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Comment by lateforwork | Hacker News Reader

Designers tend to be less open to feedback than developers. That, I think, helps explain why flat UI persists even though it has shown usability drawbacks. It also helps explain why overall usability feels like it's declining ever year — for instance, macOS Tahoe seems noticeably worse in usability compared to macOS Sequoia. Does anyone think Apple is going to rush out a release that fixes the excessive rounding of window corners? Don't hold your breath.

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On the topic of flat design specifically, developers are likely just as culpable. Back when it was just starting to catch on, by my observation some of the quickest to adopt it were solo developers because it's way easier to build a passable looking app with flat UI since that doesn't require any design talent.

A passable looking modern flat UI has a lot behind it, just like skeuomorphism and anything in between.

Unless something like https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.12.0/spectacle-noti... is what you consider to be passable looking of course.

That looks perfectly functional to me? It only looks a bit ugly because the screenshot appears to have been of a very small part of the screen that got blurry when it was blown up to a larger size.

I'll take function over for every day. (I daily drive KDE, it works fine and doesn't get in my way. Most of the time I'm either in my editor or the terminal emulator anyway.)

This is also a plasma 5 example. Plasma 6 cleaned it up.

But I also agree. KDE is pretty close to my ideal for a desktop environment. It's pretty close to a windows 7 feel which is perfect for me.

For reference, Windows' notification look this way: https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/I4VO9qHrzphTHsZHU5eI73sLL9k=/7...

The screenshot you posted is likely from KDE Plasma. The project don't have much funding to hire a UI/UX designer IMHO.

> The project don't have much funding to hire a UI/UX designer IMHO.

Well this is the point. I was countering the claim that flat UI doesn't require any design talent to look passable.

Once the windows become actually circles, or maybe some point along that path, they'll go back to square corners and congratulate themselves on how much better and innovative they are. It's just a stupid trend to keep rounding things more and more... I hope.

It's all just rearranging deck chairs at this point.

I feel like UX designers don't realize that their job should have a natural tailing off as we discover and lock in the good ideas and discard the bad. Even if the ideas aren't that great, users can at least get good at however it does work, if it stays constant. Instead, we just get more dice rolls, eyecandy, and frustration.

I for one hate the power dynamic that OS and website designers have over me. They can just sneak into my house and rearrange my furniture on a whim. Even if it sucks, I would adapt to it if it stayed constant! Instead I both hate it and can't learn it, because everything is different and keeps changing when I least expect it.

At this point my brain has given into learned helplessness and won't retain much of anything at all, but it's next-level figured out that it's useless.

Designers seem to have a bad track record, and it's getting worse.

Sorry, designers.

Part of the problem is that each generation of designers want to leave their mark on the product - often by undoing the work of the last generation of designers. They're not entirely wrong. Design has fashions, like clothes. I enjoy that the industrial design of laptops and phones changes every few years. But good UX isn't good because its fashionable. Good UX doesn't go out of date. They've gotta learn to stop fixing it when its not broken.

Eg, MacOS's new system preferences panel is worse than the old one. And its stupid putting the windows start menu in the middle of the screen, where you can't as easily click it with the mouse.

There was that one time when MS tried to do something radically different with windows 8...

The start button is eternal!

I think you might be confusing flat design with UI density. While they emerged as trends during a similar period, they are distinct concepts. You can have small flat elements or large skeuomorphic ones.

>Designers tend to be less open to feedback than developers. That, I think, helps explain why flat UI persists even though it has shown usability drawbacks. It also helps explain why overall usability feels like it's declining ever year

We see it in the FOSS world too with GNOME.

I don't think openness to feedback is the main metric, but rather ability to objectively measure outcomes. It's just harder to objectively measure usability than the presence or absence of a bug or performance problem.

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