Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

But maybe it’s time to fresh it up a little? Get rid of gradients, dirty washed-out colors, unnecessary separators, add a little more air.

No, no, no, NO!!!11 I've had it with these "sea of floating text on an expanse of white" redesigns, seeing yet another one follow this mindless trend just disgusts me thoroughly. The lines, subtle gradients, and other affordances of the old design serve to organise and direct your eyes into the appropriate sections; without them, everything blends together into a jumbled mess and it almost looks like the stylesheet didn't load fully.

If you feel disoriented, give it a minute.

I've had to put up with such redesigns for literally years now (I don't remember when the trend started --- mid 2010s?) and I don't feel them getting any better --- and eventually get around to making a user stylesheet to make them look better than they used to.

In contrast to the article this is one of the very few redesigns of a site which I actually would like (not mine, previously discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17242367): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De17PIKXUAE27W6.jpg:large

If you know someone at Github, send them a link to this article. Maybe someone there will like my ideas and eventually get to implement them

Hopefully not. "Don't make me get out the custom stylesheet editor..."

Can't tell if the irony is lost that both GitHub UI mocks are by the same designer, Nikita Prokopov.[1][2]

[1] Windows UI satire https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1003593821723267072?s=...

[2] Honest redesign http://tonsky.me/blog/github-redesign/

Can some UI expert chime in what it is about the windows style redesign that makes everything so absolutely clear and easy to find? I can find everything literally at a glance?

It's not sexy, quite the opposite but god does it run electricity through my fingers. I feel like i would use the shit out of it.

Is it association and familiarity with the old windows UI or does it follow human nature better?

This is most probably the result of the UI making you resurface good memories of your past.

Anyway the old Win UI was extremely clear in creating visual hierarchies, when not too many layers were on the screen — modern UI tends to be optimized for a way larger amount of layers, or the opposite, a hyper reduced hierarchy complexity (not the ergonomic / perceived complexity)

Thanks.

I'd love to see a breakdown of what creates this clarity, like how the OP has for every element type.

I know it might seem like an exaggeration but I was physically invigorated by it.

It's called nostalgia. It's emotional, not rational.

Ask any 16 year old (like my son), who came of age having no context for what the windows 95 UI even looked like. Shocker, he vastly prefers flat interfaces, ie. like the design of Notion.

The problem I see in this github redesign has nothing to do with the fact that it's flat. It's tougher to use because it's just bad design. The three columns make it insanely dense in terms of information (eliminates any hierarchy) and adds in weird red underlines (which typically mean "error") for no reason. Also the button styles are all inconsistent in the final version.

The first part of the article was great, the second part he started going off the reservation. I think he's strong in terms of a UX thinking but lacks the skills of visual designer who would better implement his thinking visually.

No, it's not nostalgia, goddammit. It's because it contains good visual affordances. Skeumorphism isn't pretty, but it works because our eyes are naturally trained to perceive the visual hints. Our eyes are trained to subconsciously perceive depth via shadows. To perceive clear edges and group things by them.

I really, really hate that 99% of all UX designers are basically graphic designers who are good with visual flourish but without the tiniest bit of interest into half a century worth of HCI research into what makes interfaces visually easy to read. So they end up with whatever graphical look is hip without understanding the usability consequences. That may make a page look good as a whole in the "conforms to current graphic design trends", but it destroys the ability to organize the individual elements.

EDIT: Also, skeuomorphism when done right can be pretty, and if you really want you can still combine it "flat" design by using hints of shadows and depth for better readability - look at games like Snake Bird for examples of that. In general I agree with Bret Victor that the best place to look for good interface design these days is successful computer games, because if it doesn't feel right to play (that is: interact) with, the designers tend to throw it out, and it is the most likely place to see experimental interface design.

Skeumorphism produced good and bad UI designs alike, just like the new flat style. As an example what can work in terms of the newer style is google’s material design.

I am a designer and one of my favourite websites uses the browsers default theme.

Designers can run into the danger of rationalizing changes to fit the visual goal they want to reach instead of the other way around. Form surely should follow function — but it should also follow social convention and usage.

This guy is right that to a non-git person the commit mrssages make no sense. I remember when I started using it and asked myself why the discriptions of the directories are so weird.

Now that I use git I’d rather have them. Our designer here is rather quick in judging it’s usefullnes. These messages describe the state of your remote repository.

I am mostly fine with the proposed menu changes, but again throwing out useful things like the edit button or the fork numbers is not a good idea. This is exactly the class of things you wanna see when you open the main page of a repo and there is not much elsewhere where it would make sense.

If I had to redesign github, I’d first spend a fair time assessing what works and what doesn’t, then reorganize the thing and only in the end decide on how to redesign it. Removing existing functionality is always a thing that should be very well considered.

>I really, really hate that 99% of all UX designers are basically graphic designers who are good with visual flourish but without the tiniest bit of interest into half a century worth of HCI research into what makes interfaces visually easy to read

You probably won't be downvoted because of the audience bias here, but that's like saying "I really hate that 99% of all engineers are basically code monkeys with zero understanding of...[insert thing here]"

It sounds like you've simply worked with bad designers and/or got burned by a bad redesign of a product you use. Sorry. Just know you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

First, you seem to be confused about what skeumorphism is. You're arguing about shadows. Skeuomorphism is not about shadows. Skeuomorphism is when you design a digital interface to mimic the old "real world" task it is designed to replace. Like how Apple Books used to have a literal 3d bookshelf as part of the interface.

Moving away from this is not a "trend." It is the natural progression of technology. When more people read words on screens than they do on paper, the bookshelf ceases to be an affordance--it just becomes distracting visual noise.

Shadows play a large role in most modern "flat" interfaces. Material design is just one example. Not sure what your point is here?

Even if he is wrong about the literal meaning of skeumorphism- he very well pointed out what was right about the windows UI. And I think his intension with the charged statement was to convey the meaning that people talk without knowing what they are talking about.

My intention with discussing the meaning of skeuomorphism is to also convey that people talk without knowing what they are talking about.

Being vaguely angry about "young designers" and their "hip flat interfaces" is a common trigger on HN. I've seen it here countless times, and its rarely insightful. The argument is rooted in a the fallacy that designers only care about making "pretty" things.

Likewise, I've also heard it the same way towards engineers. 99% of engineers only care about cool technical solutions and not meeting users needs. When you've drawn such a broad stroke, it's not a basis for good discussion...just a flamewar.

I think he only got the name wrong- he was right about what caused Win UI to "just work" and in general about how the shadow stuff is useful

> Being vaguely angry about "young designers" and their "hip flat interfaces" is a common trigger on HN.

No, the triggering part of your message was the "nostalgia" claim, which isn't supported by the evidence. Even young people typically have an easier time finding their way around interfaces with an older visual design than a modern flat design (all else being equal). This has been tested.

The fact that you claimed it anyway tells me that you have opinions on UI design but don't bother to check if they hold up.

Would you mind pointing to a good resource with a brief write up on the state of the art of good UI, as you pointed in your first comment? I'd also like to read up on the shadow stuff a bit, on how to do it right.

I have a master in interaction design and I'm being critical of my own field.

EDIT: Also, no, I did not misunderstand what skeuomorphism is, your own definition of it is what is too limited. Using fake depth and shadows on a design element to give it a 3D look like a real-world button is a form of skeuomorphism, because it relies on an understanding of real-world buttons that can be pushed.

Thank you for going into detail- I was pretty sure it was UI and you pinpointed what.

Could you point me to some reading on shadow stuff please?

The Windows 95 "3D" look isn't skeumorphism. Skeumorphism refers to design touches that mimic real life objects. The big example is from early iOS which had things like virtual leather stitching in apps or lined paper in the Notes app or shelves in the iBook app.

As I mentioned elsewhere:

> Using fake depth and shadows on a design element to give it a 3D look like a real-world button is a form of skeuomorphism, because it relies on an understanding of real-world buttons that can be pushed.

Note that these effects are always on objects that have interactive behavior with real-life analogies. Windows for example can be "picked up" and "moved". It casts shadows to mimic the idea of one window being in front of another. The mock-up tabs in the Win95 interface can be clicked on and also mimic real-life tabbed file folders.

Yet at the same time, a table does not feature any drop shadow or fake depth effects. A table cell doesn't have a real-life analogy of an object that can be picked up and moved around. It does feature a visible grid to help eye saccades.

Look up the history of the desktop metaphor. It's based on actual physical desktops. You know, the ones in administration with paper folders which contain files. For most modern people it is skeuomorphism hiding in plain sight.

Just to be clear, are you only complaining about the OP's redesign? Or is this aimed even at the current GitHub look?

Not a UI expert professionally but here's what it is:

Windows has standardized and reused GUI elements across every application. So it's immediately clear what's a button, tabs, a subwindow, and how tab hierarchies work (notice they have a bounding box on the tab contents they will change).

Modern web-design disregards all of this because it prioritizes being visually pretty over being easily-recognizable.

I bet the last two aren't mutually exclusive... (i'm not a UI expert either)

Indeed... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

http://tonsky.me/blog/github-redesign/210_compare.png

Theres usually some value in design trends, but the OP's github revamp where you can't tell non-interactive text from buttons is painful. The whole point of a button is to indicate interactivity, if your idea of an interactive control is text with maybe a bar under it don't be surprised when users are totally lost.

I thought some of his suggestions were pretty decent. But then he just threw everything away by mucking around in the Code, I mean Overview tab. His last design, without the guiding lines, make it look like jumbled shit pie.

I have the same feeling. He proposed a very good changes and then started to mess up Code…

I wouldn't mind seeing the latest commit history there, but the stats are totally out of place.

Agree; though even before the latest commit history, I’d much prefer the README to be hoisted up there, so it’s at least visible when I first visit a repo.

At the time of this posting I got 13 points for expressing a popular opinion. I'm not sure it deserved it. Its not that I disagree with what I wrote, but it could have been more thoughtful. This kind of thing just reinforces my feeling that HN's vote system is broken.

I haven’t used the gui or windows as primary os for over a decade but that was instantly grokkable, they really nailed the gui in win2k been downhill ever since.

_If you feel disoriented, give it a minute._

The guy spends a very long article explaining how things could be laid out easier to orient yourself in and then asks you to give a minute to get used to his color scheme.

This criticism seems somewhat unfair. I believe they were implying that familiarity with the old design will strongly bias your initial reaction, and giving it just a few more seconds will help to avoid that trap.

No. If the new design is better, I will immediately go "oh wow, that is good". If I have to give it time until my bias goes away, the new design is not necessarily better, merely different.

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