Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

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bogs
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Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

Post by bogs » Sat Sep 09, 2017 9:57 am

Was wondering if anyone else had caught this article about flat vs. older user interfaces ? I found it pretty interesting, since I tend to prefer older interfaces myself, which were less mono-chromatic in appearance imho.
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Re: Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Sep 09, 2017 4:24 pm

Good find. I had a discussion with a team member on this some 20 years ago when he proposed removing all graphic treatments that distinguish clickable from non-clickable elements. It was everything I could do to bite my tongue and not call the proposal insane, but thankfully user testing took care of that for me.

Related story of fashion over usability:

Internet is becoming unreadable because of a trend towards lighter, thinner fonts
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016 ... rds-light/
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bogs
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Re: Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

Post by bogs » Sat Sep 09, 2017 10:56 pm

Oddly enough (or perhaps not) I've seen examples of both of those that made it through user testing. Ting's website comes to mind, ghastly, isn't it? When you go to sign in, you actually can not see the box to click in to put your information. It usually takes me a while to poke around till I do locate it :(

I did find other references that seem to agree with it being a worse way to go from farther back than you would think, namely Affordances and Metaphors by Joel, and Scott Rossi's Fight Flat with Fancy (buttons for LiveCode) articles, both of which I found insightful despite the dates they were written.
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Re: Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

Post by mwieder » Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:23 am

Ah. Thanks for the links.
Yeah, that's the way I feel looking at the 'new' monochromatic LC menubar and tools palette - a bandwagon with a flat tire.
And the Property Inspector has always had a flat look, but it could use an injection of sexy itself.

...and don't get me started on the Project Browser.

bogs
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Re: Flat UI Design...Anyone else catch this article?

Post by bogs » Thu Sep 28, 2017 1:00 pm

mwieder wrote:...and don't get me started on the Project Browser.
(...looking for the 'starter' button...) :mrgreen:

I think you and I are holding hands on that one, as I mentioned previously in "Current IDE Oddities and Obstacles", I myself prefer a touch of color and objects that look (at least somewhat ) like what they are trying to represent.

I also tend to think changing a functional layout to a less functional one is a disheartening trend, though I have come across articles on both the pros and cons of such. While I would never suggest using the old gag "Programmer designed UI"
bad-functionaloverload1.jpg
with its gazillion buttons and fields, I do think the older project browser and property inspectors were far more useful than the current, and all elements worked far far faster (although -hh's testing AND contributions in the Tiny dictionary may show that speed at least is improving).

Of course, I don't use the current version very often, and certainly not for indepth use (unless I'm on the laptop, where I use Andy P's ide plugin), so I am probably not the best judge of such.
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