The Death of Personality (2017)(tdarb.org)
tdarb.org
The Death of Personality (2017)
https://tdarb.org/blog/death-of-personality.html
69 comments
Haha ah man that’s funny and also depressing. I miss the Web 2.0 icons. Really made me feel like I wanted to create something. Now it’s just flat corporate garbage
I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Oh wait, I'm not laughing. The old icon was unmistakable. The new one looks so vanilla I might never find it.
the old icon made me realize i yearn for something. it took me back to the first few versions of mac os x. i didn't realize how much i missed from those days, and now i both realize it and have a word for what's missing: personality.
it's kind of blowing my mind.
it's kind of blowing my mind.
Au contraire: HN’s interface. I know no one who is displeased with the simplicity of design except designers themselves*. Just like premature optimization for engineers, it feels like designers are building for themselves rather than their customer.
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
-Hendry Wadsworth
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
-Hendry Wadsworth
I was a newspaper layout designer in a previous life. The only complaint I have about HN is the line length on large-ish screens.
In my newspaper days we stuck to around 60 characters as an optimal line length for readability. I've seen up to 80, but even that seems to be pushing it. Once you stretch out the lines so much it's hard to track back and forth from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.
I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.
I agree that simplicity is a noble and useful goal, but when it comes at the expense of usability it's hard to swallow.
In my newspaper days we stuck to around 60 characters as an optimal line length for readability. I've seen up to 80, but even that seems to be pushing it. Once you stretch out the lines so much it's hard to track back and forth from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.
I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long. Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.
I agree that simplicity is a noble and useful goal, but when it comes at the expense of usability it's hard to swallow.
I'm reading the parent, top-level comment on a Macbook Air with a 13 inch screen and the first line is a whopping 194 characters long.
...resize your browser window? The text is as wide as you want it to be.
On the other hand, I absolutely hate it when I want wider or narrower lines, and resizing the window either causes useless whitespace or a scrollbar to appear.
...resize your browser window? The text is as wide as you want it to be.
On the other hand, I absolutely hate it when I want wider or narrower lines, and resizing the window either causes useless whitespace or a scrollbar to appear.
...no?
I have lots of tabs open, and every other site I use chooses a legible width.
You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab?
Sites are designed. Legibility is part of design. Appropriate characters per line is part of legibility. Full stop.
I have lots of tabs open, and every other site I use chooses a legible width.
You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab?
Sites are designed. Legibility is part of design. Appropriate characters per line is part of legibility. Full stop.
You think I'm going to resize my browser window narrower every time I switch to HN, and resize it wider every time I switch to a different tab?
Or you could just put it in a separate window of the desired width; maybe then you'd even have enough space on your huge monitor to see several sites all at once!
As I wrote the post above, I had about a dozen different windows open, all of varying sizes. Monitors have gotten much bigger, yet the users seem to have gotten worse at making good use of that space.
Or you could just put it in a separate window of the desired width; maybe then you'd even have enough space on your huge monitor to see several sites all at once!
As I wrote the post above, I had about a dozen different windows open, all of varying sizes. Monitors have gotten much bigger, yet the users seem to have gotten worse at making good use of that space.
Why the heck would I want to put HN in a separate window instead of with the rest of my tabs? I only want one browser window, I'm not going to change my workflow to accomodate a single badly designed site, nor should I have to.
(Nor do I have a huge monitor, I'm on a laptop...)
(Nor do I have a huge monitor, I'm on a laptop...)
Sounds like you need Stylus, or some other browser extension that allows for custom CSS rules.
Not disagreeing with your premise BTW.
Not disagreeing with your premise BTW.
This is something that has consistently bothered me about the web for most of my life. Why sites like Wikipedia (and many blogs) don't limit line length by default is beyond me. I usually just end up zooming in and/or limiting the width of my browser window.
Because if you want to narrow a wide window, you can just resize the browser.
But if I want to widen a fixed-with design, I can't.
So yeah, I'm with Wikipedia.
But if I want to widen a fixed-with design, I can't.
So yeah, I'm with Wikipedia.
> I was a newspaper layout designer in a previous life.
Such a cool-sounding job! Any fun stories to share from those days?
> Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.
Agreed. I always browse HN in a window that's half the width of my monitor.
There is something nice about the ultra-simplistic CSS that goes as wide as your window, though. Then, the user can just resize their window to find the sweet spot for themselves. The sites that force a fixed width for reading on everyone really miss the point, I think.
Such a cool-sounding job! Any fun stories to share from those days?
> Reading anything of length on this screen is decidedly uncomfortable when browsing HN.
Agreed. I always browse HN in a window that's half the width of my monitor.
There is something nice about the ultra-simplistic CSS that goes as wide as your window, though. Then, the user can just resize their window to find the sweet spot for themselves. The sites that force a fixed width for reading on everyone really miss the point, I think.
It was a cool job until the newspaper business imploded.
I have yet to experience anything even remotely close to the buzzing productivity of a newsroom minutes before the press deadline. Election nights were always fun because all the information was coming in later so we had to scramble. Obviously we knew about the time constraints beforehand so we could plan for it to the best of our ability, which of course usually fell to the curse of best laid plans.
I’m nostalgic for slower paced information flow and newspapers remain a near-perfect example.
I have yet to experience anything even remotely close to the buzzing productivity of a newsroom minutes before the press deadline. Election nights were always fun because all the information was coming in later so we had to scramble. Obviously we knew about the time constraints beforehand so we could plan for it to the best of our ability, which of course usually fell to the curse of best laid plans.
I’m nostalgic for slower paced information flow and newspapers remain a near-perfect example.
The line length even seems to be limited already, just at a (too) high number. WHen I maximize the browser window the comment texts use about 2/3 of the width.
I just tried and Firefox' reader mode automatically limits the width, though unfortunately that's not made for interactive use. I guess it might be a good idea for a browser plugin (if it doesn't already exist), similar to the ones forcing dark color themes on websites using CSS.
I just tried and Firefox' reader mode automatically limits the width, though unfortunately that's not made for interactive use. I guess it might be a good idea for a browser plugin (if it doesn't already exist), similar to the ones forcing dark color themes on websites using CSS.
> The only complaint I have about HN is the line length on large-ish screens.
I think it's fair to add that links/menu items/buttons are generally too small and close to each other on touch devices.
I think it's fair to add that links/menu items/buttons are generally too small and close to each other on touch devices.
That's a feature, not a bug though. Similar to an on-by-default no-procrastination mode.
There's a difference between "simplicity" and "simplicity at the user's expense." Outside of HN, major trends in design include: Making all your phone's icons look the same, making it harder to quickly find what you're looking for. Low-contrast gray text on white backgrounds, which are nightmarish if your eyesight isn't good. We can keep going here.
More to the point, HN achieves simplity without going to an extreme where the user experience is negatively affected.
More to the point, HN achieves simplity without going to an extreme where the user experience is negatively affected.
HN could use a serious mobile update.
All links and buttons are freakishly small.
All links and buttons are freakishly small.
I just want dark mode.
Customer rarely knows what they want until they see it. A designer building for himself and a designer building for the customer are the same thing, right up until the point the design is released.
The premature optimization here, is not trying skeumorphism again, because of a feeling.
The premature optimization here, is not trying skeumorphism again, because of a feeling.
The internet c. 1995-2005, and probably before, was lacking in fun design but was so straight forward that I miss it, save for constant pop-ups. Websites like Craigslist, Wikipedia, HN, are a few of the last bastions of content over pretty.
The main counterpoint I'd try to come back with would be that apps arent special. For almost all apps, the apps highest service is to fade into the background, to become undistinct & not noticed. Cute might possible draw some early smiles for a little, but for anything enduring, cute tends over times towards noise & pointless distracting & unwelcome character.
There were some real losses though. The tension between flat & unobtrusive vs flat and indistinct becomes a usability issue. Clear separation of elements & sufficient contrast can be lost.
In some ways, it should be more a question of what the user wants. Apps used to sometimes have multiple skins, winamp being an over the top notable one, but I believe IM programs like trillian did too. The old gtk2 themes on linux allowed users far more flexibility in picking what kind of an experiemce they wanted, what level of contrast they wanted, what the look & feel.would be like. The alow march towards everyone being beholden to crazy crafty designed UI's we were force fed is, imo, part of what drove the counter-push towards flat; users lost control, it was way too overloading an experience, and flat became the more neutral acceptable dictated/company-driven style.
There were some real losses though. The tension between flat & unobtrusive vs flat and indistinct becomes a usability issue. Clear separation of elements & sufficient contrast can be lost.
In some ways, it should be more a question of what the user wants. Apps used to sometimes have multiple skins, winamp being an over the top notable one, but I believe IM programs like trillian did too. The old gtk2 themes on linux allowed users far more flexibility in picking what kind of an experiemce they wanted, what level of contrast they wanted, what the look & feel.would be like. The alow march towards everyone being beholden to crazy crafty designed UI's we were force fed is, imo, part of what drove the counter-push towards flat; users lost control, it was way too overloading an experience, and flat became the more neutral acceptable dictated/company-driven style.
Google has recently screwed this up too with Material You where every single icon looks basically the same. App icons should be distinct. They are there for you to recognize the app! Monochrome and uniform shape does not help with this.
Most annoying is that the clickable elements are not identified visually.
This does have an upside. Sort of. People are more accepting of dark patterns, as when you have to mouse over the ad before the "x" to make it go away appears. In a different place each time, for the worst cases.
This does have an upside. Sort of. People are more accepting of dark patterns, as when you have to mouse over the ad before the "x" to make it go away appears. In a different place each time, for the worst cases.
‘DOWNLOAD NOW’ hahahahaha
It's funny, the new Google icons are literally using disruptive camouflage.
If you're drawing shapes, why the fuck do you intentionally break them? Shape-breaking is the exact thing animal and military camouflage do to make animals and humans less recognizable in the environment. And Google applies it to something they want to be spottable.
@mcclure111 used a colorblind filter on them and they look better, as expected, because the shapes get broken less.
Google basically failed Design 101.
https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1313541935022342144
If you're drawing shapes, why the fuck do you intentionally break them? Shape-breaking is the exact thing animal and military camouflage do to make animals and humans less recognizable in the environment. And Google applies it to something they want to be spottable.
@mcclure111 used a colorblind filter on them and they look better, as expected, because the shapes get broken less.
Google basically failed Design 101.
https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1313541935022342144
I very frequently open the wrong Google app on my phone because they're too similar. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've gotten Photos when I wanted Maps or vice versa. I sometimes hit Slack when I'm aiming for one of the other two.
My brain basically chooses icons by color content, so when everything is a primary color picker, I err frequently.
My brain basically chooses icons by color content, so when everything is a primary color picker, I err frequently.
Perhaps this is deliberate? The user "discovers" a new Google app by accidentally clicking on it when they really wanted Gmail or Maps?
Yes, im speculating its distruptive design meant to produce some form of anxiety in the user base, add some hard to pinpoint friction so users pay more of their mental cycles in the said software and cause them stockholm syndrome so they’re hooked. It could also be nothing of this but mere incompetence, producing change to resell the old at a future time. Regardless, it’s all to mess with your mind because as a user you never have the option to keep the old familiar and you always have to relearn stupid interfaces, ocasionally click the wrong button, be forced out of the happy path and sometimes get angry and but options to disable this/that.
Im at the point that if something gets annoying I simply drop off. If ads for example become unavoidable Id stop consuming, %99 is utter waste of time anyway. End of rant
Im at the point that if something gets annoying I simply drop off. If ads for example become unavoidable Id stop consuming, %99 is utter waste of time anyway. End of rant
I just wrote about this in my blog. I'm lazy so I'll copypaste it here.
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Linguists already understood a long, long time ago that redundancy is not a bug, it's a feature; it's what allows you to decode a message even if you don't get it fully.
I feel like interface designers should’ve understood the same already. Sleep-deprived, with poor sight, not tech-savvy enough to get it right, using a non-native language because the native one is not supported, interacting with the program while taking care of a kid, there are a thousand (no, a million) ways that users can miss small tidbits of info conveyed by the design, so that redundancy is essential.
Yet they didn’t. On the opposite, the current design trends boil down to redundant → removable → should be removed. Also known as “minimalism”.
You end with icons that look the same, not quite sure if something is clickable or not, those ugly switches that assume (why is there always some assumer behind poor decisions?) that you're aware of the "right = on, left = off" (or that on/off makes sense in that context), so goes on.
And it’s kind of funny. If you actually point this out, plenty designers (or other laymen, like me, except that they agree with the design decisions being pointed out) will be quick to spit the same fallacy: “it’s new so it’s better, as an assumer I assume that you live in the past”… yeah, nah.
This may or may not be related to the fact that I still use MATE, instead of GNOME 3 or similar.
________________
[Non-copypasted] Someone mentioned HN’s interface. It's the exception that proves the rule because, when you actually analyse it, it has all tidbits of redundancy here and there; such as the "next", "upvote", "collapse" and "reply" buttons appearing for all comments. A minimalist designer would've removed them all, and made the content of the comments clickable.
_______________
Linguists already understood a long, long time ago that redundancy is not a bug, it's a feature; it's what allows you to decode a message even if you don't get it fully.
I feel like interface designers should’ve understood the same already. Sleep-deprived, with poor sight, not tech-savvy enough to get it right, using a non-native language because the native one is not supported, interacting with the program while taking care of a kid, there are a thousand (no, a million) ways that users can miss small tidbits of info conveyed by the design, so that redundancy is essential.
Yet they didn’t. On the opposite, the current design trends boil down to redundant → removable → should be removed. Also known as “minimalism”.
You end with icons that look the same, not quite sure if something is clickable or not, those ugly switches that assume (why is there always some assumer behind poor decisions?) that you're aware of the "right = on, left = off" (or that on/off makes sense in that context), so goes on.
And it’s kind of funny. If you actually point this out, plenty designers (or other laymen, like me, except that they agree with the design decisions being pointed out) will be quick to spit the same fallacy: “it’s new so it’s better, as an assumer I assume that you live in the past”… yeah, nah.
This may or may not be related to the fact that I still use MATE, instead of GNOME 3 or similar.
________________
[Non-copypasted] Someone mentioned HN’s interface. It's the exception that proves the rule because, when you actually analyse it, it has all tidbits of redundancy here and there; such as the "next", "upvote", "collapse" and "reply" buttons appearing for all comments. A minimalist designer would've removed them all, and made the content of the comments clickable.
At every turn I promote the book “About Face : On Interaction Design” because for sure most app teams haven’t read it. There is a rhyme and rhythm and reason why some things work and others do not. Every day I could make a list of fallacies in interaction: and this is coming from the top dogs such as Apple and Google to small programs and websites, there is still so much to improve. There is still lots of room to innovate as well!
In my admittedly imperfect memory, I thought it was Microsoft and not Apple that led the charge with the first wave of “flat” interface design, Google quickly following. iOS 7 was a round of catching up, and could only have happened after Steve Jobs.
Remember the much-derided Corinthian leather of the OS X address book, inspired by his personal Gulfstream? He loved that visual approach.
iOS 7 was sold as bringing the software more in line with the minimal hardware design philosophy. But it was really a response to industry trends.
Remember the much-derided Corinthian leather of the OS X address book, inspired by his personal Gulfstream? He loved that visual approach.
iOS 7 was sold as bringing the software more in line with the minimal hardware design philosophy. But it was really a response to industry trends.
Visual Studio 2010 was the first Windows app with flat design. It was almost impossible to figure out what the icons in the tool bar were doing. They slowly added some color in later releases but none of them were as clear as Visual Studio 2008.
When UX design is about how to decrease usability least with the new design instead of increasing usability, something has seriously gone wrong.
that is funny, just the other day i was thinking about how i wished twitter, in particular, felt more 'fun', and started making a stylesheet to try and make it feel more 2006-ish or something lol https://i.jollo.org/xoYwhYpb.png
To be honest, maybe i'm in the minority, but I don't want my tech/UI/designed stuff to have 'personality'. I want it to fade into the background as if it isn't there so i can get on and live my life.
I want it to be simple, to get out of my way and do what it is supposed to do. I feel like the world and particularly tech products are overwhelmingly noisy.
I yearn for everything to be more simple. Less notifications, less ads, lets annoyance. Don't take over or interrupt my life, enhance it with functionality then get out of the way. I don't want it to have a 'personality'
I want it to be simple, to get out of my way and do what it is supposed to do. I feel like the world and particularly tech products are overwhelmingly noisy.
I yearn for everything to be more simple. Less notifications, less ads, lets annoyance. Don't take over or interrupt my life, enhance it with functionality then get out of the way. I don't want it to have a 'personality'
First thing i do, when i get a OS, is take a iron broom to the various Programmer Egos in the room. It has to go, the notifications, the ballons, the updates and other busy work simulators. GUI goes grey, the various empty real estate modes are turned off.
Then i try to protect the environment i created from the damage the original creators can do. Take a snapshot, kick the VMs Network driver if needs be. If something has annoying sound adds, i rather rip the sounddriver out of my phone then let it play loud - even in the background. Nobody is taking my attention hostage, i learned programming to turn my devices into servants of myself. Any coup by others will be meet with brutal punishment, and if it annoys me enough, that punishment will be available to others as a crack.
On my ideal workstation, your GUI designers starve and your bloat programmers hunger.
Then i try to protect the environment i created from the damage the original creators can do. Take a snapshot, kick the VMs Network driver if needs be. If something has annoying sound adds, i rather rip the sounddriver out of my phone then let it play loud - even in the background. Nobody is taking my attention hostage, i learned programming to turn my devices into servants of myself. Any coup by others will be meet with brutal punishment, and if it annoys me enough, that punishment will be available to others as a crack.
On my ideal workstation, your GUI designers starve and your bloat programmers hunger.
Then I build a circumvallation around it. When the bells and whistles try to sneak back in, I build another circumvallation around that one and fight the siege on both sides!
You seem to be talking about something completely unrelated. A design personality does not get in your way.
Modern "design" seems to revolve around cost-cutting and letting people who cannot design to LARP as "designers"; Thankfully I can still install a skeumorphic theme and icon pack.
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As a counter, I think what isn’t pointed out here is that minimalistic design is important to increase engagement. Intricate, pretty, interesting things are also exhausting after a while. Minimal designs do a good job at allowing users to compartmentalize and ignore without too much difficulty.
More likely, it's just aesthetic trends. Styles crash in, spread widely, become stale, and get replaced. Often those replacements call back to prior styles while exploring new dimensions to them.
To think that today's style finally achieved some objective progress about engagement and exhaustion is just post hoc speculation.
Minimal design is itself getting exhausting, and there are a number of styles that are coming in to challenge it, including intentionally garish designs that nostalgically call back to the Myspace/Geocities aesthetic that many young designers are fascinated by.
To think that today's style finally achieved some objective progress about engagement and exhaustion is just post hoc speculation.
Minimal design is itself getting exhausting, and there are a number of styles that are coming in to challenge it, including intentionally garish designs that nostalgically call back to the Myspace/Geocities aesthetic that many young designers are fascinated by.
I hate to be the guy bringing up crypto, but case in point: look at the design trends happening there. Curve finance was cool partly because it looks like Windows 3.1
Regarding Mac and dock icons, I prefer an unobtrusive (but static) dock at the side, which results in rather tiny icon sizes. While this used to worked great, starting with ADock on classic Mac OS, with Big Sur this has become something like the following (on grey background and transparencies disabled): the terminal is the black, square blob, the calculator is the tiny bar I'd never associate with a calculator, Preview is the invisible one, Maps is the one I don't even see, the Bin is the one I wouldn't even recognise for its lack of contrast, weren't it not for its position at the very end, etc. None of these icons communicate to me in any way or sense. – Well done. (That is, if you were aiming for the heat death of your design universe.)
UIs have trended toward flat minimalist utilitarianism while everything under the hood has trended toward bloated web UIs built on 20mb of JavaScript or apps larded up with spyware and gratuitous telemetry.
Simpler UI, gratuitous complexity beneath.
Simpler UI, gratuitous complexity beneath.
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Worry not, HN: there are plenty of upstarts building interesting tools and platforms drenched in personality. UI centrism will continue to refine itself forever, but that still leaves plenty of room for fun apps to shine.
An example I bumped into just this week: https://www.artbreeder.com/
P.S. "visual design doesn’t involve UX design" is not a common designer belief. "UI !== UX" (the reference I'm assuming they're making) means something else entirely.
An example I bumped into just this week: https://www.artbreeder.com/
P.S. "visual design doesn’t involve UX design" is not a common designer belief. "UI !== UX" (the reference I'm assuming they're making) means something else entirely.
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My Biggest issue when reading a lot of sites is that i dont like seeing the content in the middle. and the screen not being entirely used. Most of the time when im browsing i will check some stuff on hackernews on emacs. but only because i want to see something real quick for a break. i also find i have to style a lot of sites because they simply just either dont fit what i want or like certain fonts they use like O and 0 is not obvious enough. and i dont want to make a mistake on the content.
lovely. agreed -- the loss of personality comes from this insistence on design conformity... details make everything better.
read this article with this lovely music playing.
https://youtu.be/mcOYj2Jd6po
read this article with this lovely music playing.
https://youtu.be/mcOYj2Jd6po
Never underestimate the wants of clients. We are all in this chaotic ride together.
That is just design evolution not 'lack of personality'.
I prefer 'modern' except for the fact that there's a lack of borders and groupings, and designers try to get too smart.
I prefer 'modern' except for the fact that there's a lack of borders and groupings, and designers try to get too smart.
The Cardhop icon (packed with “personality”) praised at the end of the blog post now looks like this: https://flexibits.com/img/new-fantastical/logo/product/cardh...