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Comment by stayux | Hacker News Reader

If you're not well-versed in visual design, it's okay to stick to some basic guidelines.

But remember, every rule is just a starting point. If you have a solid understanding of contrast, color, composition, usability, accessibility, and more, you have the freedom to experiment and try new things.

In my professional opinion, standardization and commoditization in design have their pros when it comes to production and usability. However, this approach is leading us towards a bland and uninteresting user experience.

I'm hoping that the emergence of XR will bring back some of the old-school "skeuomorphic" spirit of exploration, expression, and texture in design. If we keep relying solely on "best practices," we risk being replaced by automation.

And please, don't design UI without having a design background. Use some UI library or Tailwind/Bootstrap instead.:)

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> And please, don't design UI without having a design background. Use some UI library or Tailwind/Bootstrap instead.:)

Maybe it's time overthrow the W3C and invent HTML6 already, and provide for some proper modern UI widgets instead of needing piles and piles of JavaScript UI-library-of-the-month that create widgets by hacking together a clutter-fest of div hell.

Stuff like <hamburger>, <tabset swipeable="true">, <img pinchzoomable="true" onclick="window.lightbox(this)" lowsrc="..." highsrc="..." ultrahighsrc="...">, <ul pulltorefresh="true" onrefresh="foo()"> should be part of it already, <button> should have more sane margins, font, contrast, and border radius choices by default, <hr> should be low contrast by default as the article says, and the default background and text colors should be #f2f2f2/#222222, and not #ffffff/#000000. Visual centering should be implemented in CSS with a neural net. Let's get standards with the beat.

>Visual centering should be implemented in CSS with a neural net. Let's get standards with the beat.

Actually, I am utterly baffled that this is not the target of current neural net implementation. I expected some form of automation to emerge in this field first.

Instead, someone decided, that investing in generative "A.I." art and removing the human element from the illustration process is more important.:)

But I have to say -- there are a lot of people with a design background, working for major software companies, that produce crap user interfaces too.

The craftsmanship requires dedication, critical thinking and hard work.

In the world of lean development and design sprints, the quality of UI is not the important part.

Maybe in the near future, only the best designer will survive the shift.

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