Can we? Much like that top 40 song that comes on the radio way too often, I have come to find all the rounded corners off-putting. They are usually a signal of form over function, and often used by information sparse sites.
Give me square corners like HackerNews, old Reddit, or Vanguard any day.
From the article:
+ Boxy shapes are commonly seen as reliable, uniform, traditional, and professional.
+ Round shapes are commonly seen as charismatic, endearing, harmless, and friendly.
Sounds like you and the authors would agree.
Why Does ‘Mother’ Sound The Same In So Many Languages? The concept of “Mom” is universal — and, for the most part, so is the name we’ve given her. The reason is probably a lot simpler than you think.
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/why-does-mother-sound-the...
It's a little ironic to me that we've literally resorted to "cutting corners" with our latest UX trends.
I'm sure that it does despite being far from being my aesthetic
I mean I know as soon as I use it it's all disappointment but every time I look at the new Surface I actually want to buy one Windows 11 and all (if I could combine the talent and the means I'd r restore W2K look and feel immediately as by bid for the Nobel economic fake prize award for getting that many people back to working.
Recent HN discussion about the wyze cam app - it was pointed out to me that a feature I had never been able to find (and only put in a less than half-assed attempts to find tbh) - was via a HUGE green button on X screen.
Seeing as though I have used this app many many times over the past year plus, I went looking for it - and wham - it is actually there.
But.. it's a large sharp cornered bottom of the screen - which made it look like a header / footer / name of page to me.. it never dawned on me that it was a 'button' - if it had rounded corners and a drop shadow it would have be obvious to me.
Of course I had other expectations as well - that the 'thing to push' would be above the half way fold of the screen to access such an important function - and that the naming conventions would be done better - but I digress.
Now I did like the 'beauty' of slightly rounded corners back in the day when everything was sharp, and many web pages had 'sidebars' - I liked the look of a round corner there.
Sadly most content is absorbed via the mobile devices and such 'form' is not as much about beauty / style as it is to show function these days it seems.
Small data points, but another perspective that may not have been considered nonetheless.
No one could figure out how to print because it turns out that round thing in the upper left was basically the old file menu, but since it didn't look like anything else on the screen people were really confused, so much so, that as you see from the link above they just moved it to the tabbar/ribbon in the next version of office.
So, its doubtful it has anything to do with how round something is, and more to do with the drop shadowing and whether people expect a button in that location, and whether it looks like one.
so I can see how if all the other factors were aligned, that roundness would not be an issue - so you are right - but given that the other things were out of whack in the wyze screen issue - non-roundness vs roundness would of made a difference for sure.. but yeah, if the location was better and the sizing a bit better - I can see how roundness would not matter / make much of any difference.
Nobody does that any more.
(With a very few hackish exceptions, some of which may be news to you... ;-)
Checking IAWBM: the original site design used a Gif for the design element:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191222/https://slashdot....
https://web.archive.org/web/19980418031312im_/http://slashdo...
[1] https://www.famefocus.com/tv/33-things-didnt-know-battlestar...