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Comment by diegof79

1 month ago

As someone who works in UX, I admire all the work the Google UX team puts into Material: tons of documentation, UI kits, theme generation tools, a lot of thinking on systematizing the color combinations, etc.

However, this article has a lot of "Pepsi Logo" vibes (https://www.scribd.com/document/541500744/Pepsi-Arnell-02110...). I never confirmed if this was a hoax, but it was made into many news websites at the time.

Many design justifications they put on the page don't make much sense: yes, a big send button increases the metric of people finding the button, but it also takes space from the screen, and your daily phone UI is not a kiosk. "New users" become "experienced users", so the big button quickly becomes annoying. Even the M3 documentation site is terrible on mobile: the tab switch at the headers of some docs is so big that just two tabs don't fit into the screen.

By contrast, Apple, which is often praised for its product aesthetics, never makes marketing content like this about its design language. It may present creating emojis as a huge feature or inflate some of its claims a bit, but in general, they let the product do the talking.

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diegof79

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thewebguyd  1 month ago

> By contrast, Apple, which is often praised for its product aesthetics, never makes marketing content like this about its design language. It may present creating emojis as a huge feature or inflate some of its claims a bit, but in general, they let the product do the talking.

On top of that, when Apple makes a change or does a redesign, it's usually not overly disruptive (new macOS settings aside). The core functionality and layouts remain more or less the same, but it's just a new coat of paint. I still use my Mac the same way today, with the same keyboard shortcuts and workflow I did in 2006. Meanwhile, Windows has gone through no less than 5 total UI disruptions since then.

  • formerly_proven  1 month ago

    > it's usually not overly disruptive (new macOS settings aside). The core functionality and layouts remain more or less the same

    ios 18 photos app?

    • Aerbil313  1 month ago

      It was overdue for a redesign. I find the iOS 18 Photos app much more usable, it's been clearly redesigned with a focus to make a faster and more aesthetically pleasing interface for the experienced user. It's significantly denser too, with a single scroll (under half a second) you can access way more collections and utilities, and those you want because you can customize. And this makes sense, the Photos app is not a new-user app, every iPhone user uses it every day, every user is an experienced user.

    • thewebguyd  1 month ago

      True, even Apple has been slipping lately too, particularly with apps.

      At least the core OS hasn't gone through a reinvention yet.

overfeed  1 month ago

> By contrast, Apple, which is often praised for its product aesthetics, never makes marketing content like this about its design language

I clearly remember the Jony-Ive-hagiography era, which I assume was organized by Apple PR/marketing. Perhaps it's more accurate to say Apple doesn't do this anymore.

freeone3000  1 month ago

But it has a 30% increase in the key attribute of “rebelliousness”!

  • kevincox  1 month ago

    Reeks of "we asked about 1000 attributes and took our favourite ones that happened to go up" despite those increases not being statistically significant.

Lammy  1 month ago

> However, this article has a lot of "Pepsi Logo" vibes

So wildly successful that we're all still talking about it even though they don't even use that logo any more?