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Comment by fredsted | Hacker News Reader

I like the minimalistic UI of El Capitan. It gets out of the way, and puts in focus what I really want to look at: the content, Web pages, my code, my photos. My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at.

Buttons still look pushable, input fields still look editable. The Dock didn't lose any functionality whatsoever by having the 3D effect removed.

In my opinion, the El Cap UI requires just as much talent as the overdesigned (but very pretty) icons and graphics from the previous era. I don't miss the brushed metal and pinstripes, though.

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The Dock absolutely lost usability; all the icons look the same now. I practically stopped using the dock because I never find the apps I'm looking for quickly; I've switched to using Spotlight for opening apps instead.

The old "Pages" icon was instantly recognisable. The new one looks, at first glance, exactly the same as text edit and notes.

I don't think that the UI actually needs to get out of the way. We humans are perfectly able to ignore even the most obnoxiously designed mess (cf. banner blindness). But we are not very good at picking from many similar-looking things. Replacing the colorful sidebar icons with simpler monochrome versions now requires us to actively look for the icon you need, instead of just picking it intuitively.

Exactly why I make mine transparent: http://imgur.com/a/AXNy9

Contrary to popular belief these days, contrast is not the enemy.

What app is that you have the checklist in?

Just the built-in apple notes app - starting with El Capitan it has checklists now

How'd you make it transparent?

cDock: http://w0lfschild.github.io/app_cDock.html

>I don't think that the UI actually needs to get out of the way

Getting a bit fed up of listening to fellow designers preaching about "cognitive overload" over a few button shapes and icons then proceeding to ship designs where all the controls are un-styled blue text with the occasional semi-abstract line art icon.

I agree all the designs of icons all look the same and that's not the best thing, but using Spotlight to open things is just better anyways.

> My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at

Things looking better actually has a positive effect on usability.

Hmm, not sure on that one. A beautiful interface can be better but I suspect it's better to have an uglier consistent and intuitive interface.

I'm a long-term Inkscape user, they recently 'improved' the icons; it all looks wrong (but handsome in a minimalistic, low-visibility of chrome, sort of way) and disturbs my workflow considerably.

A beautiful interface can be better but I suspect it's better to have an uglier consistent and intuitive interface.

I'm not sure why the parent comment was downvoted. If the above statement was intended to mean that being consistent and intuitive is more important than aesthetics then that is almost certainly true, in my experience designing and testing UIs. Of course, the ideal is to have it all by using the aesthetics to support the functionality. Being attractive and being functional aren't mutually exclusive.

This is where, IMHO, a lot of generic minimalist/flat designs following the current trend go wrong: they sacrifice so much detail and so many possible ways to be visually distinctive or interactive that what remains inevitably all looks very similar and loses some of the visual cues that could help to guide the user in how the system works.

>Being attractive and being functional aren't mutually exclusive. //

But being fashionable and being functional are often opposing forces.

Seems to me flat web design was a reaction as the antithesis of an over-indulgence in skeuomorphism. We just appear to have thrown out a lot of affordance and visibility in that reaction.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "over-indulgence in skeuomorphism". However, if you're suggesting that the previous trend of almost photorealistic visual styles could sometimes become too detailed/cluttered/noisy or that UIs in that style sometimes lost cohesion because being photorealistic was about the only thing a lot of the iconography and window dressing had in common, then I would agree with both of those points.

Yes but a flatter look doesn't necessarily look worse.

But losing color arguably worsens the usability.

And I would argue that the new flat look looks much better. That's the problem with that statement, there's no universally agreed upon "good" look.

source?

Presumably there's a setting to use the old icons if you prefer them?

Nope. That would be a branding nightmare.

>branding nightmare //

I sort of understand, but no-one outside my family uses my desktop and when I worked in an office it was just me or the IT support people, so how is it about branding in the general situation. For media stuff everyone is likely to be using the default.

Removing the 3D effect on the Dock is the only visual change I'm onboard with. Too bad it looks so bad with transparency turned off. :/

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