once.
| jorvi wrote:
| But he didn't ask just one person, he checked with multiple.
| Obviously that is still too small a sample size, but who says
| he isn't on to something?
| api wrote:
| That's not new. Gen-Xers got the same thing. Boomers got the
| same thing. Lazy stereotyping wasn't invented yesterday.
|
| I don't think this blog post means to stereotype all of gen-Z
| though. I think they're just using it as a foil to talk about
| the counter-trend to early-21st-century minimalism. That was
| in turn a counter-trend to late-1990s / early-2000s
| eclecticism like old Geocities.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >Gen-Xers got the same thing
|
| GenX got ignored. The baton was passed from Boomers to
| Millennials. I guess we were all taking a bathroom break or
| something.
|
| GenX UI, at least on the Web, was TABLE layouts with spacer
| GIFs dictated to us by Boomers who wanted brochures. Our
| crowning design achievement still lives on in WiFi router
| Web management tools and phpBB.
|
| Yo, anybody going to the Phish concert? I need a ride.
| CPLX wrote:
| > GenX got ignored. The baton was passed from Boomers to
| Millennials. I guess we were all taking a bathroom break
| or something.
|
| There weren't enough of us. Also we were apathetic to
| everything. At least that's what I was told I wasn't
| really paying attention.
| mr_toad wrote:
| With no power comes no responsibility.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| In my opinion phpBB remains a more usable interface than
| many modern software applications, especially the web.
| Dense with information, tools that empower the user to
| sort, search, and filter. Ability to express yourself via
| avatars and signatures, multiple color schemes and
| interface options.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| You're wrong because Twapper has a market cap of 65
| billion dollars. People love reading things by scrolling
| down, and then up. And then scrolling down again, pawing
| at their pocket-sized supercomputers like monkeys before
| the Monolith.
| beders wrote:
| Tears for Fears is touring again and I'm planning to
| catch Steve Hackett as well.
|
| Still being talked into seeing a-ha and Duran Duran. Go
| Gen-X!
| jmkr wrote:
| Yes, the rescheduled MSG New Years Phish run, then summer
| tour.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| > late-1990s / early-2000s eclecticism like old Geocities.
|
| My first thought seeing the Gen-Z version was "why don't
| they show a flashing marquee banner, an email with flapping
| wings, and play some MIDI music while they're at it?"
| _jal wrote:
| Millennials are spoiled by the attention. The Committee for
| Generational Distinctions is still trying to erase the
| existence of GenXers.
|
| But it all gets better in your 40s. That's when you and your
| peers start to have enough power and money to be catered to.
| And when the 20-somethings start bitching about you.
|
| > Older generations who think they know exactly what the
| younger generations
|
| This is frequently called 'society'. Keep breathing long
| enough, you'll find yourself on the other side of that
| behavior.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| No way, man. We're gonna keep rocking forever!
| tehbeard wrote:
| > But it all gets better in your 40s. That's when you and
| your peers start to have enough power and money to be
| catered to.
|
| _laughs, then starts weeping in perpetual renter_
|
| Honestly, I've seen more camaraderie between millennial &
| genZ than adversity. Both of us got the luck to be born to
| "interesting times".
| CPLX wrote:
| > The Committee for Generational Distinctions is still
| trying to erase the existence of GenXers.
|
| As a member of the Gen X community I am completely fine
| with this. Oh well, whatever, never mind us.
| dleslie wrote:
| We millennials are turning forty, for the first time, this
| year!
|
| I'm waiting with eager anticipation to hear what wrongs our
| whole generation is uniquely responsible for.
| mbg721 wrote:
| We're responsible for all the ills caused by things the
| Gen-Xers were apathetic about.
| jspash wrote:
| We Gen-Xers we're apathetic due to witnessing the blatant
| greed of the Yuppies and we wanted none of that kind of
| thing.
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| mellosouls wrote:
| There seem to be quite a few negative comments assuming
| contempt/stereotyping/whatever in what seems to me a tongue in
| cheek and equally self(cohort) mocking article. It seems fair
| enough to hypothesise generational taste differences, there's
| hardly anything new about that.
|
| I like Filter Off, it's a breath of fresh air in the dating app
| space though the last time I looked at it it was mobile only
| which kind of dissuades those of us on the cheap end of the
| camera spectrum...
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Millennial here. I like whichever one loads the fastest.
|
| Disclaimer: According to my wife I am not to be trusted with
| decor choices.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I wish there was a platform where I could express the UI purely
| in terms of content, structure, and behavior, and let the design
| be supplied by the platform, with the ability for the user to
| override it. Then someone else could deal with fickle fashions
| while we application developers focus on what matters. I don't
| even want to have to provide a default design, e.g. a Bootstrap
| stylesheet. But of course, if I use pure browser defaults, it
| looks like something from the early 90s. Maybe the HTML5 doctype
| should have told the browsers to go with fashionable defaults in
| addition to turning off quirks mode.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I've never seen partiful.com before. I love it! This design is
| fun and custom. It's perfect for a party planner app.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I don't think it's a generation thing. Culture maybe, but not
| generation.
|
| Also, it's possible to have a colorful and energetic design while
| still being usable and intuitive. An app doesn't have to be
| minimalist to be functional.
| [deleted]
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| If we have to call it "Gen-Z" mode to get back some personality
| in software and interface design I'm all for it. I grew up with
| theme options on websites and software and desperately want it
| back. Windows Classic, Winamp, message boards with multiple theme
| options.
|
| I'm so tired of every interface being just floating text on a
| white background with excessive whitespace. A border
| differentiating parts of an interface seems to terrify modern
| designers.
| floren wrote:
| Whoa buddy, hang on, sometimes there's a little toggle that
| changes it to floating text on a _black_ background. Only power
| users allowed, of course.
| spanktheuser wrote:
| The mistake the author makes is to define the visual design
| around a generation. Which is like defining an visual design
| around gender. Both can be salient but it's rare for either to be
| the dominant characteristic that centers a design.
|
| Task is generally the correct choice. Consider two apps: One is
| playful, coy, energetic, private and safe. The other is
| efficient, prudent, clear and secure.
|
| It's likely you can confidently determine which is a dating app
| and which a banking app. If I told you one is a dating app for
| boomers and the other a dating app for millennials you'll have a
| much harder time.
| topaz0 wrote:
| I know the article doesn't really talk much about dark mode in
| the end, but the title in context does sort of imply that Dark
| mode is Millennial mode. I whole-heartedly agree. I never got the
| hype.
| wwilim wrote:
| Somewhere along the line we forgot there was end user interface
| customization other than light and dark mode. It was called
| themes.
| Arrivest wrote:
| I remember reading an article comparing Google maps with Waze and
| it criticized the UI of Google maps to be "traditional" and
| considered the Waze UI to be superior. I guess it was written by
| gen-z.
|
| At the time I was shocked - since when did the google UI become
| the traditional? They really had no clue how long it took us to
| get things look right.
| user-the-name wrote:
| bilekas wrote:
| This hits the nail on the head and I never even realized it. I am
| a religious minimalist when it comes to design, I have no idea
| why but progress from the 90's sites just seemed to keep removing
| things so it felt like a natural progression.
|
| I can see why the change from minimal to 'busy' would be the
| inverse when starting from a minimalist POV like the younger
| generations. Great article.
| mamoriamohit wrote:
| I remember the time when I first used <marquee> and I jumped like
| a little kid. Fast forward a few years when I started designing
| for web as a career, and I was sad to see that nobody used
| <marquee> in production. It turned out to be a toy.
|
| Heart broken.
|
| But I grew to love the minimalism design.
|
| Recently I started Youtubing and make designing thumbnails,
| minimal doesn't work. The demography 18 to 35 year old prefer
| something that quickly grabs their attention.
|
| Amused to see the trend seeping into UI/UX as well.
| st3ve445678 wrote:
| Type <marqee> in google to see an easter egg.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > _[..] <marquee> in production. It turned out to be a toy._
|
| Screens were tiny low res, mice had no wheels and people where
| not used to scrolling. I don't think <marquee> was originally
| intended as a toy, even though it was mostly used like one.
| usui wrote:
| Gen-Z mode would get me more excited, interested to use the app
| for its intended purpose. Shouldn't all apps aspire the same?
| Milner08 wrote:
| I agree, I am not much younger than OP, but I think the GenZ
| version he posted is much more engaging. His default one is
| definitely lacking soul. But I dont think you have to give up
| Minimalism to gain that soul.
| geraldyo wrote:
| The point is that you get more excited by that, but I
| personally would never use that app lol
| hammock wrote:
| You must hate Hacker News then.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Hackernews is (fairly) well designed for it's purpose, so I
| don't understand this comment. The example in the article is
| a party app.
| diegoperini wrote:
| I'd really like the author to ask the same question to their
| friend again in 8 years. That'd be a nice experiment.
| beweinreich wrote:
| Haha, touche. I will set a reminder to do that.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I am definitely not Gen-Z but neither look especially exciting to
| me. Both are sorta boring in their own way. Nothing like the
| insane stuff we used to see on Geocities!
| 1shooner wrote:
| The example of 'Gen-Z mode' is a product that acts as a party
| invitation. Wouldn't it be more fair to compare it to something
| like evite.com, which has similar attention-grabbing animations,
| but probably cater to previous generations?
| dugmartin wrote:
| At age 50 now, I'd prefer a Gen X mode where the font size is
| 125% and the text is high contrast.
| jamil7 wrote:
| Boomer mode is when there's 13 advertising popups all over your
| screen and autoplaying videos on full volume.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Someone of age 50 in 2022 is part of Gen X not Boomer gen.
| jamil7 wrote:
| I'm aware of that.
| fmajid wrote:
| I think jamil was implying Boomers are too stupid to know
| how to install an ad-blocker. As a Gen-X, I'm inclined to
| agree.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Wow you're old as fuck and calling the slightly older
| group stupid.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I don't think they're stupid but somehow my dad, who
| could always program my grandpa's VCR and put together
| high end AV setups in his youth can't set up his own
| entertainment center equipment anymore.
|
| I struggle with phone UIs but that feels like mostly
| because I can't be bothered to guess at the "intuitive"
| ways I can touch a screen that do different things across
| apps. For instance, some of my video apps are double tap
| to fill screen, others are outward pinch (is there a word
| for that?), or a press of certain buttons, or they just
| don't do it.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Hear that honey? Free cruise! God I hate my wife.
|
| That Joe Brandon has bio labs in the Ukraine too! Election
| stealing sonuva...
| IncRnd wrote:
| That has nothing to do with this webpage's article.
|
| Though, if you must know: The US has clearly said there are
| bio labs in Ukraine, and that they've built some and funded
| others. The United States, through BTRP,
| has invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine
| since 2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories,
| health facilities, and diagnostic sites. [1]
|
| And from the US Embassy in Ukraine: BTRP
| has upgraded many laboratories for the Ministry of
| Health and the State Food Safety and Consumer
| Protection Service of Ukraine, reaching Biosafety
| Level 2. In 2019, BTRP constructed two laboratories
| for the latter, one in Kyiv and one in Odesa. [2]
|
| The 2005 agreement between the US DOD and Ministry of
| Health of Ukraine, signed in Kiev, is here. [3]
|
| [1] https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/11/2002954612/-1/-1/
| 0/FAC...
|
| [2] https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-
| offices/defen...
|
| [3] https://www.state.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/05-829-Ukra...
| bckr wrote:
| Eh, as a Zillenial, I like it when my eyes don't hurt so I'd
| probably use that mode too
| dvtrn wrote:
| I thought it was "Zennial", but then again for the longest
| time I also thought the "millennials" were "Gen-Y" and that
| Billy Joel actually started the fire, so wtf do I even know
| anymore about what generations are called
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Just to add to the confusion there's also "Xennial" which
| is pronounced exactly the same way but refers to people ~15
| years older.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Just in general its nice to have an interface that highlights
| the right features and makes it clear what is a button, what is
| text and the sort of interactions I will have before I click on
| it. All the research on UIs done in the 70s and 80s seems to
| have been abandoned in the pursuit of a new look that is less
| easy to understand.
|
| The amount of time wasted in Windows constantly changing the
| interface skin (especially the new taskbar that has lost a lot
| functionality in Windows 11) instead of fixing core issues in
| the OS or expanding elsewhere is a concerning cost of human
| time. I suspect many people buy "pretty" rather than functional
| but its kind of annoying the amount as an industry we waste on
| trends that achieve nothing other than a make over.
| daveslash wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder if these trends the author is picking up on
| (i.e. _" Millennial Boring on Purpose"_ and _" Millennial
| Minimalism"_ vs the Gen-Z _" Excitement"_ and sparkles) is more
| of an _actual age_ thing vs. a _generational thing_?
|
| I'm still in my 30s, and I prefer the Millennial Minimalism
| now, but I didn't always. And I find myself bumping up the font
| size to 125% once in a while - and I expect to be doing it more
| and more as the years progress.
| omgmajk wrote:
| Same, and I agree fully. I saw the websites that came out
| when flash/shockwave was new and they were DECKED OUT and
| that sh*t went sour way too fast. I went from crazy designs
| to "millennial minimalist" as soon as I turned 30+.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Yea, from what I remember of the leading edge Gen Y/ trailing
| Gen X culture in early 00s it was similarly fucken crazy and
| eclectic.
|
| Cat photos with cut out style animation playing guitars. The
| whole electroclash thing. Just watch the music video for The
| Knife's heartbeats.
|
| I associate the sterile corpo chic with 2015 onwards because
| in my young adult days (2011-2014) we were wearing Aztec
| print stuff, ripped 501 jeans and iridescent shell jackets
| with fresh prince colour vomit snap backs, bright plastic
| sunglasses and abusing psychedelic amphetamines like it was
| 1988
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. Part of the same simple/spare design fashion is small
| grey fonts.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| With product design becoming more data-driven, feedback-loop A/B
| testing etc, won't the natural evolution of the field be toward
| UI/UX that's tailored to each user client-side given their known
| profile of design and interaction preferences, learned by AI?
|
| In other words, in the long run will this even be a problem
| anymore?
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Can we also have a "Gen-X" mode, when I can use dark theme for UI
| and light theme for content?
|
| This boggles my mind that I can't have it in any OS or browser.
| The fact that I want muted-looking UX doesn't mean that I want
| the same for content. I can't read white-on-black text for longer
| than a minute.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Honestly I am fifty years old and the "Gen Z" theme is much more
| appealing. The light one at the top of this post is _incredibly_
| boring and grey. Grey background, grey buttons, greyed-out
| photographs. The right screenshot is slightly better with the
| touch of blue but it 's not very saturated. Little thumbnails. A
| tiny but of color from the image next to "Ready for date night?"
| but not much.
|
| Hire an artist, get some kind of fun mascot drawn, make some font
| choices that aren't the same ten fonts that ship with iOS, get
| them to do some comps of really out-there ideas to make it a
| _fun_ place to come look for someone to date. Right now it 's
| just the Grey Zone. Come here to look for a grey person to have
| boring grey dates with. Woohoo.
|
| Change the look now and then. For holidays. Big ones, little
| ones, local ones, made-up ones. A real-world meeting place would
| do this, why shouldn't you? Talk to the same artist about doing
| that.
|
| Hell, even pick a day in the middle of winter to be Grey Dates
| Day and have a monochrome skin for laughs. Whatever. Get some
| color and whimsey in there.
|
| (The post ends with "we're hiring a creative director" so I guess
| they're kinda looking for an artist now.)
| zthrowaway wrote:
| > I'm a 33 year old straight male
|
| Completely off topic, but why do I need to know your sexuality?
| Seriously, can we stop doing this? It does not matter.
| lambic wrote:
| If it doesn't matter, why does it bother you?
| wrycoder wrote:
| OP wants you to know he's unusual.
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| > I'm a 33 year old straight male and you could sum up my
| design sense as pretty "basic." Err-- sorry, "cheugy."
|
| It's a joke. Straight men are stereotypically less sensitive to
| fashion trends than women or gay men. He's using his age,
| gender, and orientation to make light of how baffling he finds
| the design preferences (and language) of other groups.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| From a marketing perspective (which informs UIUX), these
| demographic qualities do matter.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| To be fair the original design didn't look bad, but it lacked
| color!
| thih9 wrote:
| Random offtopic feedback, please add speed friending mode; I'm
| not interested in dating but would love to meet new people and
| chat via video. I really like the app idea and the landing page
| too, nicely done!
| k12sosse wrote:
| Surprised this "content" didn't upset more of the "my internet
| shouldn't have ads on it" people.
| toastal wrote:
| At least the title is showing developers that themes aren't a
| `isDark` binary that I keep seeing in the wild.
| 2143 wrote:
| I think this might actually have nothing to do with Millennial or
| GenZ or whatever.
|
| I mean, the author has just a single data point.
|
| The author's friend might just happened to have liked that
| particular design, and it might not be true for other Gen Z
| people.
| [deleted]
| jmspring wrote:
| The proposal reminds me of a modern version of all the bad flashy
| <marquee> and related flags from the 90s.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I do not care much about _" basic"_ and _" minimalism"_ vs more
| baroque approaches. Each has its place. Kawaii, Glassmorphism,
| Uniyo-e, you name it, they can all work in the right context.
|
| What I desperately need though, is Boomer-Mode. It can be Boomer
| Light or Boomer Dark but when it is active both are 100%
| consistent. When I'm in Dark Mode I want everything to be light
| on dark, no exceptions.
|
| Nothing drives my aesthetic sensibilities - as well as my aging
| eyes - more crazy than sudden contrast changes.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Never heard of partiful, enjoyed looking at the design of their
| website. What really stuck out to me is that for the most part
| the design isn't actually that noisy (some colors and informality
| fits well given the product), but as you scroll down there's
| always one element on the screen that's "abnormal": a marquee ish
| thing, some word art looking title, etc.
|
| I think, as a millennial, when I was growing up these elements
| were often design smells: only a boomer will use word art
| unironically, etc. our clean minimalism became the suffocating
| corporate vibe of the 2010s (via tech giant software).
|
| Now, word art in the right context can be playful and imaginative
| without the boomer vibe. Hip startups are disrupting the
| suffocating millennial minimalism. Brilliant.
| bitwize wrote:
| I've never actually heard the word "cheugy" used except by howdy-
| fellow-young-people journalists who think they found out how kids
| talk these days. I think it may be a trollword specifically
| intended to bait such journalists, similar to Megan Jasper's fake
| "grunge slang" the _New York Times_ got suckered into publishing
| in the early 90s.
|
| That app design looks like GeoCities barfed into a Unicorn
| Frappuccino. I don't see anyone (except maybe little kids)
| enduring it for long as a practical UI. As a bit of fun, like
| GeoCities pages were, sure, why not, but cloying UI becomes
| psychically fatiguing over time -- a lesson that could/should
| have been learned from the UI mistakes of previous generations,
| but alas.
| rchaud wrote:
| First things first: I don't think there's anything wrong with the
| design based on the screenshots. At least, nothing stands out as
| being so unusable that users would flee for your competitor.
|
| As for "Gen Z preferences", I don't think there's enough to go on
| here to prove that. I'm over 35 and have watched user interfaces
| go from the the fun, colourful and UNIQUE designs of the 2009-era
| iOS apps to the hyper-corporate, boring af grid system that's
| "Apple Approved". Android is similar, w/ Material Design. I think
| they have a new one now that replaces MD, but I can't be bothered
| to look it up.
|
| You're creating a video speed dating app. Dating is supposed to
| be FUN. Why design it like Zoom? Have you used trivia apps like
| QuizUp? You'll notice how different the design and dynamics are
| compared to most apps that are designed to render text/image data
| in specified fields.
|
| Also look at TikTok/Douyin for an example of unconventional app
| design. They could have just copied Instagram, which is blandness
| personified. But they went with an unfamilar style that
| nonetheless took off. Nobody's asking "how do I turn my camera
| on" there, are they?
| perardi wrote:
| For Android, you're talking about Material You, which is a bit
| more colorful and bubbly.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/android-12-the-ars-t...
|
| --
|
| And as to grid systems...well, that isn't exactly a recent
| development. Design and typography has been dealing and
| fighting about grid systems for a long, long time now. This is
| not a new discussion. At all. We just generally don't think a
| lot about the full history of design.
|
| https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1013
| causi wrote:
| Every time they update Android it puts less information on
| the screen. Android 20 is going to have the same UI as an
| Apple Watch.
| bsder wrote:
| The problem with _ALL_ of these stupid mobile designs is always
| twofold:
|
| 1) The important information is rarely the obvious thing on the
| page.
|
| Partiful! Yay, party! Where? When? Cost? Oh, that grey on grey
| blob. Even filteroff, WTF am I searching _for_? Why does your
| "Ready for date night" take up 1/3 of the damn screen instead
| of something _useful to me_?
|
| 2) Interactable objects aren't obvious.
|
| Presumable that stupid double circle is a trendy hamburger
| menu. Oh, wait, no, I've get a hamburger down and right. Whats
| scrolls? What clicks? And how do I go _back_.
|
| As a side bonus, these types of Social Crapware apps (dating,
| party, etc.) have a special failure mode:
|
| 3) Design for these kinds of apps is _ALL_ about attracting to
| your app lots of the cruise director type--generally a female
| who is nominally single and probably right in her mid-20s (age
| isn 't as critical as female and nominally single).
|
| Consequently, design for 25-year-old Anya supersedes _ANYTHING_
| else. Period. Bar none. What Anya thinks is good _IS_ good and
| overrides any other consideration. Follow that trend or get
| kicked to the curb by the company who does.
| JPKab wrote:
| Really on point here.
|
| Having worked at a company where our VCs demanded we "do what
| Google does" and then had to adopt the entire "design system"
| approach, it ends up robbing UIs of anything fun, because all
| UIs become "design by committee" by default.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| This doesn't apply to all types of applications, but one
| person's fun may prevent another person from completing a
| task or even having a particular job. Yes, it's possible to
| design UIs that are both fun (whatever that means) and
| accessible. But it seems to me that boring, by-the-book UIs
| are more likely to be accessible by default.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Beyond a few distinguishing elements, the design of the
| author's app and the design of the purported Gen-Z app aren't
| really all that far apart.
|
| At the basic level, both are built on a contemporary,
| minimalist UI discipline, with a similar approach to visually
| differentiating elements like buttons and fields. The later
| mostly distinguishes itself typographically, adopting a very
| trendy "brutalist" type family, with associated practices like
| mixing widths in the same line. The only other differences are
| more saturated, high-contrast colors and ambient animation.
|
| The end result for the latter may be considerably less
| minimalist, but the foundations have a lot more in common than
| they have differences.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > I think they have a new one now that replaces MD, but I can't
| be bothered to look it up.
|
| Do you mean Material Design 3, or something else?
|
| https://m3.material.io/
| jkaptur wrote:
| It's funny that you bring up grid systems, because the
| screenshot of the partiful really evokes how some designers
| have played with grid systems in decidedly non-minimalist ways:
| e.g. https://vanle.info/blog/2021/february/josef-muller-
| brockmann...
| blihp wrote:
| What's old is new again. It's not a generational thing, it's a
| market maturity thing.
|
| There were plenty of unique UI's in the 80's (every OS with a
| GUI had a distinct look and feel) and 90's (most OS GUIs had
| started to look and feel like Windows but a few daring
| applications took a chance to be different). Kai's Power
| Tools[1] was my favorite as it had a distinctive look and feel
| but was entirely functional. There were a number Mac apps with
| carefully crafted and unique UI's in the pre-iOS days which no
| doubt took a ton of effort vs. just making a bland Windows-
| esque UI.
|
| It's not so much that developers stop wanting to push the
| envelope, it's that beyond being an early stage differentiation
| gimmick, users don't tend to reward them for very long for the
| effort. So developers focus on what they do get rewarded for
| which tend to be the checkbox features vs. their competition
| and the UI is demoted to whatever the lowest-effort fashion of
| the day is. Even Apple seems to have settled on slapping on a
| fresh coat of paint every few years and calling it a day.
|
| [1] https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/kais-power-tools-30
| altcognito wrote:
| Very little character and "authenticity" in websites that default
| to very safe choices and heavy use of whitespace for a low
| density of information.
|
| I'm not a designer, but that's the first thing that comes to mind
| when I see the "correct designs." You have zero branding. What
| website am I even on?
| [deleted]
| aasasd wrote:
| I'm way into my middle age, and I find the author an obnoxious
| and boring stuck-up who thinks that our collective recovery from
| the 90s' excess is now a sacred cow. Meanwhile, the discussed
| design is just a rather restrained and so-so exemplar of post-
| Tumblr aesthetics--which by themselves are the first good visual
| trend in ages. If the author thinks that _this_ is bad, I wish
| upon him a prolonged experience with approximately-15-year-olds,
| with some Japanese TV on the side. And if the author is like this
| at 33, I probably don 't want to read his writings ten years from
| now.
|
| Perhaps the author should also learn that just like there's a
| 'fashion statement', so there's a 'design statement'--though I'm
| not sure of a proper term for that.
|
| P.S. The imagined 'Filteroff for Gen-Z' screenshot is barely less
| sterile than the baseline, and it's almost textbook corporate
| bells-and-whistles to 'reach the young audience'. Perhaps the
| author would want to run the imagined design by Anya again.
| AJRF wrote:
| I find this weird but i've always sort of resented generations
| (Boomer, GenX, etc) that aren't mine (Millenial) but Gen Z is the
| first one i've really liked. I find the general Gen Z humour to
| be very funny. I love their mercurial embrace of trends and
| tearing down of sacred cows. The way they approach work/life
| balance, call out stupid cultural norms. Their attitude and
| acceptance of people not like themselves.
|
| By the way I know this resentment is stupid and unfounded in any
| reality - its just a feeling I have.
|
| I know this is all generalisation and not everyone born between
| two arbitrary years are like this - but the general vibe I get
| from their generation is that the kids are going to be alright.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'm firmly a Millennial but I relate a lot more to Gen Z
| because our childhoods/formative experiences had a lot more in
| common. (For example, I got online when I was 4 and was allowed
| free rein, very similar to a lot of Gen Z/"iPad kids", but
| that's a pretty rare experience in my age group [33]). Our
| worldviews are more aligned as well: Things that people thought
| were insane when I said them 10-20 years ago are now
| mainstream. I feel like I have backup for the first time in my
| life.
|
| I adore Gen Z.
| max68 wrote:
| This is what the news and Reddit want you to think about our
| generation. The reality is much different from my observation
| agent008t wrote:
| What are the actual differences between millenials and gen z? I
| would argue both are characterized by the fact that there is no
| single fit-all characteristic. There is no common pop-culture
| to define a generation any more.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Experiences. One big one is that most Millennials were hit by
| 2008, while Gen Z wasn't, but at the time we believed what we
| were told that 2008 was an aberration and things would get
| back to normal. We were also raised in the "go to college and
| you'll be set for life" era, so we were given expectations
| that were then ripped away by rapid change.
|
| Gen Z didn't believe anything they were told to begin with,
| because while Millennials grew up in the 90s and early 00s
| and got _some_ optimism in our culture, America has been a
| polarized, rapidly-changing nation for pretty much all of Gen
| Z 's time.
|
| The tl;dr I'd say is: "Millennials had our expectations
| dashed, and Gen Z didn't build up the expectations to begin
| with."
|
| (Note that I'm not commenting on whether this rapid change is
| good/bad/malicious/whatever. Just that how we've planned for
| and lived our lives has changed a lot in the last 15 years.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Older Gen Z graduated into the pandemic, like millenials
| with '08
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yup, but unlike us, they had '08 before them to look at
| and go 'hmmmm.... I've seen this before'. (I was a '10
| graduate).
|
| We (Millennials) mostly _believed_ what we were told, due
| to both not having experienced a shock like that before +
| having more limited information access. Gen Z has enough
| contrary evidence and ability to share things that they
| just took a Fast Pass for the cynicism line. And good for
| them, honestly.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Please tell me we're not at the point where "We were told
| 2020 was an aberration" is okay.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| At one point the entire web was fun and quirky, then myspace came
| along and everyone stopped making their own webpages opting
| instead to customize their profile in crazy ways, then facebook
| came along and only allowed rigid government like structure.
| Tumblr was a beacon of hope for a time, but then wild creativity
| moved to sanctioned playgrounds like minecraft, or to the
| personal web pages of highly skilled artists.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Geocities comes to mind
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| > then myspace came along and everyone stopped making their own
| webpages opting instead to customize their profile
|
| ... that's a weird re-writing of history. The vast majority of
| people on MySpace never made their own webpages, and MySpace
| wasn't the first "customize my profile hosted on someone's
| site", as LiveJournal, Xanga, and others came before it.
| prpl wrote:
| not the first but definitely the largest, probably by two
| orders of magnitude
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| I don't think myspace ever had an order of magnitude more
| users than LiveJournal. Do you have any data to the
| contrary?
| paulcole wrote:
| > At one point the entire web was fun and quirky
|
| I'm guessing this time was when you were ages 15-25 or
| thereabouts?
|
| I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was.
| Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems
| weird and scary.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _I 'm guessing this time was when you were ages 15-25 or
| thereabouts?
|
| I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was.
| Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems
| weird and scary._
|
| Dammit, you got me. I was thinking of that age range exactly,
| and I'm always a sucker for a simpsons quote.
|
| Though it is undeniable that "web masters" in the mid to late
| 90s were more willing to try wacky things, even on corporate
| or political types of sites. There weren't frameworks to keep
| things reigned in, and it was rarely a full time job, so the
| fact that it worked at all was enough for most people.
| jasfi wrote:
| Not everyone knows how to, or even wants to create their own
| website. These platforms also make it easy to share and network
| across members. It was really only a matter of time.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > facebook came along and only allowed rigid government like
| structure.
|
| And suddenly, I could comfortably read content again. For me,
| it was an amazing time, no more eye-hurting colors and fonts,
| but finally just nicely formatted text. Content was nice,
| ordered, and chronological. For me, MySpace and similar sites
| back then were like someone linking foone (sp?) twitter
| threads. I want the content, but I hate the presentation.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I remember most of me and my friends breathing a collective
| sigh of relief at how clean Facebook was when it came out,
| compared to the chaos that was MySpace
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm late 40s and would prefer the Gen-Z mode in a dating app.
| Give me clean and utilitarian on a note taking app or something
| where I'm creating. Give me something fun (but usable) for
| something that should be fun.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Yes, it's more playful and maximalist. I'm honestly happy these
| days when I see something that doesn't look the internet
| equivalent of midcentury modern / Scandinavian interior design.
| boringg wrote:
| Yeah, let's not paint the entire web with one brush. Very
| astute point.
| josho wrote:
| The author is close to an epiphany, but I feel doesn't quite
| reach it.
|
| Yes, the last few years has seen iOS design trends to learn
| towards sterile apps where there is little uniqueness across
| apps.
|
| This is good for novice users, the consistency makes it easier to
| onboard into a new app. The downside however is that many apps
| feel the same and have little differentiation.
|
| The solution is to invest in UX and design to find ways to give
| your app a personality while keeping with the visual affordances
| users have learned. The solution is most certainly not to add
| sparkles and off angle text boxes.
| guessbest wrote:
| I miss skeuomorphic.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > visual affordances
|
| What visual affordances? Those were all removed in "the great
| flattening".
| hammock wrote:
| I first noticed this "Gen-Z" mode trend when I played Mario Kart
| on Wii. Compared to N64 or SNES, the screen was so busy. I
| honestly had a hard time keeping track of where my player was and
| where the "track" was compared to all the colorful fast-moving
| background cruft.
|
| I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm just not used to it. Fortnite seems
| like another example of how "Gen-Z" and headachy a digital
| environment can be.
|
| For sure people will downvote me for not being a gamer who gets
| it, or for being an old fuddy-duddy. Wanted to provide the
| perspective though.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Are you sure the N64 and SNES Mario Karts weren't just less
| busy due to hardware constraints? N64 had limited polygon count
| compared with modern gaming systems.
|
| Also, the Wii came out in what, 2006? It's definitely a
| millennial gaming system.
| moltke wrote:
| >It's definitely a millennial gaming system.
|
| In fact I can't think of another product that's more
| quintessentially millennial than the Wii.
| dtx1 wrote:
| > In fact I can't think of another product that's more
| quintessentially millennial than the Wii.
|
| Antidepressants come to mind
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I have the same feeling sometimes. With some games it's really
| easy to understand the world and figure out what's going on.
| With others I feel like I'm spinning due to how blurry
| everything is or that I'm starting into the sun due to the
| intense brightness.
|
| As for user interfaces, video games are excellent case studies.
| My favorite example is the Ace Combat series. It shows how a
| functional interface themed after aircraft screens can be
| easier to manage than futuristic interfaces. At the same time,
| the futuristic interfaces manage to show a lot of geographical
| information in 3D instead of 2D maps.
|
| It's always impressed me how much story telling is done
| _through_ these interfaces. Before every mission, there is a
| briefing video where an officer explains context to the player
| and other pilots in the squadron. It 's stylized as an officer
| literally booting up military software, authenticating with it
| and using it to present data.
|
| https://youtu.be/dHsBpf9As-0
|
| https://youtu.be/ctun9SEza4Y
|
| I can't seem to find a single video of the menus themselves,
| apparently everyone cuts out the parts where they're navigating
| the menus.
| dudul wrote:
| I don't think the Wii is a gen z thing.
| PhaseLockk wrote:
| Mario Kart on Wii was released in 2008, when the oldest of
| Gen-Z would have been 11 years old. I'm pretty sure that's too
| young to be setting design trends.
| h2odragon wrote:
| It is the perfect age to be stamping pliant young brains into
| the shape they'll retain for the remainder of their lives.
| They associate informational assault with happy and busy and
| expect the association to be a part of the world.
| turboponyy wrote:
| Fortnite is pretty visually clean if you ask me
| doix wrote:
| Competitive gamers agree with you and have been trying to
| increase visual clarity for a long time. I remember finding out
| about picmip back in quake3 and never looking back [0]. In AoE2
| there was a mod called 'pussywood' that made the trees smaller
| so you could see things. People then also started putting
| borders around tiles and cutting buildings so they didn't block
| what was behind them [1]. In SC2 some weird settings made
| invisible units more visible, I think you set everything ultra-
| low apart from shadows or something. There are hundreds of
| other examples, if you watch any competitive gamer stream,
| their game will look different to the default experience you'd
| get if you installed the game yourself (unless it's a
| tournament stream, they'll turn all the settings up to max for
| that 'gen-z' factor).
|
| The problem nowadays is that companies are incentivized to
| reduce visual clarity by selling super flashy rainbow
| skins(doesn't apply to Mario Kart, applies to Fortnite).
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/cabbagebrains/status/1246155602625064961
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/hqRkLh2
| judge2020 wrote:
| Visual clarity vastly depends on the game and what sort of
| playstyle it's going for. For competitive shooters, it
| matters a lot more to be able to visually detect enemies
| slightly visible behind corners, eg. Valorant with red
| outlines on characters. However, regarding Fortnite, having a
| flashy animated rainbow skin actively makes it easier for
| _other players_ to spot you, so if they were really
| incentivized to sell flashy skins they 'd make it so you
| could choose a skin that other players see and a separate
| skin you see.
| jdlyga wrote:
| The "Gen-Z" look feels wrong. But if you step back a little bit,
| all the "flat design" trends of 2011 also felt wrong in the exact
| same way. "You mean that after all the advances in computer
| graphics we're going to just go back to text on top of a
| rectangle like Windows 3.1?" A lot of people forget this since
| flat design is just how everything is done nowadays.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's not the same as in Windows 3.1 at all. We now have
| shadows, gradients, far better colors and a lot of smooth
| animations [0]. The basics are the same, but if you compare the
| designs side by side, you'll find more differences than
| similarities.
|
| I feel that there was a transition period were you really
| needed to show of the new capabilities and colors that your
| computers can do now. But with current trends, this won't
| impress anyone anymore and just look cheap, so people got back
| to subtle, timeless designs.
|
| [0] I'm assuming a well-done design - you can of course overdo
| it.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I think that subtle and timeless have veered into rigid and
| stultifying. Of course master designers are able to twist it
| and make it fresh but there aren't enough of them on earth
| for every project to have one.
|
| For me internet video speed dating is a concept that's fun,
| spontaneous, maybe corny. None of that is expressed in the
| filteroff design which looks more like an accountant's blog.
| It's a "filter on" look.
|
| It looks like a defensive design intended to avoid criticism,
| but does that inspire users to go out on a limb and try a new
| form of dating?
|
| Perhaps a different minimalist design (or changes to the copy
| text) could do the job, but this seems like exactly the type
| of app where a maximalist, colorful, tongue in cheek kind of
| design could have worked.
| jdrc wrote:
| windows 3.1 used contour depth perception. That is one of our
| fastest perceptual algorithms, truly a gift from nature. 2022
| throws that in the trashcan.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Shadows are an essential design element of Windows 3.1, they
| are just used differently. In flat design a button is a flat
| piece of paper that may cast a shadow below it because it
| floats above the layer below it. In Windows 3.1 [1] a button
| is instead a 3d object that casts a shadow on itself, but
| because it's "glued" to the UI it doesn't cast a shadow below
| it.
|
| I agree that they are very different though. Windows 2.11 is
| a flat design [2], Windows 3 - XP are a design philosophy of
| physical metaphors.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#/media/File:Win
| do...
|
| 2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_2.x#/media
| /D...
| anthk wrote:
| Windows 3.11 had semi-3D buttons.
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| "we're going to just go back to text on top of a rectangle like
| Windows 3.1?" A lot of people forget this since flat design is
| just how everything is done nowadays."
|
| That's contradictory. "Flat" design is just text on a rectangle
| (at best); Windows 3.1 actually indicated what was a control
| and what its state was.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > You mean that after all the advances in computer graphics
| we're going to just go back to text on top of a rectangle like
| Windows 3.1?
|
| When a friend of mine saw Windows 8 screenshots his first
| reaction was "why does it look like Athena[0] widgets?" :-P
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Athena_Widgets
| animalgonzales wrote:
| lol the partiful.com background image file is 4mb.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| I think its better to test with a bigger sample set.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Over the years I always thought that general UI and web design
| trends tend to follow whatever the latest version of MS Windows
| does.
| nathias wrote:
| Designer is shocked to find out that the corpo-minimalist-copy-
| paste design isn't universally beloved. So it must be about age
| or gender or race or something ...
| boringg wrote:
| What does a Gen-Z kitchen look like if that was a millennial
| kitchen?
| yakubin wrote:
| Every single element of design featured on this page looks
| terrible: the apps and websites visible in screenshots, the blog
| itself. The excessively rounded ages make me feel as if I was in
| a children's house, where everything was rounded so that children
| don't hurt themselves hitting their heads on corners, or even on
| a children's carousel. The text on the website isn't evenly
| centred inside the boxes (top padding is smaller than bottom
| padding). Generally the spacing between elements, and between
| elements and text makes the site cause nausea. Also, compare how
| much space there is between the word "Date" and the enclosing box
| (claustrophobic) with how much space there is between the "+"
| sign and the enclosing box (agoraphobic).
|
| Overall, modern design is awful.[1]
|
| Regards,
|
| A Gen Z-er bitter that Win11 is going to bring round edges
| back[1]
|
| [1]: Yes, it looks like I've run out of positivity for the day.
|
| [2]: Rough edges of Win10 were the best thing about its design,
| that was otherwise questionable in other places.
| dleslie wrote:
| I recently downgraded all my Windows machines to Win10, because
| they UI and ads were obnoxious. I'd prefer Win7, or better,
| Win2K, but driver support only goes so far back.
| agrippanux wrote:
| "The excessively rounded ages make me feel as if I was in a
| children's house, where everything was rounded so that children
| don't hurt themselves hitting their heads on corners, or even
| on a children's carousel."
|
| This is exactly why I can't use MacOS anymore. It's a neon-
| pastel-candy-colored, everything-is-rounded, excessive white
| space UI nightmare for me.
| 5ESS wrote:
| Have fun missing out on M1. Mac OS Monterey looks fine to me
| especially on dark mode. What ui element you use often is
| neon pastel colored exactly besides the window controls and
| the loading cursor? (Which we're almost always colorful)
| olyjohn wrote:
| Oh no! I'm going to miss out on a processor which is faster
| than some other processor under certain workloads! Please
| say it ain't so! Oh god what ever will I do with this
| x86-based Mac? I guess I'll throw it out for fear of
| missing out on... something...
| [deleted]
| 5ESS wrote:
| Nothing else competes for power:performance ratio.
| Furthermore only M1s can score 300+ on browserbench. I
| bet the M1 Ultra will score in the 350-400 range, while
| Windows PCs can barely peak 220. This is because M1s have
| AI cores designed specially optimized for web browsing
| instructions. Browsing the internet simply feels 30%
| smoother on my M1 than it does on any x86 PC (I use
| chrome-dev --args --enable-
| features=CanvasOopRasterization --use-cmd-
| decoder=passthrough on both OS's) So if you do browser
| heavy workloads and web app programming like I do nothing
| else competes.
| yakubin wrote:
| I feel similarly about macOS. The Snow Leopard/Mojave-era
| rounded-edges were at least passable. But what they did in
| Big Sur (re edges, padding and colours) is straight up
| comedic. Unfortunately, it appears to be the platform with
| the best selection of desktop apps.
| 5ESS wrote:
| The spacing is messed up here and some of the sizing is
| questionable but there's only 2 instances of rounded corners I
| see so I think your exaggerating a bit.
|
| That being said it doesn't invoke the feeling of a safe dating
| app to me.
| neilpanchal wrote:
| We think alike. I am building a UI framework that goes against
| the grain of basically all contemporary design. It will echo
| the Berkeley Graphics philosophy: Emergent over
| prescribed aesthetics. Expose state and inner workings.
| Dense, not sparse. Explicit is better than implicit.
| Regiment functionalism. Performance is design.
| Verbosity over opaqueness. Ignore design trends. Timeless
| and unfashionable. Flat, not hierarchical.
| Diametrically opposite of minimalism. As complex as it needs to
| be. Driven by specifications and datasheets. Beauty
| emerges automatically without deliberation. Do not
| infantilize users.
|
| Humans can handle complexity. Especially, building UIs for
| technical people. McMasterCarr is being used by millions, yet
| it looks so unlike today's contemporary bloat:
| https://www.mcmaster.com/
|
| If you're interested, sign up here:
| https://berkeleygraphics.com/newsletters/
| closetohome wrote:
| I think those are all good ideas. Minimalist design trends
| have nothing to do with generational taste, and everything to
| do with practicality. As technology became more ubiquitous we
| had to design for less technically-literate people, period.
| Simplicity, if nothing else, generally makes it harder for
| people to get in trouble with the UI. It definitely went too
| far, but the inspiration was for the most part usability, not
| aesthetics.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I don't think it's cheugy at all because none of this aesthetic
| is try hard.
|
| Think it's just more the SV aesthetic that was spawned from iOS7
| and Material design era forwards was originally meant to be the
| glass of water in the land of skeuomorphism has instead become
| the aesthetic of all products the optimize for conversion rather
| than experience.
|
| All your kind of miserable experiences in the notification misery
| mobile world have the background muzak of iOS7 and Material
| design. It's almost like carpet and celling tiles of the DMV.
|
| And west coast/SV just doesn't understand anything beyond this
| aesthetic anymore, there is no charm or whimsy in any of their
| products, even when they try to forcefully inject charm into it
| like with Memoji the end result comes across like a robot make
| it, it's just not actually cute or funny just feels gross somehow
| like there isn't any cuteness, humor or wit to any of it and it's
| super apparent when you compare it to similar products like Line
| Friends or even Bitmoji manages to have wit to their work.
|
| You've pushed a whole generation of designers in SV to focus on
| the wrong thing really and this is why all these SV platforms
| will eventually be up for grabs and the ones that dethrone them
| are going to be coming from strange places and wont be
| understandable to the current platform barons. Look how alien
| Tiktok was to IG they're still trying to replicate it but its
| almost like they can't understand it and I don't mean because
| it's a Chinese product I just mean the muscles required to
| understand what make it great have completely atrophied in SV
| product designers.
| didip wrote:
| The prime example of this is Snapchat. I don't know why it has so
| many buttons and why there are so many secret menus (behind the
| swipe left and right) or why the buttons are placed there.
|
| Compared that to Instagram where the buttons are obvious.
| blunte wrote:
| MySpace. Not dull at all.
| rexpop wrote:
| 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 Pokemon 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/
| andrewzah wrote:
| 1. You made a boring design. It's not a gen-z thing to dislike
| sterile, clinical designs that look more suited to businesses.
|
| 2. This is an ad, and seems like it was intentionally written as
| flamebait.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| 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 mock [1] even radiates the "millennial snowflakes" energy
| that used to be prevalent, with the "You are unique. You are
| different".
|
| Thinking about it further, I actually think this is a super
| clickbait way to get hits and link clout? If you look at their
| blog [2], it's really just advertising all of the different
| dating verticals this company runs. And gosh, the names are
| horrifically cringey. "Sappho Dating", "Matzoball Dating",
| "Subtle Curry Dating"?
|
| 1: https://uploads-
| ssl.webflow.com/6197f007be798d88368f80d7/623... 2:
| https://www.getfilteroff.com/blog
| nisegami wrote:
| "Subtle Curry Dating" is a reference to the Facebook group
| "subtle curry traits", which itself may be an offshoot of the
| "subtle asian traits" group (I forget which came first).
|
| These are both examples of Facebook groups aimed at a large but
| unconnected group of people from similar backgrounds. I think
| they can be fundamentally considered to be "subreddits, but on
| Facebook". Imagine /r/BlackPeopleTwitter but for
| (South/)Asians.
|
| As someone with the right context in the target demo, I find
| "Subtle Curry Dating" to be a hilarious name. Not only that, I
| think I'd be more likely to find someone I mesh with on that
| service than the same service with a different name.
|
| Edit: some cursory googling revealed that "Matzoball Dating"
| might be a similar sort of in-joke:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo_Ball
| 6510 wrote:
| If you do something for an audience it is fine to alienate
| everyone else. It might even be required to avoid "one size
| fits all" Or moving away from the topic to attract a larger
| audience.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Exactly--"Kosher masala pussy" needs to be right exactly
| once.
| [deleted]
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > And gosh, the names are horrifically cringey. "Sappho
| Dating", "Matzoball Dating", "Subtle Curry Dating"?
|
| "Sappho"/"sapphic" are fairly common self-descriptors among
| teens/twentysomethings on a few subcultural niches like Tumblr.
| Ironically your own comment is an example of the tendency you
| decry; you're clearly not familiar with the markets at play
| here.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Haha, I appreciate this reply. Sure, I'll be up front and
| admit that I didn't actually get use of matzoball dating and
| subtle curry dating/etc, but as an LGBTQ+ individual, I
| _think_ I understand how the Sappho descriptor is _trying_ to
| be used here (hey! It 's a LGBTQ+ dating app!), and yet I
| still think it's a misapplied pattern match? And that's what
| led me to think that the keyword uses are also less-than-
| very-good references.
|
| That is to say I personally wouldn't use a dating site themed
| around a reference for LGBTQ+ erasure. Though perhaps this
| doesn't represent everyone's opinion, and that's okay!
|
| (For those out of the know here on Sappho/etc, see the
| subreddits /r/AchillesAndHisPal and r/SapphoAndHerFriend)
| severak_cz wrote:
| Sappho is literally name of famous greek poet from island of
| Lesbos, which may help you guess that they are probably
| lesbians
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho
| jmmcd wrote:
| 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.
| vagabund wrote:
| 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.
| jmmcd wrote:
| > by prioritizing the design preferences of the former over
| the latter
|
| I feel like this is still omitting the "and then" part of
| the story. The point of the post is the opposite of what
| you said.
| [deleted]
| seanabrahams wrote:
| Neocities, Gen-Z sites that look like the early web:
| https://neocities.org/browse
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Stop caring about what the kids think! "The kids" have always
| been (even my generation), and will always be, STUPID
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I hope that in a few more years we've gone full circle and let
| users install their own quirky UI themes again just like in the
| late 90's.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Me too! That'd really whip the llama's ass.
| fundad wrote:
| It's like the themes in iDVD
| jayd16 wrote:
| Gen-z? Looks like a 90s zine.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Is it just me, or does anyone else find this whole lumping people
| into arbitrary generations with silly labels completely stupid?
|
| I don't see myself as broadly similar to other people who happen
| to be roughly the same age as me. Then again, I'm GenX, so I
| guess I'm just cynical ;)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| > but many do not like "millennial minimalism."
|
| Reminds me a post calling prior, post GAR generation trends as
| the 'gigabore':
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170731050026/https://medium.co...
| asciimov wrote:
| 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 movement. That's more designing
| for psychology than aesthetics. Movement looks exciting, and has
| been used successfully for years in other mediums.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Why does dark mode cause eye strain?
| asciimov wrote:
| 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.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| 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...
| asciimov wrote:
| Yep I have that too.
|
| That is a really good article by the way, thanks for
| sharing.
| cpcallen wrote:
| I was wondering how long it would take before I saw someone
| advocating for webpage backgrounds to be grey again. Mosaic
| (and later Netscape) had the right idea from the start. It's
| only too bad it's taken so long for us to get back to where we
| started.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| an old curmudgeon.
|
| P.S.: Get off my lawn!
| ryandrake wrote:
| I want web page backgrounds to respect the defaults I set in
| the browser. Remember those settings? They are still in your
| browser but the first thing a web designer does nowadays is
| force background and font colors, text sizes, and so on,
| totally disregarding the user's set preferences.
|
| Now get off MY lawn!
| [deleted]
| graderjs wrote:
| _Gerald took off his glasses and rubbed them a little on the
| tablecloth. He was bewildered. How could this be, he kept
| thinking to himself. No--how, literally, could this be?_
|
| _He couldn 't have known it, but at that very moment, the same
| conversation, and the same bewilderment, was being had, in
| offices over lunch hours, around dinner tables in startup work
| condos, all across America. Something had shifted._
|
| _In later years this age would come to be known as: The Dawn of
| the GenZ School of Itinerant Design. GenY art historians with
| goth hair and overcoats tried and failed to analyze it as a
| "return to the retro-aesthetics of MySpace and Geo-cities,
| heralded by Glitch", but the labels never stuck. Older, wiser and
| more bitter professionals, fustily defogging their glasses while
| seated defeatedly at their architect-style slanted drafting desks
| (with optional standing desk accessory), would oftentimes mutter
| to themselves, alone at night in their downtown 23rd-floor
| apartments, lit only by the synthetic warm-LED glow of their
| ironically chosen "Banker's lamps", a different name for this
| cultural watershed: "The End-times' Madness." But nobody listened
| to them anyways, and they didn't much care._
| jsolson wrote:
| > Older, wiser and more bitter professionals, fustily defogging
| their glasses while seated defeatedly at their architect-style
| slanted drafting desks (with optional standing desk accessory),
| would oftentimes mutter to themselves, alone at night in their
| downtown 23rd-floor apartments, lit only by the synthetic warm-
| LED glow of their ironically chosen "Banker's lamps", a
| different name for this cultural watershed: "The End-times'
| Madness." But nobody listened to them anyways, and they didn't
| much care.
|
| Well, I feel seen, except that it's a Tolomeo desk lamp and I
| keep a flat desk (with standing desk accessory) as I sometimes
| use solder in anger.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| The formatting in italics makes this seem like a quote, but I
| can't find a source. Is this a quote from a larger work?
| graderjs wrote:
| Well, I imagine it to be a larger work. But it just came to
| me now as a sentence / fragment of a larger one. I haven't
| written it yet...should I do this?
| silent_cal wrote:
| Yep!
| omgmajk wrote:
| You have a good way with words so I'd absolutely read it.
| tgv wrote:
| This was fun to read because of the pomposity, but I'm
| afraid it might get rather dull when extended in the same
| vein.
| shrikant wrote:
| / dons flame-retardant suit
|
| // braces for downvotes
|
| ..much like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| "Those that fail to read William Gibson are doomed to
| repeatedly reinvent his style."
| fleddr wrote:
| "How do I turn on my camera?" is an all too common email we
| receive."
|
| This may be more a case of boomer mode, but I opt for everybody
| in software development to be put on customer/user email support
| for a while. It's very educational, humbling, and maddening.
|
| You could have a giant flashing camera button permanently in the
| UI and you'd still get this question. People still can't find it
| or they can and then double-click it, shutting it down again. The
| amount of ways in which people can misunderstand even the
| simplest of interactions is a sight to behold.
|
| This still pales compared to what for some websites/apps is 75%
| of their support requests: logging in. You think you've drawn out
| every process, sub process and exception, but people will find
| many new ways to screw this up.
|
| One of the core UX lessons is that people don't read anything, so
| any instruction is in vain. They operate on vague patterns from
| other experiences, muscle memory and basically just click based
| on intuition, and if that wasn't what they wanted, they go back
| and try something else.
| pier25 wrote:
| I don't know if it's related, but there seems to be a trend these
| past years of ugly design taking over...
|
| The first company I remember was Dropbox but they seem to have
| backpedalled on that when looking at their current homepage.
|
| Gumroad or Xolo recently updated their websites and are perfect
| examples of what I'm talking about:
|
| https://gumroad.com/
|
| https://www.xolo.io/
| azinman2 wrote:
| Very 90s meet current web. Doesn't surprise me given a lot of
| snicker designs these days.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Dropbox also used to have beautiful design - now it's similar
| to those 2 links you posted...
| munificent wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
| herval wrote:
| I'm a Millenial but I really prefer the GenZ mode, out of these
| 3. Boring UX is BORING.
| burlesona wrote:
| Design trends come and go. Minimalism is has probably already
| peaked, and typically when a trend peaks the next trend
| intentionally runs against it.
|
| The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people thought
| that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html elements.
| Those were noisy pages, but they had the feeling of an
| enthusiastic hobbyist scrapbook, and that was part of the appeal.
| "I could make something cool like that." That "artsy teenager's
| notebook" aesthetic is like the 90s web reborn in high def, this
| time with 40mb of javascript along for the ride.
| munificent wrote:
| _> typically when a trend peaks the next trend intentionally
| runs against it._
|
| Humans naturally crave both novelty and familiarity and the
| tensions between those desires mean that aesthetics will always
| evolve and oscillate.
| jamil7 wrote:
| > Minimalism is has probably already peaked
|
| I hope so, I thought that the original intent of it was
| anchored in a functional way of designing UIs. Now it seems to
| have been taken to absurd levels where important controls are
| hidden behind modals, dropdown, hover states, popovers etc.
| instead of just being visible and available when you want to
| use them. I really don't understand this but have given up
| pushing back on it.
| fmajid wrote:
| I think hiding controls is driven by the limitations of phone
| screens, and mobile-first thinking leads to substandard
| desktop or tablet experiences.
| api wrote:
| Every good idea gets unmoored from its original purpose and
| driven to absurdity. Look at agile, lean startup, etc.
| intrasight wrote:
| > Design trends come and go.
|
| True. Buy my training is in military, process control, and
| nuclear. In those context, I've never heard a project manager
| say "make it look like a game". Whereas in business apps, I
| have heard that many times.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And that is a good thing, some applications, explicitly not
| _apps_ , have to be made to work and function properly. Not
| to look good or fancy.
|
| Just wait until someone proposes to build a blinky-clicky UI
| on top of the serious stuff to make it easier for users. No
| joke, I have that problem at work right now...
| replygirl wrote:
| when the ui doesn't evolve with the user base, everyone in
| hawaii gets texted a nuclear emergency alert
| hef19898 wrote:
| If the UI takes precedence over funtionality you don't
| pass financial audits.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| > The "gen-z" look reminds me of the early web when people
| thought that <blink> and <marquee> were really exciting html
| elements.
|
| Literally the thing that went through my mind when reading the
| article: "the 90s/early 00s design is coming back!"
|
| Time to start replacing the cursor with unicorns barfing
| rainbows (or nyan-cats, whatever you prefer!) and adding on-
| click confetti explosions to our web pages again.
|
| What an exciting time to be alive!
| Zak wrote:
| My first thought when I saw the example designs was Geocities;
| my second was Myspace.
|
| Beyond design trends and generational preferences, the purpose
| of the app in question matters. A video speed dating app should
| probably have a more fun atmosphere than Hacker News,
| Wikipedia, or the Wifi settings panel.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| It also has the appearance of people using nothing but MS
| Paint as an image editor. Slap dash quickity fast. No need to
| wait for 10 minutes for PS to launch, this task will be
| completed before that.
| derefr wrote:
| You're talking about "weirdcore":
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpgddVUidq0
| IncRnd wrote:
| That is the result of Max Headroom getting an account on
| Myspace while corresponding with Geocities for design tips.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone took
| too much or needs to up their dosage.
|
| Visual graphix aside, it's just exhausting to listen to.
| Dude, take a breath, or at least allow your viewers to take
| one. Had to double check I didn't leave my YT player in
| faster than normal playback speed.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Ritalin?
|
| I blame some late Gen-Xer who got stuck in a basement and
| got too obcessed with gaining likes on the internet they
| just morphed into this one-weird-trick pony with their
| clipart coming exclusively from 90's Magazines that come
| with a CD kinda thing
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It takes literal ages to edit videos in this style so while
| the end result may resemble h.264 encoded ADHD, the process
| does not.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Literal ages is such a random gen-z way of describing
| this!
|
| I'm literally a video editor/motion graphics person, so
| no, this doesn't take "literal ages" to edit.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The linked video is a pretty slow entry to the genre.
| Look at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmTsa3rFU0
|
| There's approximately three animated memes per second in
| these and people are usually using pirated Vegas to make
| them.
| derefr wrote:
| They also had to pick a one-second slice of a
| "thematically-related" music track to set each of the
| ~100ish readings to. That would take a fair amount of
| time during editing, no?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Those are called sound f/x. They are quite common and are
| litterally just 1 second sounds to be dropped into a
| timeline. There are libraries upon libraries of them
| available. They used to come on vinyl and had to be
| recorded in to something useable. Then they came on CDs
| and could just be ripped. Now, they float around as YT
| videos or other websites royalty free.
|
| This would be common knowledge amongst people that have
| spent any time in an edit bay as a client or as an
| editor. It's one of those things that those that know
| just sit back and smile while those that don't are in
| awe.
| severak_cz wrote:
| It's depend how you are skilled and how good your editor
| software is. With bad software it can take ages.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| While I may not be a 10x dev, I'm at least an 8.5x
| editor. Experience goes a long way as well. Knowing
| when/where to use certain technique, how/why something
| takes longer, etc all add up to make an edit session go
| faster.
| carlisle_ wrote:
| > I blame Ritalin for this type of video, either someone
| took too much or needs to up their dosage.
|
| Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I'm really tired of ADHD
| ableist jokes like this one. With the controversy and
| struggles of medication for ADHD, implying that the only
| functional ADHD brain is a medicated one just frankly
| sucks.
| mrexroad wrote:
| This. Thank you.
| replygirl wrote:
| there are people who have to sleep outside, you know
| carlisle_ wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment by chance?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Maybe I'm overly sensitive
|
| Yes, I would suggest in this specific instance you are.
|
| >but I'm really tired of ADHD ableist jokes like this one
|
| Not once did I mention ADHD which is a medically
| recognized condition. However, the use of Ritalin in
| today's society is not limited to those that are
| prescribed Ritalin as a treatment for ADHD. There are
| many many people that use it recreationaly. Being around
| people using it as an upper gives me the impression that
| I'm stuck in molasses with their hyper-everything. It's
| exhausting.
| carlisle_ wrote:
| Little defensive there, huh.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, feel free to go around the internet and accuse
| people of something, then make fun of them for being
| defensive when they explain how it's not what you
| thought. Especially after preceding your entire post with
| "I might be overly sensitive"
| carlisle_ wrote:
| I don't even know how to respond to you. Saying "Little
| defensive there, huh" constitutes "mak[ing] fun of"? I'm
| not sure who's actually the sensitive one here.
|
| Besides, pointing out ableism isn't an accusation. In
| fact, I don't accuse you of anything personally, I bemoan
| the joke. In the face of this, you retreat to a scenario
| where you are besieged every day by recreational Ritalin
| users in order defend your ego from maybe admitting your
| joke wasn't actually funny (or accurate).
| derefr wrote:
| > Not once did I mention ADHD which is a medically
| recognized condition.
|
| "Needs to up their dosage" would imply someone who
| medically requires Ritalin to treat something, which
| could only be ADHD. Take that part out and the joke is
| otherwise fine/about what you're saying.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Perhaps. I will stipulate that for those with no
| knowledge of recreational drug use, this could be an
| interpretation.
|
| However, anyone familiar with recreational drug use knows
| there's a common phrase of "know your dosage" right along
| "know your dealer". Yes, it's borrowed from else where,
| but it's still a thing. Do I need to eat half a bar, or
| take 2? I might suggest Wolf Of Wall Street as an example
| of knowing one's dosage.
| derefr wrote:
| That phrase is about knowing the _maximum_ dosage beyond
| which the side-effects render the trip unpleasant; along
| with the _threshold_ dosage below which you don 't get
| any effects.
|
| Taking "too little" Ritalin recreationally -- i.e. not
| meeting the threshold dose -- doesn't result in ADHD-like
| symptoms.
|
| Unless, y'know, you have ADHD. In which case it's not
| "recreational usage", you're just self-medicating.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Dear lordy, you must be having an agenda here. Other
| people are injecting ADHD into this conversation.
|
| People taking Ritalin when not prescribed to them by a
| doctor do not care about ADHD-like symptoms. They are
| using it purely as an upper. "To help them concentrate"
| or whatever they tell themselves. It's less "trashy" than
| meth, easier to find than coke. The affects are also
| different than these other drugs.
| [deleted]
| saila wrote:
| It's seems pretty obvious that they made the video in this
| style intentionally as an example of weirdcore.
| derefr wrote:
| IMHO, at least the abruptness of the cuts (trimming off all
| silence between clips) is intentional, part-and-parcel of
| the aesthetic being demonstrated. Weirdcore is abrupt.
|
| I don't know about the rest -- might just be the video's
| author's style -- but I have a feeling the high speaking
| speed is there because they're mostly reading a definition
| off of this article
| (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weirdcore), with no
| content editing to compress for time, but still a need to
| make the video feel like it's not "dragging on" for viewers
| who are impatiently waiting for visual examples. (The
| proper thing to do here would have been to do the content-
| editing of the script, of course.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| If only it were this video
| api wrote:
| There is a whole genre of YouTube videos where people talk
| like farm auctioneers. I give you PrestonPlayz:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUKPaCoQPEU
|
| For those who don't get the farm auctioneer reference:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPUX8rv7gs
| devmunchies wrote:
| The comedian/meme personality Sam Hyde was doing this a
| couple years ago https://youtu.be/7ENMpzR54us
| max68 wrote:
| A lot of the comments are saying this looks like a 1990's
| website. I think it's kinda true, but there's also
| something extremely modern about it. Much more raw than the
| partiful design. I really like these graphics and would be
| very interested to see a website rendition of this
| aesthetic
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I really appreciate the design of Cruelty Squad
| (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/),
| it's deliberately garish and ugly but it's also very endearing.
| [deleted]
| jqcoffey wrote:
| I for one, as a mid-life gen-x-er, can't wait to welcome our
| new gen-z design overlords if it means that we bring some
| visual variety back to computing.
| endymi0n wrote:
| Spot on. This is just the anti-trend to minimalism, which again
| was the anti-trend to what I grew up with:
|
| https://www.cameronsworld.net/
|
| (which was the anti-trend to the original, booooooring
| beginnings of hypertext)
|
| 'All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them
| remember it.' -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
| dntrkv wrote:
| I think y'all are conflating two completely different things.
|
| There are "fun" sites where proper UX, information hierarchy,
| and general good design patterns take a backseat to some wild
| design (band websites for example).
|
| Then there are sites that focus on productivity which should
| have all the elements of good design. Craigslist is from the
| 90s, yet it doesn't have sparkles and random shit scattered
| across the page.
|
| Everyone is reminiscing about the wild designs of the past.
| How many of those sites you visited were actual productivity
| focused sites vs now? You can't compare Geocities to Jira...
| gotaquestion wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It comes and goes. It doesn't really stay.
| Finnucane wrote:
| 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!
| gotaquestion wrote:
| 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.
| :)
| Finnucane wrote:
| My own living room is done in 'jumble of whatever' style,
| so there's that.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'd add that design trends and taste are also regional.
|
| Minimalism isn't appreciated in some Asian countries. Their
| print, ads and web pages use every single inch/pixel to
| saturate it with the maximum amount of content, be they text or
| visuals. It even translates to physical products, as an example
| a laundry machine with 500 buttons and lots of blinking lights.
| SamBam wrote:
| Agree. I feel like I've heard so many comments recently that
| the web looks so boring, and people miss the old fun of the
| early web. And people who miss the web of the 90s and early
| Oughts are by definition not Gen Z...
|
| I'm excited for a bit of bang and pop and messiness and
| individuality to come back.
|
| With it, I hope for return of websites. You can't display
| individuality on an endless scrolling feed of social media.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I started out a little curmudgeonly about the style, but was
| won over by Persona 5:
| https://www.atlus.com/persona5/home.html
|
| It's messy, chaotic, and feels like something from the late
| 90's/early 00's, where you'd often see custom web pages using
| formatted images as elements of the page. But I love it. I
| can't quite make sense of it, as I adhere pretty strongly to
| brutalism/minimalism when designing my own content.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Persona 5 did really well with balancing their line work
| and colors. The colors are very bold and in your face, but
| so is some of the strategically placed line work, so you
| can still visually differentiate everything.
| function_seven wrote:
| And there's still a design language underpinning the
| site. It's chaotic and loud and whatever, but the
| elements are consistent.
|
| It's not random. Still has a theme and a palette. I like
| it as well.
| Shorel wrote:
| It looks like a well-designed comic book.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| https://heckscaper.com/plugins/ and
| https://heckscaper.com/aminals/deuteronomy/ (warning: semi-
| NSFW) is a powerful aesthetic of loud colorful idiosyncratic
| individuality, which makes any of the websites or software
| I've tried building pale in comparison.
| [deleted]
| lowwave wrote:
| yeah and get myspace back as well.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I haven't heard nearly as many people wanting a return to
| maximalist 90s web design. People miss the time when a
| website wasn't a 3 megabyte download, and didn't pop up a
| newsletter signup form. They don't (as often) miss the web
| pages with 100 animated gifs on them, an over the top tiled
| background, blinking text, and so on.
|
| Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets out
| of the way and shows you the content you came for, which was
| (if you like) 90s web design minimalism. That's the
| motivation all this gopher revival/gemini protocol stuff is
| about, at least from a design perspective.
|
| I'm just trying to say there were different strains of "90s
| web design" which are not compatible with each other.
| kixiQu wrote:
| > People miss the time when a website wasn't a 3 megabyte
| download, and didn't pop up a newsletter signup form. They
| don't (as often) miss the web pages with 100 animated gifs
| on them, an over the top tiled background, blinking text,
| and so on.
|
| This is really colored by who you're paying attention to.
|
| https://yesterweb.org/webring/members.html <-- this is a
| lot of Gen Z, especially with the more active people.
| _Literally_ animated gifts, tiled bgs, etc.
|
| > Many more people want the minimalism of a page that gets
| out of the way and shows you the content you came for
|
| This is an assumption, not data.
| theo_sort wrote:
| are you really saying that website you linked is a gen z
| design? looks like something out of 2004, looks
| horrible... or maybe it's not loading well on my phone.
| but that's not....
| kixiQu wrote:
| The website I linked is a list of members of a webring,
| because such a survey presents more examples than a
| single page can. The creators of the pages in the webring
| are predominantly gen z. The argument it is supporting is
| about which people want which strains of 90s web design
| to come back. If you look at a few pages in the webring
| you will see which strains _these_ young people, at
| least, want. That 's what I'm saying. Whether you
| consider it horrible is immaterial.
| frostwarrior wrote:
| That's just rationality intertwined with nostalgia.
|
| I mean, I do acknowledge how messy 90s websites were.
| Overly bloated with GIFs and annoying MIDIs playing on the
| background. But they were full of personality. And it was
| also a time where getting into "the internet" was an
| exciting thing by itself.
|
| Only us, people who are "computer literate", complain about
| a 3mb download or 10mb javascript blob. Most people don't
| care as long as their phone or computer are able to do the
| job.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| People care about things being slow, but our industry has
| done a fantastic job of covering up the fact that it
| constantly makes everything slower by convincing people
| they just need newer devices. It is sickening.
| __s wrote:
| Yeah, I recently made a portfolio site for a friend. Very
| minimalist: https://christinelopez.ca
|
| It's hand written. This was also an early web thing: no npm
| build pipeline. I feel a little bad not making the modal
| view fallback to image-is-a-link when JS is disabled _(I
| also would 've opted for no google fonts, but it ultimately
| isn't my site)_
|
| Meanwhile another friend built a similar site:
| https://kaeillustrates.art which may have more of that
| Gen-Z aesthetic (albeit we're millennials, so it doesn't go
| overboard) & is built on tailwind/react
|
| Hopefully minimalist-as-fashion design will go away &
| minimalist sites can return to being small
| memory/dependency footprint
| wrycoder wrote:
| Surprisingly, his site seemed to load faster for me.
| __s wrote:
| That's the thing. Computers have become so fast &
| bandwidth so wide that the bottleneck is primarily
| latency
| wrycoder wrote:
| Interesting point!
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I actually really that that site design!
|
| One note: can you tag that NSFW or somesuch? Even
| artistic nudity can be unwelcome and get people in
| trouble.
| bearbearbear wrote:
| swiftcoder wrote:
| You know, the internet I remember looked a lot more like that
| "fun" app, once upon a time... Bright colours, flashing marquees,
| comic sans everywhere.
|
| I don't think GenZ is the problem here. The bland corporate
| aesthetic that has taken over tech spaces is... bland and
| corporate.
| zzzbra wrote:
| I remember the first time I realized I was no longer interested
| in "interesting" UI when I tried out Snapchat. Later I read a Gen
| Z user saying that the obtuseness of the interface was a plus. I
| wonder how much is a factor if biology and how much is a factor
| of having a million responsibilities like maintaining a home,
| working at a non-entry level in your job, etc., and just not
| having any interest in needlessly expending mental bandwidth on
| interacting with an app for yet another few precious moments of
| my increasingly limited time.
| ahoka wrote:
| It actually looks a lot more engaging. I didn't even realize it's
| a dating app from the screenshot.
| lbrito wrote:
| The Partiful screenshot in the article reminds me of mid-2000s
| TV-focused media player UIs (Windows Media Center, XBMC/Kodi
| etc). Must be really awkard to use in a web/mobile context.
| shreyamurthy wrote:
| it's actually amazing on mobile
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I mean, this is not _new_?
|
| Has the OP ever been to MySpace? Before Facebook came in and
| swooped all, MySpace pages _all_ looked like that.
|
| Is blingee GenZ?
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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 absolutely no bearing on
| their worth or right to enjoy the products they use in whatever
| way they choose to use them.
|
| If you can't have enough compassion for your users to design
| something they love _respecting who they are_ then you shouldn 't
| be designing for them.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| 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.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| 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.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| 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.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| That's a little bit like saying a barber should only cut hair
| the way he'd want to wear it. Being part of a professional,
| maybe the defining feature is to be able to understand what
| customers want and to do it without bringing personal
| preference into it, unless that's asked for.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I like your sentiment, but I think this only works at the
| start. After the initial MVC phase, you discover additional
| potential target audiences, and often (but not always) it
| makes more sense to apply empathy and adapt the software to
| also benefit their needs, rather than just abandoning then as
| "not the intended audience".
| munificent wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| One is rather small sample size for what users want.
| v-yadli wrote:
| Looking at that partyful website vs. the author's app, an
| immediate analogy struck me as Discord vs. Microsoft Teams. (doge
|
| So what is it? Colors? Animations? Gamification? Memes? "Crossing
| the line"?
| WesleyHale wrote:
| I see how you can reach a generational correlation, but I believe
| it's a age issue that isn't unique to any generation.
|
| The younger people want the pop and sparkles. The older people
| want what they're using to simply work because they value their
| time. The pop and sparkles are a distraction that doesn't add to
| the functionality.
| exhaze wrote:
| Age is implied here. The author isn't comparing the Silent
| Generation to the Baby Boomers. They are comparing two
| successive generations, which by definition, have an age gap.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| An increasing problem I see with designers is that they no longer
| use tools that are truly capable of pushing pixels. Sure, Figma
| et. al. can crank out nice looking flat designs, but that's about
| it.
|
| We are essentially experiencing 'vendor lock in' in the digital
| design space, where the tools being used are no longer easily
| capable of exploring different styles of design beyond the
| current trend.
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| Can you give an example of something you can't draw on Figma?
| I'm having trouble picturing what you mean.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Sure - I would say many of these would be much better suited
| for creation in a competent raster-based tool:
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9c/a8/7f/9ca87fcc3a2bed54edfb.
| ..
|
| https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/02dcb79b40989932a37ce8.
| ..
|
| https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/1866209/screenshots/8200836/m.
| ..
|
| https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/02/iBooks...
| canniballectern wrote:
| It's not surprising that pixel art is easier to make in a
| raster editor than in a vector editor.
|
| The 3rd image was probably made in Figma or Sketch though.
| It would probably take more time to build that in Photoshop
| than Figma, and the result would be harder to make changes
| to.
| xhrpost wrote:
| At first glance, "maximal" is not the conclusion I would have
| come to. The author using this term implies the opposite of
| minimal. While yes, there is more graphic "noise" I suppose, the
| UI itself still looks minimal to me. I can tell very easily what
| this page does and how to submit a new party. Minimalist design
| preferences were always about this. Don't make the user think in
| order to accomplish their mission. And this doesn't make me
| think. It's the antithesis of "put a thousand options in one
| window and then expect the user to watch a vhs training video
| before using it".
| tomatohs wrote:
| The Partiful tagline on Twitter is "Facebook events for hot
| people," which shows that they're fully aware they're they anti-
| facebook. It's the entire schtick.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| What amuses me reading the comments here is thinking that among
| characteristics of how people behave, the "gen-<foo>" one may
| have one of the highest standard deviations among them. The bell
| curve of what a GenX likes is nearly flat, vs a GenY which is
| equally flat, but it's non-flatness just a little bit to the left
| (or right). Repeat for all Gen's.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I hit partiful.com and found this after scrolling a bit:
|
| _The Recyclable Camera Includes development, a prepaid mailer, &
| free shipping.
|
| Photos are sent straight to your phone, where you can upload them
| to your Partiful party page.
|
| Go ahead, make some memories
|
| (The specs: Premium Kodak 400 ISO 35mm film with 27 exposures.)_
|
| Really? Everything old is young again!
| severak_cz wrote:
| lol, that's almost literally kodak business model from 1920's
| :-D
| nebula8804 wrote:
| It really is the roaring 20s all over again!
| cardiology-fat wrote:
| I don't know about the millennial angle, but minimalism does seem
| to be on the way out. As a university teacher, I spend a lot of
| time staring at the lids of laptops (as much as I'd like to ban
| them).
|
| Back in the late 2000s, those laptops would be covered with
| various stickers -- Obama, sports, home star runner, etc. The
| last decade or so they have just been shiny unadorned metal or
| plastic.
|
| This year amongst my 18 year-old students, the stickers have
| started coming back.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Party Round is another recent Gen-Z design:
| https://partyround.com
|
| Although their particular design aesthetic is also very common in
| the NFT space.
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