There’s effectively no universal list of UX warts people agree with.

The Flat UX fad was objectively terrible on just about every metric I was taught, but people were actively pushing for such designs.

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selestify 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why was that? What causes such fads? Why did everyone go along with it?

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hypfer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Speaking entirely out of my ass here:

FOMO for sure is one of the driving factors.

"We cannot risk looking outdated". So weak management, probably.

But also talent availability I suppose. If there's a new trend, the pool of people you can hire include many that are in on that trend.

UI frameworks too, probably. The modern thing™ does the modern thing™ and you do want to be on the modern thing, because you fear that only that receives security fixes or whatever.

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darkwater an hour ago | parent [-]

If UIs today still looked exactly the same as Windows 2.0 or System 7 or CDE people will be bored to death. Aesthetics come and go and come back, it's part of how humanity worked for a few centuries already.

	▲	hypfer 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Do I need to be entertained by my butter knife, mop or screwdriver? I really don't think that "keeping people entertained" is a sensible goal within the context of building software as tools and not software-adjacent Art. Which is not to say that I would not want a great and polished experience, but that is not equivalent to "being entertained". ___ It would be nice if not everything one interacts with would try to get some sort of emotion out of me. Bring back being bored.

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zuminator 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Make-work. Managers needing to justify their promotions with a new way of doing things. Whole teams are given a reason to stay employed. OS and device obsolescence is achieved. A win all around, save for the consumer.

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xigoi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What’s wrong with flat UIs? Skeuomorphic designs have served their purpose of helping people get used to computers, but now that is no longer necessary.

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sakjur an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If you introduce flatness without also adjusting the colors (or worse, making many backgrounds translucent) you end up with really poor contrast.

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Telaneo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

New people are born every day.

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xigoi 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

The newly born people grow up in a world where computers are already commonplace, so they don’t need to get used to them.

	▲	Telaneo 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That fact that they are common doesn't mean they don't need to get used to them.

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hypfer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a good engagement bait if I've ever seen one

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xigoi 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m being serious. I find skeuomorphic UIs to be too visually overwhelming compared to flat UIs.

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hypfer 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That is a valid opinion to hold, however, the question of "what is wrong with X? Y is outdated and over" is

a) a different statement from "I prefer X"

and

b) pretty low effort, trivially to Google (or ask AI) and generally a bit on the ignorant side

A better reply would not just have said what it said but contained actual wonder about the topic. Like this, it's just indistinguishable from engagement bait.

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xigoi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> pretty low effort, trivially to Google (or ask AI) and generally a bit on the ignorant side

I know the most common reason why people prefer skeuomorphic design (the visual metaphor), which is why my original reply directly addressed this complaint by saying that it’s no longer relevant. Some other complaints I’ve found online are about specific bad instances of flat design rather than flat designs in general. Therefore, I am asking about reasons that don’t fall under these two categories, which I haven’t been able to find.

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benj111 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you're being overly hostile.

The parents question seems reasonable to my non designy mind.

	▲	hypfer 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes in a vacuum. No on the Internet. Especially not on the sea-lion infested HR-world Internet, in which trolling has evolved to exploit good faith directly.

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dutchCourage an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a somewhat unpopular opinion here, however I do think flat UI can be done right and is well fitted to digital UIs.

It's possible to have a flat style but have buttons that look clearly like buttons, and elements that have shadows and colors.

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chopin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But there are things like consistency which one can check for. And should.