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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I don't care if it feels like a place to get real work done or not. Whether I do get real work done matters of course, but I want it to look like a really nicely designed space too. And by nice design I mean beautiful to look at, not merely "designed to get work done" in the industrial design sense. Just like working in an office effectively shouldn't mean it has to be decorated with complete utilitarianism at every turn, nor should by screen.

Am I strange to tend to like app and OS redesigns if they make things look fresh, even when they might slow me down slightly, or even slow my machine down? I just wanted to be the contrarian voice here. Redesign all you want. It's ok to say "Let's choose just a little bit of form over function here". I usually like the new better than the old. No, Win2000 wasn't the pinnacle of Windows neither in function nor design. There I said it.

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> Am I strange to tend to like app and OS redesigns if they make things look fresh, even when they might slow me down slightly, or even slow my machine down?

It's not strange to like redesigns. But if they slow you or your machine down? Yes, it's strange!

Would you prefer a car that changed every year to a more "fresh" design, but each year make it harder to open the door and would let you go 5(km/m)/h slower? I definitely wouldn't and it's strange that you would, yes.

> make it harder to open the door

You mean like in the BMW i8 ? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T-upswNkRqE

Exactly!

I guess it would depend on what you're looking to get out of your car.

I only open the door twice - once to get in, once to get out - so a small nuisance like being harder to open wouldn't bother me as it's only a fraction of the time spent engaging with the car. However I have family members with terrible arthiritis who struggle opening car doors anyway, so it'd definitely be a factor for them.

I'm also not typically in a rush when I'm driving, so if the car is a little slower that doesn't bother me as much as whether I'm comfortable and enjoying the drive. Or even if the car was no more comfortable, but just looked better, I might actually feel some pride in it and that would give me a lift and result in an improvement to my mood. If my goal was to get from A-B as fast as possible though, then it absolutely would bother me.

I agree with this. Regular computer users are fin and like these UI changes. Most professional users don't, because it hinders them. You want to have all the horsepower available and to be able to work quickly, not prettier.

But I guess we're the minority!

> Regular computer users are fin and like these UI changes

My experience is that regular users hate changes, period. Doesn't matter if it looks much prettier now. The button isn't where it was or changed color and they are now confused.

This is starting to change as more people had computers in a phase of their life where they were happy to experiment. But it will still be many years until the majority of the working population evaluates changes on design and performance criteria instead of just disliking them for being different than before.

There are real issues with some changes, though.

Like Windows 11 for some reason centers the buttons on the screen. I'm not quite seeing what that improves since now things move around, and the start button is no longer in the very comfortably reachable corner by default.

I don't like this about myself, but these days when Google or Microsoft mess with the software I've been using for a few decades my first feeling is frustration and my immediate reaction is to turn off the new feature.

A few days ago, a new search bar showed up in Windows 11 and I immediately closed it without trying it in any way. Months ago, I switched to DuckDuckGo because I couldn't disable Google's search result highlighting. I hate the new microwave in our house because it doesn't let me type in seconds and instead I have to push some "Automatic 1" for a fixed 60 second interval (there's probably a better way, but my wife threw away the manual).

Sometimes, better is worse. I am so close to switching to a basic Linux distro like Gentoo just to avoid these surprises.

> I agree with this. Regular computer users are fin and like these UI changes.

<citation needed>. I don't think I ever saw anyone say more than "ok it looks kinda neat" and that isn't commentary on "liking" just "well, they changed it and it is not terrible yet".

Most of UI changes in long running software honestly looks like designers (or their managers most likely) trying to excuse their employment than anything acutally useful for the user

> Regular computer users are fin and like these UI changes.

Why would you think so? It's not like any vendor goes and asks them about it, before making a UI overhaul.

In my experience - which I recognize is anecdotal - they absolutely hate those changes, even more than professional users, because it's even harder for them to find their bearing again. Non-tech-savvy people in particular don't have the experience and developed mental models to pin-point and describe the sources of their dissatisfaction, so they round it up into "tech sucks" or "my computer is slow, maybe it has viruses, I probably need a new one".

Moreover, people would be up in arms if a perfectly good car, with a perfectly good engine starts consuming say 30% more fuel than an "update" ago.

This is a great analogy.

It's actually not a recent analogy https://blogarithms.com/2005/01/07/if-cars-worked-like-windo...

Computers keep getting newer and better features. Cloud software is in my experience leaps and bounds faster than legacy software, AI features have helped substantially and judging by ChatGPT will go on to help way more, videoconferencing has grown from a novelty to being able to handle people’s entire working lives (poorly, but better then not at all).

People have nostalgia for 98 and XP, but try to use any software from around that era and it’s the equivalent of riding a bicycle on a highway. Definitely not 5 km/hr slower every year

> Cloud software is in my experience leaps and bounds faster than legacy software

You and I must use disjoint sets of software then. For me, cloud software is universally slower than legacy software. Good chunk of it is because of the browser. The UI, by default, is jankier and slower for every interaction - to the point I can notice the delay on every click, which for desktop software even 15 years ago was true only when the machine was under large load - not literally all the time.

And that's without considering UI interactions that block on network requests.

And so, I find trivial webapps to be just jankier. For anything serious though, they're near-useless, as the performance drop prevents using the app or, in some cases, slows down the entire machine. 2D raster and vector editors, and 3D modelling software, is still done primarily as desktop apps for a reason.

I regularly use database software and certain queries that take hours on the legacy server-based software take seconds on the cloud-based software

Cloud-based software is server-based software. Cloud is just some damn servers that you don't own. There is no cLoUd. There are just servers.

> Would you prefer a car that changed every year to a more "fresh" design, but each year make it harder to open the door[…]?

I purchased a Tesla model 3 in 2019. Adjusting to controlling everything on a tablet in the center of the car was a huge change from every car I had driven previously, but I gradually got used to the UI and memorized the layout. In December 2021, Tesla launched a new UI that moved the buttons around and hid many single tap actions behind multiple taps. It was terrible. The last place I want a redesigned UI is in a car I currently own. They should have only launched the refresh on new models. It wasn’t the main reason I sold the car, but it certainly didn’t help. Big UI changes can be exhausting.

No but I’m certainly accepting - even enjoying - to re-learn the car-UX (which takes months) every few years, in order to get the new model. If there was ever an option to purchase a new copy of the old model which I already know instantly, I’d go for the latest refresh even with a long list of infuriating quirks added!

The problem is that it's gone too far to the other side, aesthetics with little respect for function.

It's akin to that office that has no desk because it would ruin the aesthetics. The desk has to be there, your challenge is (should be) to design around the functional requirements.

Good designers try to reach a good solution where multiple (seemingly opposed to each other) requirements are covered in such a way, they enhance each other's qualities.

That being said, designers work with customers and as a former freelance designer I can tell you that wrangling the customer is basically half the job. This is true even in a company setting.

Design is one of those fields where everybody thinks they know what works and everybody thinks they have taste (spoiler alert: they don't). I ultimately stopped working in the field because you literally had to manipulate customers into making okay choices instead of horrible ones and even then you had the occasional CEO just overriding weeks of work with some bullshit idea he had on the shitter.

Everybody blames designers, but designers rarely make the choices that lead to the results everybody sees. Designers just try to get paid.

I don't know who told me that this is a common thing among designers but it does ring true to me:

The designer described how every time they had to show a draft for a stakeholder such as a client or manager, they polished their design and then added some obvious design flaw like making something clearly off-center that should have been centered or similar. Then when they show their initial design, the manager says "Looks good but make that thing centered properly".

If the design had been flawless, the manager would find something else to object to, which would invariably make the design worse. So showing off the imperfect design leads to the perfect outcome: the manager or customer gets to feel like they contributed to the design but the design stays the way the designer intended.

I first saw that idea mentioned in a (deleted) 2010 StackOverflow thread [1].

[1] http://archive.today/EeAw7

This trick was used against Soviet censors as far back as 1968[1].

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062759/trivia?item=tr1788197

This is one of the Laws of Consulting, iirc, and it applies to anything, not just design: find something for your counterparts to object to and hand it to them, so that they can feel empowered.

More broadly, it's just political management of assemblies. Most governments do the same with controversial legislation: attach some wildly-outrageous clause to something slightly-less-outrageous, focus opposition on that, then strike it out. You then have the space to pass the bulk of it, which was your real objective all along, while claiming you "listened".

By designers I mean people who are involved in the design, I don't care what their official title is.

Having said that, at no point do I really believe the role isn't involved in decisions like hiding the randomize button in iphone music player.

>>And by nice design I mean beautiful to look at, not merely "designed to get work done" in the industrial design sense.

Yes, so.....win98/win2000 interface. I don't have any idea why you'd look at the attrocity that is win 11 and say it's "beautiful". It's not. It's mostly just empty coloured boxes that don't have any inherent meaning.

It depends on what parts we're looking at I guess, but I think flat looks good these days, I don't mind the rounded corners, I like the use of the palette in Win11 compared to Win10 (And definitely compared to Win98/2000 etc. which used too much contrast).

A lot of this is simply because the newer designs are based on large screens while Win98/2000 was hampered by the requirement to being readable at 800x600 and 256 colors. Using gradients, negative space and was a luxury not afforded in 2000 but it does help.

In the Win98/2000 days 32 bit color was already commonplace. 1024x768 was also becoming mainstream.

In fact Windows 2000 use different color pallete than 9x as it does not try to fit into the 16 color RGBI CGA palette. The difference is subtle, but significant.

Is there a good theme for KDE that hews closely to the w2k/w2k3 look and feel?

I have fond memories of using wxpx64 which was basically w2k3 desktop edition.

>Yes, so.....win98/win2000 interface.

I honestly hate how it looks and I think it is fucking ugly.

Yet I still defaulted to switching back to it (back when that was simple, don't think it's an option in win 10 anymore) just because the new one was so anti-functional. It was that bad.

I wouldn't be surprised if many users did once they knew that it was even an option.

Peak of "traditional" while still looking decent was honestly XFCE for me. Since then I went full geek and set up i3 tiling manager with basically workspace/screen per app, as I realized near-everything I do is just "running 2 full screen apps on 2 screens" so I optimized for that.

Ugly? Why? Ugly would be Amiga 3.1 with odd proportion based icons and crude widgets. Win 9x looks functional and usable, with 3D hints everywhere.

Yes, it looks functional and usable, I already said that.

I just find the look ugly. There is no objectivism in preference to how something looks.

I wouldn't see that as "ugly". Highly functional, maybe utterly boring, but not ugly. I mean, w9x looks as boring as an Ikea stool.

Ugly would be, with no arguing, the first editions of Amiga OS. Look:

http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1.html

http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga2.html

Windows 95, being designed for 256 colors, looks really fine. Ok, Mac's System 7 it's prettier, without any doubt, but as I said the Amiga OS 1/2.x versions are far worse.

Windows 95 it's boring in the sense of being tied to a corporation based style, with cubicles.

Your point is very valid except aesthetic redesign shouldn't impose performance penalties. Or if they do, they should ideally be opt in settings. Other than that, yes, computers can also be used as a creative space to explore art & aesthetics. They don't have to be only focused on brutalist functionality. But UI updates in many, even most, cases, somehow manage to bloat the app or impose tiny inefficiencies, which over several such updates, tend to add up. But this is a secondary concern to the primary one with periodic UI redesign, which is to make the app more and more unintuitive to use, even though the very reason for these redesigns is the opposite end. This I feel happens when UI refreshes are done for their own sake rather than genuine need, and also when adhering too religiously to the prevailing industry UI fashion trends, and no real user testing/feedback.

Right but form follows function should be adhered 100% with no exceptions for software which only use case is to enable running and quick navigation between other pieces of software and related stuff.

If your artstyle(s) doesn't fit usability patterns, change it or find someone else.

I can't say that I agree at all.

My computer is sort of like a toolshed. There's a workbench. There are some tools hanging up on the walls. There are some storage cabinets.

Whether I designed it or someone else, I'm here to work, and over time I get used to how things are arranged.

If tomorrow I come in and everything is different, it will be difficult for me to find my tools, and my efficiency will be reduced. If the tools are rearranged in a way that makes them permanently less efficient, I may get irate.

It's different if we're talking about the living room or even the bathroom. It's different if it's my casual clothes or the garden.

But my computer is none of those things, it is my workstation. And if anything gets in the way of that, I get rid of it and find a replacement.

I like your analogy. I got a shed myself and I like working on my bikes. Got loads of tools and it is so relaxing and satisfactory finding the tools you need at exactly the same place you left them. When my brother and me were living together, I would get furious when he would leave tools somewhere else (and vice versa) so I feel the pain.

Thinking a bit about this though, say Microsoft could argue that the toolshed isn't really yours. That you're merely renting/"licensing" it and they reserve the right to rearrange their tools at a whim, and they usually won't touch tools you own. I don't know how to counter-argue this though.

I think if Microsoft - and Apple, and an increasing number of software vendors - were being a bit more honest, they'd argue the computer isn't a toolshed in the first place. It's a theme park. You're supposed to "use it" to enjoy a controlled experience, and get monetized along the way.

You can see it in the language used in UI design these days. It's all about user experience and their journey. Not much about what they want to actually do with help from software.

> Thinking a bit about this though, say Microsoft could argue that the toolshed isn't really yours. That you're merely renting/"licensing" it and they reserve the right to rearrange their tools at a whim, and they usually won't touch tools you own. I don't know how to counter-argue this though.

This is exactly the case, and why I don't use their toolshed anymore.

You write as if you assumed that people back then did not care for aesthetics at all. But they did, quite a lot actually. Those designers just happened to be lucky to be working in an era when any novelty desires they or anyone in the audience had could be perfectly satisfied just by using the possibilities of then-latest technology. Very much unlike these days, inn which novelty is limited to details and subtleties unless they force it in destructive ways. Which apparently "they" really like to do, and get the reaction they deserve.

And while we are into ending a post with random opinion statements, yes, 2k was the pinnacle of Windows design.

>Let's choose just a little bit of form over function here

All I can think about is the Windows 10 Calculator. Prior to Windows 10, you could type Windows Key + R, Calc, and immediately type my equation. Amazing for when you're in the middle of a meeting and just need to calculate something right away.

But now it's a stupid app that takes a few seconds to load regardless of how fast your computer is. Needless bloat which seemed to have only only made things look pretty.

The best feature: it will fill the screen. Good luck using the mouse.

Just remember that if you have a little inconvenience from a redesign, that regular non-technical users have that inconvenience magnified a hundred times over.

What you're talking about is "juicy" design. It's what takes UX up a notch and makes applications a pleasure to use, similar to games.

I think what people are trying to do is combine the legibility of Windows 98 design with the juiciness of modern UIs, which as far as I know hasn't been done yet and is why this keeps getting brought up.

The occasional refresh is expected. Revamping the UI every two years is not. It makes it impossible to do anything other than watch youtube. Supporting a network with a mixture of OSs that kind of match but not really is an exercise in frustration.

Yes some people want their computer interface to fade into the background. I want my own photos and wallapper to be more beautiful than the computer. Too much ornamentation is not a good thing. The contrast is better.

I agree with you that design and aesthetics matter, but I think Win 98 looked great.

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