Original question text by @phantomwise@lemmy.ml
What are the modern design trends you hate most? Feel free to rant! Mine are:
- Physical buttons are out of fashion, now EVERYTHING must have a touch screen instead! Especially if it makes the appliance more inconvenient to use. Like having to press a flimsy touch screen ten times to scroll through a washing machine’s programs instead of just turning a physical knob and pressing a physical start button.
- Every website looks like it’s made for a phone and was vomited by the same app in slightly different flavors of vomit.
- Actually EVERYTHING looks like it’s made for a phone… Like what’s the deal with all those hamburger menus on DESKTOP apps? Please just put a regular menu and same me some pointless clicking, it’s not like you’re lacking screen space. I especially hate that those menus can’t be opened from the keyboard like regular menus.
San-serif fonts across everything.
Camera bumps on phones
That’s not a design decision per se, but a physical limitation of camera lenses and light.
The thickness* of the device could be considered a design decision.deleted by creator
It’s a design decision that had to be made because they wanted to put bigger cameras in yes, pretty much all physical design decisions have to be made around physical limitations.
The removal of bezels on phones, the camera cutouts sometimes have issues and its all together worse, just for a technically larger screen, and Apps, so many apps are just packaged web browsers, but with more access to private information and such.
I don’t understand why they need the have the lenses in a bump. Just make the phone a bit thicker with a bigger battery
Yes this is so dumb. Razor thin phone with massive camera bumps. Who is asking for this?
Especially when the first thing you do is get a case to protect the cameras and make the phone sit level on a table
I think that’s kind of the thing. They can’t physically make the camera any smaller, but they assume you’re going to make the phone thicker with a case. So it’s a compromise based on customer preference.
Well ideally they would just make the phone more durable without a case, and the full thickness of the camera filled with battery, headphone jack, etc.
Seriously so much smartphone design is based on initial appeal, not actual usability.
For me, the issue isn’t just about durability, it’s also about how a cheap clear TPU case is way grippier than the metal or glass of the phone itself.
I love my Xperia, still has bezels and it makes the phone easier to hold imo
Minimalism.
It’s everywhere from company logos, to fast food interior design, and now the vexillology community swears by minimalist flag designs.
The open floor plan was the beginning of our demise.
Almighty Profit Motive™ forbid we proles find any semblance of joy in our lives and - gasp - interact with the physical world around us in any meaningful and engaged way!
No, we must be deprived of all dopamine outside of our designated corporate brainrot centers.
Every electronic item whether it be a hot water kettle, air conditioner or an UPS backup in my camper, even my electric toothbrush has to make a noise, a bing or beep when either the things starts, changes phase or finishes.
Every appliance, monitor, speaker, clock, really anything that plugs in has to have a blue LED.
Got a modem from the cable company installed in my bedroom, the indicator lights were bright enough to read by.
The problem I have isn’t so much that they’re blue, but that they’re bright. I have flashlights with modes dimmer than the average modern indicator LED.
Get some blue-tack and blind all those blinkers!
The lights have use, I cover them with black electrical tape to dim them sufficiently
LED indicator lights on things that have nothing to indicate. Does an electric fan need an indicator? Will you be confused about whether it’s operating or not if it doesn’t have one? Oh, it’s in swivel mode! Good thing it told me that, or I might have thought it was swiveling for other reasons.
These indicators help in troubleshooting. If the indicator says the device should be swiveling, but doesn’t swivel, you know it’s broken. If there’s no indicator, you might think you’re just too stupid to put it in swiveling mode.
Old-fashioned switches, of course, solved this problem without LEDs.
This button “style.” WTF even is this? It’s objectively and functionally terrible.
Also McDonald’s brutalism. But then, I’m happy not to eat there.
Someone on the design team heard that squircles are the latest shit and put zero thought into implementing them.
How was this person hired onto a design team?! You can’t even read the full button text because it’s cut off for no reason!!
Worse than the squircle button design?
- the height of the “Home” button isn’t even the same as the rest of the other buttons
- no spacing between the buttons
- the element surrounding those buttons don’t even contain buttons properly
- lack of proper spacing between the buttons and the containing element
I am not wanting vast swathes of white space between elements, but if you’re giving them background colors so that you indicate where the user can click (and thus interact with the button) at least have some decency to give them some breathing room. Sure, when hovering you can add an effect such that it either changes color, brightness, or gains a glowy border or what have you, but most of the time none of those elements are hovered! You’d be seeing them all crammed together like sardines in a tube!!
Oh, and I got so riled up that I didn’t even address that out of place “ExtraCare scan in store” element. Why is it even covering the “Discover” text? Was the foreground some interactive element that just popped up?
Sorry. The more I try to make sense of the UI, the more I think rounded/squircle buttons are the least of the problems there.
Your point are all 100% spot on. Also why would the “Scan in store” thing pop up when I’m in my bedroom?
Also why would the “Scan in store” thing pop up when I’m in my bedroom?
When I try using geolocation for my desktop or my phone connected to my home wifi, it is as if I were in the same building as my ISPs offices (or maybe servers?) I suppose it’s the same over there. Maybe there’s a CVS near (same building?) your ISPs offices.
- No error messages, ever. Because apparently users hate information with all their heart and are at risk of burning down cities if they ever find out what the fuck went wrong with an application.
- Disappearing scroll bars
Disappearing scroll bars
Isn’t this triggable in most OSs? Unless we are talking about mobile, which I lean towards disappearing because of screen sizes.
Worse than useless error messages are useless error messages that try to be cute/funny.
Uh oh! We made an oopsie 👉👈 sowwy we wost your data
Two buttons on the bottom of the window:
- “It’s okay fam!”
and
- “I’m a grumpy meanie who doesnt understand things happen!”
Users have somehow been trained to ignore and dismiss error messages. Probably from getting too many ad pop-ups.
Users are lazy AF and hate to read. No matter how instructive the error message, some people would rather open a helpdesk ticket because “the computer isn’t working again”.
It says right there your USB drive is full and suggests deleting some files to free up space, Karen! 🤨
Users have always hated computers but they now must use them and treat them as appliances.
When my parents needed a new computer, I told them “no hp ever, and don’t buy an anti-virus, it’s built-in now.” They obviously knew better than me and asked the salesman instead. They bought a hp computer with a McAffee subscription…
Colors. Society has been getting more monochrome for years. And now black and white houses are all over.
Houses are usually white to reflect heat and because white doesn’t burn out.
Oh man yeah, everything’s monochrome. Grey houses, grey fences, white cars, grey window frames, grey kitchens. Everything is so dull.
I am about to close on my first house and it has white aluminum siding. I want to replace the siding, but what color do I choose? Also the roof is red metal.
Red and green go well together. Perhaps a natural foresty color.
Yeah, like a Christmas house. Sounds very tasteful.
any color you want. Your local paint store can can mix any of tens of thousand different colors while you wait. Paint is cheap - spend the extra cost for their best paint and it is still cheap.
make sure you don’t move where a hoa puts limits on you - and tell your realtor not to waste your time on those places.
Paint is cheap
I mean, compared to gold bars I guess. (Guess who’s painting their house)
My house is a reddish brown with a green metal roof. My cars are black, red, and yellow, and I do everything I can to make sure that I am surrounded by at least some kind of light and color at all times.
If I was dating a girl and I found out that she was a sad beige mom, that would be the end of the relationship.
Give me back my God damn full keyboard and headphone jack. (Phones)
Boring flat dark design interfaces.
I miss the CDE colour scheme. The BeOS funky 3D icons. Buttons that look like buttons. Tabs that look like tabs. Now everything is just flat, bland and monochromatic. It’s sad.
What the hell is it with the Sterling Archer window borders? Y’know, where the active window is black, and the inactive windows are slightly darker black?
You can choose any colour, as long as it’s black.
Apps/websites that log you out too frequently for no good reason
They all have 2 factor authentication too. Sometimes I just want to be in another room than my god damn phone.
Electron apps. Write native apps. I don’t need a simple todo app using 300MB of RAM.
If only you could write cross-platform native apps otherwise.
Many tool sets let you do just that. Qt works fine.
The problem is that when we rely on capitalist companies to produce the software we rely on, they will reduce cost as much as possible. This leads to them not wanting to pay for separate teams to develop native desktop applications on Windows, macOS or Linux.
While I hate Electron apps as well, they are how Linux became much more able to run these proprietary apps society depends on. We know the capitalist companies wound’t invest in native Linux software, as the user base is too small.
Rounded screen corners.
