What Happened To User Interfaces?

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UI for games are also a solid example of artistic interfaces

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.

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 😂😂

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.

That "Delete Card" animation on the old wallet app was pretty sick! Completely forgot about that.

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.

I turned 40 this year. Seeing Winamp skins just made me feel so OLD. LOL

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.

“What happened to UI interfaces?” As a front-end guy: “ADA/WCAG Compliance”

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.

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.

I just don't think that intuitive and beautiful are antithetical to each other. This is capitalism driving efficiency. Which is shame.

Having to come across so many "old design" interfaces which also don't work properly, the minimalist design feels like a relief

And the worst of all anti-patterns: pop-ups and stealing focus

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.