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Comment by Gigachad

7 days ago

The new glass design feels fresh and playful. Like a more refined luxury version of Frutiger Aero. The current design is functional, but it feels pretty stale and mundane after years.

That is actually a feature. An UI should never be, under any circumstances, in line with a trend, fresh or different for the sake of being different.

It should, however, be as invisible as possible. Being only functional is a compliment.

  • Huge disagreement here. Maybe true for something critical like the control board on some heavy machinery.

    But for something like a phone or messaging app, I want to see the return of fun, creative, and unique. We had such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and then it all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.

    I want to see creative menus back, I want to see whacky UIs like windows media player skins back. Ultimately for basic stuff of low importance like your phone, the most absolutely optimal UI doesn’t matter, much like I don’t care for the most absolutely optimal furniture. Its visual appeal matters.

    • >We had such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and then it all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.

      I agree with the huge disagreement. That 2006-2013 era was, in my opinion, horrendous and takes the second spot as an offender just after “peak flat”.

      However, I never denied that visual appeal matters. But design is how it holistically works, not how it looks.

      Maybe, at some point, some team will get back to Dieter Rams 10 principles and hammer it into an UX experience. We were so close in the 90’s.

      Maybe we can agree on: make the os maximally unobtrusive by default but include options to customise to taste?