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Comment by katzenq | Hacker News Reader

That app itself also has some of the most revolting UI I've seen in a modern Android app (Vertical gradient filled buttons with thick gray strokes surrounded by not-quite-Material UI widgets, in a nonsensical custom control they had to go out of their way to make rather than just use a dropdown). Android developers really just don't care.

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its not an app you open much. I'd prefer them to spend time on the actual functionality

Good design is part of the functionality.

What word would you use to differentiate design and non-design functionality?

I think the terms are usability Vs usefulness.

UX vs UI?

If one says "Good design is part of the functionality", one can also say "Interface is part of the experience".

"can I do something [at all]" vs "how [easy] can I do something"

vs “can I even determine whether or not I can do something”

Business logic

I think anyone who differentiates between design and functionality has a profound misconception of what design should mean, and are the kind of people who produce terrible interfaces because they just see design as prettifying the functionality. That's why you get buttons that don't look clickable, lines where they're not needed, no lines where they are etc. Good design is a holistic practice, and in the case of apps the interface should be an integral part of the functionality. There's lots of literature out there about things like affordances, but many people don't know about it or don't care enough to use it in practice.

I'm talking specifically about the app SyncThing, though. I use it and rely on it, and I haven't opened it in over a month. It works as a background service.

Good design would do absolutely nothing for me.

Even more reason not to add superfluous visual flourish.

Design is functionality

Good design recognizes that the user is part of the functional chain.

Bad design forces the human brain to do a lot of the type of processing that it's bad at (eg arbitrary symbolic remapping).

Or putting `Installed apps` under `Settings`. Still not fixed after 15 years.

System app list is doing almost anything you need for installed apps, I don't think I needed the list in fdroid once in my life.

Surely useful if only to see the list of apps you can trust.

Hmm? what do you mean? installed apps are now available in "My Apps", 3rd button in the navigation bar after the update.

Are you talking about pre-2.0 versions?

Wait till you see how many taps it takes to access the equivalent list on the Play Store...

droidify is a much nicer looking frontend for f-droid

Was talking about syncthing-fork here to be clear, but I also agree

What are these people talking so much about another app. Are all these bots here now?

Calling 1.22x F-Droid 2.0 ... sigh.

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