What Happened To User Interfaces?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ส.ค. 2024
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In this video, we explore the evolution of user interfaces and dive into why they have become so boring over the years. Starting from the vibrant and quirky UIs of the early 2000s, how usability and design patterns have streamlined interfaces, making them more uniform but also dull. We discuss the impact of Sci-Fi on UI design, how science fiction inspires real-world technology, and highlight examples of modern UIs that are bringing back creativity and individuality. Finally, we look at the current trends and how some companies are reintroducing cool, engaging, and beautifully crafted interfaces.
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🖖 Hey! I'm Enrico and on this channel I go behind the scenes of the design, psychology and stories behind tech and making stuff on the internet. I'm a tech Product Manager, builder of things made of pixels.
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The visuals or audio herein may not be utilised to train a machine learning algorithm of any kind without express permission of the Copyright holder (Enrico Tartarotti)
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Google needs to be broken up by Congress. It's horrible how evil they actually are. I'm old enough to remember "Don't be Evil". The hypocrisy should be palpable by now.
I'm so tired of having to check if I'm being censored. That should be evidence enough of some sinister behavior.
Hey, do you remember what was the name of that screen saver/animated background for android at 2:57?
UI for games are also a solid example of artistic interfaces
Yeah some games look awesome but some of them have TERRIBLE menu navigation bevause of that
Highfleet is my favourite example. It has an amazing skeumorphic UI.
Yeah Call of Duty having one pixel thick line for your armor
If we're supposed to be sitting more than 6 ft away from the TV then these lines need to be thicker.
I should really make it so that you could read it if it was on a 144 display so you don't have to stop to understand what the F is going on without being distracted and die.
Huuu I hadent thought about that but yeah!! Now I wonder what a Minecraft style ui website would look like
@@Kynatosh Should be more dynamic, right?
Imagine one of those Windows XP bugs which summon too many error dialogs, but as the number of error dialog boxes increases, the sound effect used changes. As I said, _dynamic._ Perhaps they stop using dialog boxes and simply bring up a terminal window.
You could be fitting a mascot character into all of this!
This change might stress out a user less and still let them believe that the computer _is_ having "severe problems", but in a more _"believable"_ manner, and let then know that the issues won't affect anything outside the computer, though they will require restarting the computer.
Imagine restarting your computer and having the mascot tell you that stuff went wrong, but that it's been alright since the restart. You wouldn't even have to view logs this way! Win-win for being both a cool and functional UI that _expresses_ things very well!
bro literally used Indian government website as an example of bad web design 😂. Yeah, I am from India and every fking Indian will agree with this fact. mostly it is a miracle if those websites even work. We just can't expect them to look good and work at the same time, no that is not possible here in India at least not with government sites 😂😂
I still have nightmares from that
@@enricotartarotti Just think of applying for jobs through those website
@@enricotartarotti That's the best website we have cuz its for foreign people, I wish you had tried the website we use to file Income tax returns xD
By the way, are you hosting a meetup? I'd love to meet you in person when you come to India. I'm from Bangalore (Bengaluru)
India is not for beginners🔥
German and Croatian websites are right up there.
The problem with flashy animations is they take time to complete, and people are impatient. An animation in a UI needs to be completed in a fraction of a second. They're there to show an action is completed.
Correct.
It's why high refresh rate matters. Can shorten delays while still showing animations.
@@LiveType that's not how refresh rates on screens work, nor does CPU speed matter for how fast an animation is done (doesn't matter compared to old computers like in the IBM turbo button and before where everything was mostly timed based off the clock speed)
I do like really fast animations (finishing in less than a second) to show that I'm navigating inside and interacting with the UI, but also, I like when I can still control the UI even if an animation is playing (it's non-blocking).
Animations typically can be interrupted, you don't have to wait
@@GIRGHGH typically it's exactly the other way around. And sometimes if they can be interrupted, it breaks something (a famous example is clock design in Android for setting timers, if you are faster than animation it sets to different values than what you selected).
Senior ux/ ui designer here. Just like anything that has transitions to mainstream e.g buildings and cars. The boring designs represents the defacto design for the masses, as it is trying to create experience that tries to cover all people. Thats why government services and banking is as boring as it gets but great accessibility. Howevever check out luxury retailers sites, gaming sites. Its focused at specific users that will appreciate fun and luxury athesticis.
There many boring cars, then theres Lamborghinis, and lambos are not made for the masses.
I'm sure many designers are also bored of the simplicity trend, but there needs to be a cultural shift for that to happen, e.g as you have shown in the 60s everthing looks retro futuristic, because the introduction of nuclear energy breakthrough.
Thanks for the perspective!
UK goverment websites are great though.
the Space-x touchscreen... sounds like what a manager would advocate for and not the actual pilot
That looks like a design from a 12-year-old boy who thinks "cool!" and "future!" as opposed to anyone who's ever, you know, flown. And if you try to call them on it they double down by calling you a dinosaur. I can't wait for the first crash because a pilot couldn't feel a button from muscle memory because it's a flat screen.
I turned 40 this year. Seeing Winamp skins just made me feel so OLD. LOL
I'm using the winamp from 2023 with my music library and great modern skins 🎉 in 2024 and planning to keep it.! ❤
@@MyrddinREmrys Does it still whip the Llama’s a$$?
It wasn't even Winamp, but Sonique, at least the one with the green head!
Didn't Winamp also run on Windows 95? I definitely remember using it on Win98.
Well you can still get winamp level customisation feel with reaper because it's made by the same guy😂.
I think user interfaces peaked right before the "aquarium" era. They were consistent and had clear design patterns, and virtually no unnecessary distractions. You could immediately tell that something is a button. Title bars were an effective way to explore and discover features of software. Window decorations and scrollbars were consistent across all applications. Buttons and switches were labeled with text you could read(!!) to understand what they do instead of some undecipherable icon you've never seen before (and will never see again).
The recent movement towards simpler, more consistent designs is definitely a step in the right direction but it is hard to do right (without throwing out important visual cues in the name of minimalism). It's all too common to see designers going for what looks good at first glance in a presentation instead of thinking in detail about how users are going to interact with the design.
This comment is so underrated. Thanks man. As a Product Designer, that's exactly what I was thinking.
YES, I thought that too. I think it's just cheaper to use automatically generated UI design patterns from libraries like SwiftUI, UIKit, etc. rather than thinking deeply about the different requirements of a music player, a shopping app, a photo database, etc. and implementing them yourself. Maybe games are the last playing field for innovative UI designs?
the thing is that everything is a button now a days
Now tell me should "Refresh tab" go into "View" or "Edit" menu?
It was step in very wrong direction. The ui you mentioned was almost optimal. Current uis are very bad for everyone. I literally mean everyone. Young folks cant comprehend you could do complex stuff with your device. Look up easy calc or planetarium on palm. Old folks cant find even simple actions - skype/whatsapp touch to show actions during calls. Profficient users are enraged by youtube tap to show actions and tap again to pause. Win10 ui where you cant tell where window ends and you click the bottom one when wanting to move the top one. I could go for hours on this. The current uis are piss poor quality and shit show. Bottom of the barrel and i would fire anyone who designed this. They are morons. Yes. Morons.
That "Delete Card" animation on the old wallet app was pretty sick! Completely forgot about that.
It's great, I wish we still had some apps that do such things these days
Imagine having to sit through that crap every time you had to delete a burner virtual card today
And the worst of all anti-patterns: pop-ups and stealing focus
And the giant ACCEPT ALL COOKIES button with, maybe, a tiny 'accept essential cookies' button. Seldom a no-cookies option though.
I disagree on the spaceship controls -- the touchscreen likely isn't substantially easier to use than the space shuttle's. SpaceX likely used the touchscreens because it's cheaper to implement and iterate on - same reason why new cars use touchscreens despite the increased safety hazzards associated with using them.
Yes! You do not see many touch sreen in military vehicles. Iterate ... that really is the mentality of the valley, fail fast, don't get it right the first time. Works for somethings, but not space exploration, aviation, cars...
I went into Design because of those old interfaces. Customizing windows XP to look like stuff out of a movie, I wanted to design animated flash websites..Some of the niche web design of that time are like a video game to navigate. But by the time I got out of uni, flash was dying and the minimalist trend became the norm. Screwed my whole life trajectory since I was somewhat aimless after that. Never wanted to get into modern UI/UX design that is so prevalent now.
Flash websites are awful, they have a "flashy" UI but terrible UX. Not to mention they're security nightmares.
@@bltzcstrnx The user experience was great on many of these sites, and while flash caused many security issues that didn't apply to these design studio made sites.
The problem was they were only really useful for say showing off 1 particular project or product. A pain to update or make changes and pretty bad if you had to send through any information in a form.
HTML did sorta catch up, But its always been more restrictive and no one does these promotional microsites anymore as social media sites just perform better.
@@Axel_Andersen Don't think for a second you represent most people. The bland boring minimalist aesthetic apple popularised is a boring plague that counter culture will eventually turn back on as is currently happening. You're a product of post modernism, functionality at the cost of beauty, art and exploration and that mentality can piss off like the cardboard tasting slop it is. If you applied your dogshit mentality to everything you'd be fed intravenously because taste is irrelevant to productivity.
Beautiful things make people happy and relieve stress and we wonder why everyone is so damn stressed and unhappy these days surrounded by mass market templated designs that all looks the same... stress is bad for productivity... But at least your grandmother wont trip up on some fancy steps or click the wrong link.
@@blakeariusexactly the issue is a lot of people use the excuse of it’s easier for users to understand how to use minimal interfaces than complex ones but that’s not true, we can make a learning curve that combines interesting interfaces that is easy for people to understand not completely dumping it for a lazier style
@@ayodeledavid3034 The problem is it's all designed for mass consumption now. Even something as simple as creating a transition animation for a dropdown menu. Most users just want an instant response. On top of that the animation script can act differently or not work on different browsers and it can potentially slow down the site that some people click off. All these factors mean its just way more economical not to bother with adding even the simplest of animated flair. The web has thus become a concrete jungle of bland accessibility.
I was flash UI designer. Now, I'm nothing.
Fuck broo, good old dayssss. Flash 😭😭. It basically made the web back then.
I miss the depth in computer OS design not because I want it to look like stuff in the real world, but our eyes are suited for 3d vision. The flat design aesthetic that has taken over the last 10-15 years is painful to the eyes exactly because it IS SO FLAT. It denies our natural vision in favor lazy design at the expense of our ability to see more clearly. Mac OS has become so devoid of life. I want the brushed aluminum look back. I want texture, shadows, etc.
Yeah, it's like UI designers were so desperate to get away from Windows 7, that they went all the way back to Windows 1.0. One thing Microsoft was really good at in the 1990s versions of Windows was making thinks look like they could be clicked on. They got fancy with XP through 7, but did a full reset with 8 and the flat crap.
Everything has to be designed with a "Mobile first" mentality. They don't care about desktop users as we are just a small market compared to mobile users. Problem is MS hasn't accepted that we are the majority of their market since they have consistently failed in their attempts at the mobile market.
@@Roxor128 I finally found my corner of the Internet. I agree with everything you’re saying things back in the day felt like they had effort put into them.
The SpaceX one looks like a guy decided that it would be way cheaper to use a touchscreen, even though it is less reliable
yep. less reliable because of everything, radiation, durability, repair, everything..
It is not just the art getting lost, these minimalist designs are also much harder to use. A few years ago everyone started wondering why buttons look different from UI labels, and you know what, it looks much more *slick* without those clunky signifiers. That really sucks as a user. It is painful to watch someone trying to use an app or website like that, and a few years ago that was basically every website, and every Android app. It was terrible.
If a building were designed like that a door would look exactly like the rest of the wall because can't have a ClUnkY recTAngle, and anyone wanting to enter would have to go push on every inch of the wall to see where that door is.
I like that parallel with architecture, I think in both architecture and software design there's some disdain for users involved.
well, I've seen quite a few buildings already where doors are only discernable from walls because they some kind of minimal handle somewhere. (gaps in the walls don't help finding those, because they get regularly inserted even if there is no door)
This. I hate having to spend time trying to figure out these gestures of every new gadget who decides they're too cool to have a few clear buttons
Rectangles are the future, mon.
simple UI is good. nothing is simpler than a box with a text label. animation exists for feedback only.
btw, this is not a "modern" interface, eg vim had no buttons 30y ago, only a status bar and several text input boxes. and people love vim so much
Been trying to teach my mom how to play OpenTTD.
She kept clicking on the labels, because she assumed they were a different set of buttons.
It's interesting how whenever this topic comes up you'll have a lot of people saying that a big driver of modern UI design is accessability, but also a large number of people complaining about how difficult and inaccessible they find many aspects of modern UI design. It sounds like modern accessability practices have some unexamined blind spots.
sounds like bs to me, we all seemed to navigate the early internet quite fine, i was like 15 on myspace.. i stole code from here, code from there, like we all did, themed up a page, did the same with vampire freaks later on, html, all on a pc i was never taught to use outside of this is limewire, this is a p2p program, this is a burnt iso, and this is an emulator lol, everything else i worked out myself and so did so many others, so if someone needs shit basic to i dunno, check their bank, maybe they should get good lol
I would be happy to see "artistic" UIs return, as long as usability isn't compromised. The problem with the "flat" takeover, is that a "simple" UI does not equate to "simple to use". The flat takeover often left me downright angry, as distinct and intuitive real-world UI elements were squished flat, indistinguishable, and impossible to use.
Thanks for the video and I love your accent.
Software engineer (Programmer, Software Developer, Software Engineer and a transitional label or two between) for 29 years, I certainly remember what you are referring to. A popular term at one time for this was "Mystery Meat" navigation, and it was absurd and obnoxious (MySpace). This was before such a thing as UI/UX, and Google's material design won, for good reason, their minimalist design and standardization across apps made it easy for non-technical users to use most websites (later web apps). Ultimately the web is about converting users to customers, and different/creative/non-standard UIs hurt those conversion numbers. Which is a bad UX for the customer and obviously bad for business. So for web apps that actually matter, that isn't going to change. Thank god.
What kind of would be cool if more customization would come back. Like into your own profile on TH-cam etc. but also that websites would offer different layouts, themes for users. I know there are plugIns for that but since there is no absolut standard or framework it will always be a little buggy until the point every page uses the same "bootstrap" or other framework to start from.
Flat design exists so companies can make a decent-enough UI without having to pay for talented graphic designers.
@@s1nistr433L take
Even in the 90s, there were still companies trying to make their UIs playful and friendly. Apple, Be, Palm, and a lot of Nintendo games from the SNES era went for that kind of look. The stark blandness of Windows up to Windows 2000 was on purpose - it was supposed to look businesslike, since corporations were Microsoft's biggest customer. As home computers became much more mainstream, Microsoft did kind of expand their color palette and soften up their design with Whistler.
And then Apple came out with Aqua, so Microsoft panicked, went apeshit and made Windows XP look like a Fischer Price toy at the last minute, eventually pivoting toward a more glassy Apple-like look with Media Center Edition.
I honestly miss the cartoony pixel art look of the mid to late 90s, though. Most people never really got to experience it, even if they had a home computer. But it was just so charming.
The blandness of Windows up to 2000 was the good kind of bland: it kept out of your way but made it easy to tell what could be clicked on and what things did. A little reading comprehension got you 70% of the way there, experimentation took care of another 20%, and reading the manual (or help files) did the final 10%. The blandness we have now doesn't make it clear what's clickable, avoids text like the plague so there's no way to use reading comprehension to try and figure things out, and rarely even includes help files at all, meaning figuring out a new program is almost entirely trial-and-error.
@@Roxor128 No, it was ugly, tasteless, and instantly stale. Apple was way ahead of Microsoft in the 90s in terms of UX.
@@luke_fabis Definitely agree with you there. I don't see it mentioned much here but personally I blame Apple and Google for most of this, as seemingly overnight everything became "mobile-first" so creativity had to be thrown out the window in favor of the need for grandmothers with thumbs - I get it, but I can still be salty about it. And then effing SEO and Bootstrap and now we're in hell.
"People caught up with technology." Ehh, did they? Or was technology simply made simple enough for people who don't understand it to actually use it? When I speak with people who aren't traditionally "tech people," I find it really easy to notice that they don't "understand" things, they just know how to "do" things. These design rules you speak of, make things uniform enough that people don't need to UNDERSTAND technology in order to use it. People don't need to learn how to use a computer, they simply need to learn a minimal amount of symbols in order to complete certain tasks. This is also why we're seeing a change in generational computer literacy. It used to be the case that parents would ask their children for help with their computers, and now, children actually ask their parents for help whenever something goes wrong, because young people, who have grown up with this modern design philosophy, actually don't learn much beyond "click button X to make thing Y happen." There are obviously exceptions, but this does seem to be the general rule. So perhaps one might argue that modern design philosophy is TOO "good" or at least too simple. Perhaps it's a good thing, to not make things too easy? Perhaps we SHOULD cultivate a society where complex tasks actually require a certain level of understanding?
I'm a late GenXer. Our generation (and older Millenials) grew up with technology as it progressed. We went from the command line interface to clunky UIs that were so slow they weren't very functional. Windows 3.1 was a little better, but Windows 95 was a revelation. It opened up accessibility to people who didn't need to understand how computers work but needed to write a document or create a spreadsheet. But as time has progressed and accessibility for ordinary people has improved (even if it is a bit boring but it improves access for disabled people) what has really fallen down is education. Younger generations should have learned a limited array of functions so that they can navigate the increasingly technological world but they have not.
I'm a college professor. The level of technological illiteracy in younger generations astonishes me. I'll give you an example - one class (population genetics if you care) I was teaching *PhD students* and there were some statistical calculations that needed to made. Nothing complicated, just the chi-square test. In order to ensure they understood what was going on under the hood, so to speak, I made them do all the steps of the calculations from scratch in Excel. I made a lovely, easy-to-use spreadsheet with the data, and all they had to do was input a couple of formulae to do some basic calculations (but not using Excel's native chi-square function). It was essential for these students to understand (hilariously, some students go into biology because they think there's less math.) One student wasn't getting the right answer, so I went over to help (small class, only 5 students, so it's easy to give personalized help). I navigated to one of the cells where she needed to input a simple formula to calculate allele frequencies. It didn't have a formula, just a number. I asked how she had done it. She had used the calculator app on her iPhone.
I was honestly staggered. Why are we churning out people who don't have a basic grasp of common workplace applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat? Going back to my original point, we have come to a place where some highly simplified UIs are killing the ability to learn more complex programs. Unless you have an interest, you don't need to learn how to navigate a CLI or write code in a common programming language (although it might be good if they did). But you do have to navigate the business world, even if you flip burgers or clean offices for a living, especially if you want to advance into a career.
I'm a CLI girl which is why I love Linux. I still use vi to write code because I'm super old-school and don't need the bells and whistles of an integrated development environment (IDE). I like using LaTeX for writing. I'm forced to use Windows and Office because writing manuscripts or creating a presentation is easy when you have non-tech colleagues who may need to make comments and suggestions. I don't expect younger generations to be like me, but we have got to stop oversimplification that is leading to technological illiteracy.
@@clairesimpson7329 Rest In Pepperoni for those students that got into biology to avoid math and ended up on a PopGen course. 😂 On a more serious note, I do feel that my ability with software has gone down as UI has simplified. I don't need to think as much about what I'm doing anymore. Which has lead to the feeling that all of my workflows are sub-optimal. "Surely there must be a better way to do X task" has been an increasingly common thought.
@@clairesimpson7329 A while ago I read a few articles about how Gen Z and Alpha doesn't understand folder structure and directories in an OS because they grew up on mobile phones.
(The article is by Verge with the title "File Not Found")
Thank you - my elder Boomer father has been using an all-in-one running Ubuntu for a decade now with I think only one support call in to me in that entire span. My Gen-Z child can't understand anything beyond the simplest concepts and aggressively resists learning.
Enrico roasting a modern house is gold 😭🙏
Butter 🧈
Imagine someone walking out and listening to him calling his house ugly 👁️👄👁️
2 important reasons this video _implicitly_ stated, but didn't sufficiently specify: 1) accessibility and 2) cost of implementation/maintenance.
1) A lot of "fancy", "hip", "fun" designs simply aren't accessible. People with visual and/or motor impairments may be a minority, but still accounts for millions of users. Most if not all screenshots of "fun" interfaces from the early Internet wouldn't come close to meeting WAI-ARIA standards.
Additionally, building "fun" interfaces that work well/predictably with assistance tools like screen readers is either highly inefficient, or flat-out impossible.
2) Even if we ignored accessibility, the fact is: websites and products we use nowadays are designed and developed by hundreds of designers and engineers. _Any_ large organisation strives to have a cohesive, manageable codebase. The more "non-essential" complexity you add to it, the more difficult that task becomes. That is why a lot of the most "innovative" new designs don't come from large organisations, but small teams or even solo developers.
For the record: Even with all of this, I am not saying there isn't room for improvement, while still honouring accessibility & scalability. But it's just very, very hard. That's why we don't see it done often-yet.
1) Not saying accessibility isn't something to consider, but we are optimizing a 5% case instead of the 95% majority?
And we are eliminating possibilities of making something cool, but don't because of the 5%?
2) That sounds more like company culture: Do we want to make something that barely works, and just fullfills the requirements or something we can be proud to have shipped.
@@Mark-wz9uh 1) There is no definitive answer and different people have different opinions. Personally, enabling 5% of global internet users to participate is an absolutely valid trade-off; at least if we’re talking about platforms that are essentially considered a utility, like social media, streaming platforms etc.
Where the target audience is NOT global I would agree it may not be of massive concern.
Also: I never said accessibility is the only consideration. As I wrote in my last paragraph: I believe there is a lot of room for improvement even WITH accessibility in mind. It’s not “either-or”.
2) I don’t know if you have ever worked in a large software organisation. Personally speaking from experience: getting software built (at all) consistently is already incredibly difficult. There is an inverse relationship between “fun & exciting” and “code maintainability”. With limited time & resources the short-term economic decision for a lot of companies is to prioritize “maintainability”.
Of course, this comes with long-term impacts on user happiness; but that’s a lagging metric with nebulous impact on long-term revenue. Thus many, if not most companies are willing to ignore it for short-term growth and profits.
I said it before and I said it again: I am not in favor of these incentive structures. I am just saying they exist; and boring design is rarely a lack of will by engineers and designers, but by necessity imposed by large organisational structures.
This.
@@Mark-wz9uh yes it is allowing the 5% to actually live a normal life, I don't know what's so hard to understand about that, acessibility no matter the field implies doing that and this doesn't mean you are hindering the life of people by doing this, it's quite literally the opposite
also if you wanna act like it's a conspiracy you can't even blame acessibility because acessibility is still mostly an afterthought, other factors at play are way more important and I imagine the original commenter also means acessibility in the sense of understanding, looking at an UI and having proper understanding of it
3:50
We're gonna die!
Old Space ship: Just use this switch!
Elon Space Ship: Just get lost in sub menues trying to find the button that saves your life
Some wires get damaged and the display goes dark.
Old Space Ship: Just feel your way to the right button by touch.
Elon Space Ship: Completely blank screen, impossible to know what menu you're in, or if it even registers touch actions.
The space shuttle is perfect example of good user interface. Everything has a place and will stay in its place and will not willy nilly move around the UI with every new version. I can see all the functionality there is and I will develop a muscle memory to find things. .And everything is documented in manual where actual answers are answered and not some useless help/search funtionality.
Like many craft, the space shuttle had many refits over it's service life, including changes to the control panels.
Also like most air and space craft, the panels were built around "MFDs", or Multi Function Displays. These are programmable LCD screens that can be configured for whatever purposes the pilot finds most useful at the time.
But yes, everything was extensively documented. Good interfaces still require this!
@@SimonBuchanNz I know. But they were not TOUCH screens. And they were carefully crafted and tested. Unlike most UI we see on consumer gear, cars or on the web.
@@Axel_Andersen Yes, there is a tradeoff of being simple vs being able to master an interface. Most apps today optimize for being simple for first time users. The cost is, that an experienced user at some point cant become more proficient.
@@SimonBuchanNz MFD style screens with programmable buttons is what the auto industry should've adopted instead of going all out on touchscreens for their infotainment
I like having a nice screen to display infotainment, but also want tactile buttons to control music and navigation. An MFD would combine both of these things
0:05 only psychopaths do this
Actually a lot of modern interface design doesn't have good usability at all. Usability has nothing to do with minimalism. The current apple website for example is a usability nightmare. Usability is about how things function, where they are positioned, those things. Usability is mostly about being relatable, being discoverable. For example one important rule is that an online button should be recognizable as such, which can be done in very different styles. Another example is the ubiquitous plus-button every other App has., except it does something totally different every time., that is horrible and not usable at all.
Designers who claim that their boringg style is like that because it has a high usability are just making excuses for their lack of creativity.
We need to separate usability and recollection and visual load. Yes they work together of course but serve different purpose. And as you say should not canibalize on each other.
The balance is also different depending on app and use case.
An important thing is that ui's for productivity / work - we need it to be plain, simple. The cognitive load of doing things differently when we are under pressure from a time and mental perspective is perhaps too much. We can't manage if things are too different. (Though, Microsoft make the dreadful UI's - think about Office for a second and if you're really unlucky, Sharepoint ).
Yes. Same as books and magazine. Sure playful comics. Children books and some fancy art / fashion magazines is cool. But there is reasons we many books is basked in shared design guidelines. They work and as you say reduce the cognitive load.
It is meant to be neutral as the content itself is the key thing to focus on. Not the ui. It should ideally be easy to understand but apart from that fade away into nothingness
Companies aim for all people, and assume many people are idiots.
To be fair, that's a correct assumption.
Skeuomorphism is one thing, but dark patterns and attempting to account for even the most technophobic user are what really drove us away from good design.
I find the most refreshing perspectives here in every upload :) , Thanks Enrico 🙌
bring back skeuomorphism
I themed my macOS so that it looks like the version 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Those old icons are beautiful.
I bet they're going to try to bring it back in the next decade but in the most unauthentic and unstylistic way possible
The icon for the app to check the time will be a smartwatch. 😆 🤣 😂
Thks a lot for that video. Was a pleasure watching and highly relevant for my job as a PM Software. Going to redesign our software and your perspective gave me some good inspirations for the tasks ahead.
++ hope your app turns out to be fire.
If you like your job, I'd suggest you don't. Look up data-driven development before taking the advice of unemployed TH-camrs.
There will always a pendulum that swings to left and to the right.
Where things are the most interesting is when the pendulum is in the middle. Designers can finally made the push to the next frontier.
Such a great video. Loved the architecture comparison!
What drove the redesign with iOS was the fact that Scott Forstall- the then head of iOS and guy responsible for Apple adopting skeumorphism in the first place (he appears incidentally at 7:31)- got forced out of the company, and Jony Ive was given free reign to implement his hyper minimalist aesthetic over every aspect of Apple's product line. It had nothing to do with users "catching up". In fact, the flat design of iOS 7 was highly contentious, there were plenty of people who hated it.
It's the one size fits all mentality and following trends. Some sites need to usable, highly responsive and very perfomant. Others do not. Other can get away with being slow but colorful and quirky. App designers need to not only know their audience but the context in which their audience use their product. For example, I use my phone for communication and entertainment but when I need to do serious work, I reach for my PC. Is the user trying to entertain himself or is he trying to complete a task? Is the user looking for an experience or for efficiency?
I guess it becomes a question of function vs form. Do users prefer aesthetics or would they rather get their task completed as quick as possible? I personally enjoy micro interactions and the fun animations in UI as a user, so I’m curious what others feel.
Like everything it’s a balance. Also let’s not forgot that many micro interactions are not just there to be fun and nice looking they also serve cognitive functions
Honestly, most of these "simplified" UIs also have less function than older interfaces, by removing features to get a "cleaner" look.
@@Cyfrik I think it’s very different. If we talk mobile ui then there was not really any old. If we talk more desktop app then they mostly have same features or have them implemented in a better and more intuitive way.
Then there is a lot software last years with less features. But that is not due to the ui but due to targeting a more casual mainstream audience.
@@litjellyfish I think that's a very naive way of looking at it. It's fully possible to target mainstream audiences and still provide a full range of advanced features for power-users. This is about taking control away from the users and putting it in the hands of the corporations.
@@Cyfrik And yes you can have advanced features. I never claimed that. Maybe I was unclear. It’s possible with modern UI approaches to allow as much control with less complicated visual controls. It’s about rethinking how interactions work. Sure nothing wrong with say Photoshop but say Procreate on iPad allows almost as much (and sometimes more) control with a lot less in the interface. Instead it favor touch gestures and more interactive widgets.
Like the time of a top cluttered toolbar and a similarly cluttered property panel is long gone. Sure this interface still is needed for some software. But you can still allow if not all the much % of the control and feature set with a more modern approach. Hope that clears more what I meant.
And I would argue that companies actually want as is giving more and more control to the mainstream. Compare user generated content today vs 10 or vs 20 years back. Those figures speaks for themself right?
I don't miss the clunky user interfaces from the past. But some were very good such as PS3's Xross Media Bar.
Simple could look amazing though. Mixing material design with a bit of skeumorphism and focus on a more vibrant color pallette and apply shadows to text as well or little easter egg animations can make ui design a bit more fun
love your content please never stop making videos like this!!!
It's just designers copying each other out of paranoid fears of being 'uncool'. Showing my dad what icons do on his iphone, made me really realise how stupid icons have become. They're not only just a few squiggles, but they literally don't look like the original skeuomorphism design they were based off. We're not ancient Egyptians, I'd rather just have... like... WORDS
that's what microsoft did with windows phone
It’s ironic how you brought up ancient Egyptians, whose hieroglyphs, that originally represented the thing that they looked like, have devolved into the very letters, you used to write this, becoming completely unrecognisable and devoid of their original meaning :D
Skeumorphism can be interesting but looks really bad most of the time
It's really not, it is because it is best practice.
@@mayatrash Functionality should come over looks everytime. This is where skeumorphism is a win many times.
very good video, you conveyed the information simply but interestingly, even the sponsor segway was done in a pleasing way
The "unnecessary" is what makes life exciting and much more worth living. If you remove the "unnecessary", the thing becomes lifeless and unrelatable. If people can't relate to something, they feel alone and neglected.
Let’s bring back skeuomorphic UI !
I always love watching your videos! You should have way more subscribers, thanks for always posting great content. I’ve been inspired by sci-fi movies throughout my life and would also think how those are probably where a lot of people get their ideas!
Love this video and such content! Thanks for sharing 🫡🙏
The guy speaks of monotonous aesthetics when his entire set production looks like an apple keynote setup.
The Patek Philippe example at the end was a chefs kiss. Great video man
Nice video, probably one of your best imo
as for me personally, i use an android and like apps designed with Material You (changing colour based on wallpaper) and also same looking interface.
I like it for the consistency and I really love the colour switching based on wallpaper. It's not necessarily that i like that the apps are somewhat minimal, its just that they are consistent and not too much in your face (idk how to describe it). Like the Apple IOS torch brightness thing you showed, i liked the old one because it was simpler.
For your Italian architecture point, as a non-italian, isnt it also just that Italian buildings are more locally focused (creating things in pieces/stages and so there's a lot more detail in each of the pieces)
I would settle for usable, even though these interfaces are clean and bland/boring, they're not always usable, sometimes the features you want to use are buried under menus, how can the interface be so clean and boring, but be so hard to navigate?
I think detailed style will come back one day. But I doubt it'll be popular in apps like tiktok. This style is more suitable for games
When Dark Patterns became a thing to not let users escape the using of a set product ... User Interfaces became what they are now .... Soulless
I actually strongly disagree that minimalist design makes things simpler and easier to use. I frequently misread flat designs in ways that would never happen in a skeuomorphic interface.
The biggest offender may be those tabs that indicate that they are active by simply drawing a colored line underneath them. I frequently mistook a different tab as being the active one while coding (in code editors the tabs may be colored differently to indicate different things) and one time I mistook the colored line for a scrollbar. And then there are text input fields that lack an outline and therefore look like labels or titles. I’ve been bitten by those as well.
Hear hear!
Agree with most of that. Having said that I think one of the things is that designer forget the old adage "Make it as simple as possible, BUT NOT simpler".
In some user interfaces for websites I can not tell the difference between a disabled button and a button, because the design between websites are inconsistent.
@@Voreoptera Hear hear!
@@Voreoptera Oh yeah, consistency in design is dying as well. Remember when checkboxes were square and radio buttons were round? Nowadays, designers just flip a coin to decide the shape of their UI elements.
And yeah, the “gray button that may or may not be disabled” and the “piece of text that may or may not be outlined with a thin line and may or may not be a button” don’t help, either.
@@ThePC007 Checkboxes ? You mean Toggle switches ? /s
Very beautiful, congratulazioni!
Well not only beauty has gone away from UIs, but also options. Technical options have been progressively hidden behind menus and often completely removed. I think that there's a misunderstanding: how things are presented to the user for simplicity and with the idea of driving the user towards a certain behaviour, should not drive towards "removing" options and control over the the product.
Honestly, I've been annoyed at the "clean interface" trend since the late 2000s. More often than not, removal of features is its main purpose, while user-friendliness is the excuse.
I just don't think that intuitive and beautiful are antithetical to each other. This is capitalism driving efficiency. Which is shame.
Exactly. Putting extra aesthetic touches into designs costs money, which eats into profit margins.
Why? Just why? For everything that happens you blame capitalism. Up there with a stuck air in your lungs.
Capitalism just means freedom. You get to keep your stuff and not get robbed, murdered, or enslaved.
If you mean the profit motive, it would motivate you to not just reduce costs, but make stuff that people will want to buy.
Lmao, capitalism is based on stealing. What are you talking about @Lestibournes
@@bradbradson4543 Lol. That's just commie propaganda to convince you to become a serf in return for "free stuff"
This video just speaks out of my soul. Thank you for making it.
A 10 years system looks more modern than nowadays systems
😮 Nicely delivered
No, no, no. Vista was "not too slow" when it came out. It was simply that for some really, REALLY strange reason, a small subset of very loud and non-computer savvy users have always had this idea that "a new OS must be faster (on my old hardware) than the old one." This has NEVER been the case. A new OS has pretty much always been slower than the old one, because it's designed for use with the newest and future hardware. If you had a sufficiently powerful computer, Vista was fast and slick. I bought a Dell XPS M1730 back in the day, and it came with Vista, and it absolutely flew. All the special graphical effects it used? Hardware accelerated... As long as your graphics card wasn't too old. Which for a lot of people, it was. Especially for non-gamers. For anyone with current hardware, it was totally fine.
Did Vista have other issues? Sure. But "being really slow" wasn't a fault of the OS, it was the fault of all those people with old computers, expecting a new, forward looking OS, to be faster than their old one.
Useability might be an excuse for why the defaults are so bland and minimalistic, but it doesn't explain why customization options are so limited.
Hmmm, definitely seen this video topic twice before recently.
It would be lovely to see UIs become nice to look at again, rather than everything being bland, featureless, dead and soulless. I imagine it'll happen one day, but when idk.
Hey Enrico, curious, what's that instrumental music that starts playing at 8:55.
I hear it all the dang time and would love to look up the artist.
I love nostalgia as much as the next guy but new interfaces are infinitely more enjoyable to use despite being more bland because they’re so fast. Speed over artistry where both can’t be achieved at once.
Bro that start bass was insane. 😂
The flat designs came from the need to save cpu and therefore battery power. A Windows 3 / 95 style button requires you to draw a grey rectangle, then draw eight lines around it to make the bevel, then draw the caption in light gray as a shadow, then again in white. Then when it’s clicked on, you have to redraw all that but also redraw the caption slightly shifted to appear pressed, then redraw it all again when you let go. With flat design you don’t bother with any of that, you just swap the background colour.
Very few programs allow me to make the UI look as I want. Obsidian being the main one with so many options. I mean, you can even make it look like a terminal from fallout...
yea but my is potato so i cant go real al out
@barutaji Yee, I tried switching to it a month ago. Unfortunately, I have too many programs that only exist on Windows to fully switch over. It is oddly miles better than Win11...
This.
Liked and Subbed before even watching the video. Thanks!
È interessante e piacevole ascoltarti, si impara sempre qualcosa. Grazie 👏🏻
I immediately recognised Lazise! Fellow Veronese, good luck with your channel!
Last I checked you can have both nice looking interfaces and usability
I don't think that 256 color screens were that primitive. They struggle if you want to show every possible color at once but in reality, designers use limited palettes like three colors, and they fit to 256 palette with their shades easily. Just look about that Xbox menu. There so plenty of colors in 256 color palette, että that it is possible to give every UI-element own 16 color palette and animate it changing palette.
Issue was resolution, early 90s 320x200 / 320x240 was fast to animate everything realtime, 640x480 was static. Year 1998 hardware was capable of animating 640x480 well to any kind of fancy scifi interface. 640x480 just made fonts coarse as we commonly used 12px fonts in main text and 16px for graphical menus.
I'm a programmer, not a designer, but I'd LOVE to work on some kind of sci-fi user interface. I've dabbled in the past with customizing UI's and while I couldn't quite get the functionality out of it that I wanted, it's always been sort of a dream to just make a program full with sci-fi UI gimmicks
I think you are correct but bias, i actually enjoy the simplicity and that hiuse was a nice house with low maintenance. 😅
Awesome video. Could not agree more. That's why I'm going all in for 3d for the web 😊
Your video reminded me why I studied graphic design and UX design. All the amazing UI back then and now I do the same boring stuff. I wish there was a way to bring that back. Accessibility is a big thing but I always wonder, WHAT IF, apps could have a fun UI and an useable and accessible one like the old apps that allowed custom personalization and themes that had real UI changes not just slight color changes. You got me dreaming man. ❤❤❤
This is pure nostalgia. The era of skeuomorphism and frutiger aero made sense at the time, but I'm glad it's gone. That notepad that looks like real paper was fine for a beginner, but also quite limited. With a monochrome background you can do whatever you want.
Also, the segment about the modern house is hilarious, cause the house actually looks great and is clearly not a copypasted suburb shoebox.
You can disagree, but UIs are tested on humans and subconsciously, humans generally prefer cleaner and less cluttered UIs, even if they think it's boring.
“What happened to UI interfaces?”
As a front-end guy: “ADA/WCAG Compliance”
WCAG standards are so ridiculous not even FAANG meets them most of the time
@@yungmetr0135 At a company who mostly does, but it can be extremely taxing at times keeping it stable, mainly because of other devs.
So those are EVIL?
@@JSSMVCJR2.1 Depends, suing pizza websites for 2 million dollars over an inaccessible experience?
@@ToddMagnussonWasHere Did that happen?!
07:46 this is such a great comparison! I always had this mindset when it comes to Urban Design and Architecture, but I never really thought of Product Design in that way. Love the message of this video!
Fundamental thing I think you're getting at is narrow optimization, in this case speed of use, drives out all other considerations. Cap-touch in automotive applications is horrible because it requires vision to be moved from road to UI, tactile isn't a thing there -- it is designed-in distracted driving.
As usual, you vids are great!❤
9:16 which movie is this scene from?
Good video although there are two points that I have to criticize:
1. He argues that colorful and cool Frutiger Aero interfaces like Windows XP and Vista were the trend back then to make computers seem more approachable and usable, but then a few minuets later he makes the argument that everything today is dull and boring also to improve usability...? - self contradiction here that doesn't at all answer why the styling is gone
2. It's not very fair to compare the Space Shuttle and SpaceX Crew Dragon interfaces as the Space Shuttle is indeed a far more complex spacecraft that had a large cargo bay that could carry satellites, a robotic arm, airlocks for EVA, and was also a fully-fledged glider spaceplane with wings, ailerons, etc, while the SpaceX capsule is a mostly automated crew pod that has none of the above. Their interfaces reflect the huge difference in complexity and capability between the two, and not necessarily a fashion/UX trend.
Usability and simplicity do not equal "mysterious meat ui". I still want labels visible without interacting with the element, and I want labels, buttons, links, and plain text easily discernable from each other. And don't even make me start on stupid toggles I always need to double tap just to figure out their state (and sometimes even that doesn't help). Ui is a victim of laziness and incompetence. And those same lazy, incompetent people had the position to make their dumb decisions a standard.
100% accurate. Well done (again), Enrico.
Google trashed them with flat design and every other corporate entity followed suit. They chase minimalism which isn't necessarily what you want for a user interface. You don't want to strip away features you want the important ones prominent even if that means there's quite a few prominent at once.
What was the name of that screen saver/picture for android at 2:57? I used to love that!
it's called nexus, if you have an android phone you could install the apk i think
I have the same thoughts, but unfortunately in my daily life I'm yet to find an interface that brings the excitement of the 90's back. That's to say I'm not too sure about the future of UI. Those interfaces really celebrated the capabilities we were seeing with hardware in the past, and need to do it again so that people feel excited about the technology, not their brand loyalty.
My computer can do so much more now, but it seems the only thing most companies and software is worried about is monitoring my usage, monetizing my person information, and generally just giving a less or equal experience from 10-years-ago with added surveillance.
I'm amazed you didn't mention LCARS... one of the most beautiful but also completely abstract and incomprehensible interfaces ever.
Interesting video! :)
Cool vid bro
There have been a huge shift in aesthetics when Google's flat design concept with web 5.0 came as a standard. Fast-forward 15 years and everything uses that! It was a determined effort to standardize the web interface and design.
I've never done it before, but this video encouraged me to create my own material. This complete misunderstanding of what creating user interfaces is all about and the inability to distinguish art for art's sake from designing practical things really deserves to be distinguished.
great analysis brought over in a very listenable fashion, the 12 mins just flew by - a joy to listen to, thanks... 🙂 my pet hate is notifications... why do so many actually very good apps think they need to bombard us almost every day with, often unnecessary, notifications..? perhaps that could be a topic for you...
artifically speeded up the video and its irritating as fuk
to be honest iam genuinely suprised we haven't seen a bunch of copyright lawsuits between companies claiming to own various design patterns.
4:24 There are reasons like some countries don't have faster internet, takes less load and helps in emergency situations! But yes they're boring and complicated...
The flat style of windows 10 is a good example. Its windows are harder to control, because it is not always clear where to click when you want to move or scale them.
Great video, hit too close to my heart. Also, there's one mainstream program that let's you go all in with customisation like nothing else, its Reaper. Its made by the same guy who made winamp in the 90s, the audio player example you showed in the video.
I really enjoy extremes…. You went to the extremes to get the point across. You’ll be a great writer ❤❤❤❤❤
bruh that fake fly bug thing in the intro terrified me ;-;