
Apple, Big Sur, and the Rise of Neumorphism - flowerlad
https://www.inputmag.com/design/apple-macos-big-sur-the-rise-of-neumorphism
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hpoe
This article hints had why I am always suspicious of "UX" and "UI" engineers.
As it notes there is a strong resistance to formalism of any sort, and working
with and considering the user doesn't seem to be the first element of design
rather a focus on "style" and "differentiation" seem to plague the field.
Ultimately software is to be used to accomplish a task and if you aren't
aiding in that are you really adding value.

Of course as I type this comment I am forced to confront my own hideous
reflection as a software engineers as all of the criticisms I level at "UI"
and "UX" engineering apply just as well to my own field. The difference is
instead of being Bohemians about how the drop shadow effects the overall sense
of user well being, we are hipsters in whatever the newest framework or
language is because it introduces some old concept repackaged as a new feature
and is the hot shit. Many argue that programming is more of an art than a
science that a good developer can just right good code and it can really be
measured, and how often is software projects, personal or professional
derailed by wanting to have a "pure and elegant" architecture, or one that is
hyper scale, meanwhile the business just wants crap done, and there is plenty
of times that developers build something without ever talking to a user.

I don't know maybe there is some reflection to be taken out of this. On the
other hand I think designers have been screwing with things to much we reached
the pinnacle of UI and UX in the Unix tool chain, CLI, terminal, text based
human computer interaction and everything after that is designed for wussies
that aren't worthy to work a keyboard.

~~~
woah
Do you know the difference between and engineer and a designer?

~~~
systemvoltage
Can you explain why you're asking this question? It almost seems like a
rherotical retort to the GP who is criticizing UI/UX designers while also
introspecting their own misgivings and hypocritical aspects in software
engineering. I thought it was well put.

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flohofwoe
I really loathe how UI designers have become so entirely separated from the
world they live in, with the result that they are forcing random change on
users just for the sake of fashion, not actual innovation in how a UI works.
All they talk about all day in day out is a "design language" or what
"emotions" a font evokes. THIS DOES NOT MATTER!

It would be fine if there would be an opt-out (let me install my own skins
like I can do on pretty much every Linux desktop, and even on older Windows
versions). Let _me_ decide how ugly or pretty I want my computing environment
to be.

UI/UX designers (I'm using the term interchangeably, because hell if I know
what actually separates a UX designer from a UI designer) should focus on
functional improvements, not on superficial fluff like colors and fonts, or
whether a button is flat or looks 3D. Stuff like this should entirely be under
the control of the user.

Oh, and the Hamburger Menu is _not_ a functional improvement.

~~~
fnordsensei
As a UX designer, I've worked with plenty of things that isn't strictly UI.
Unless you count functions like the support staff a kind of UI, which it
arguably is (a kind of UI to the company or service offered).

At some point, I started calling myself "service designer" instead, because UX
as a concept was fairly easily appropriated by visual designers (I guess what
you call "UI designers") to mean "appearance."

Otherwise, what term do you use to mean that you're working to improve the
experience of using a service across all interaction points it offers? I.e.,
across boundaries of particular screens, particular systems, particular
company functions, or even particular companies in a few cases.

But I'd like to point out that it sounds like that, even while criticizing the
wasteful focus on "look and feel," the look and feel seems to be exactly what
bothers you, not the functionality behind it. If only functional changes
mattered, we wouldn't register either way if they decided change the visuals
of the system. You wouldn't need skins if the impact of it were immaterial to
you.

It ends up that visuals are functional as well, and there's no hard line to
draw between aesthetics and functionality. If I were to draw up a system that
has great information architecture, navigation/findability, affordances, and
the rest of it, but used terrible contrasts and font-weight: 100 everywhere, I
would still have failed at making it usable.

I do agree that many designers seem to have some kind of pornographic
relationship to UI, where they revel in it for its own sake. Personally, I
consider UI to be cartilage: there should be as little as possible of it (but
not less), and it should perform its function and stay out of the way as much
as possible.

What "be as little as possible of it" and "staying out of the way" means is
very contextual to service itself and the people using the service, which is
why it is hard to establish a universally objective notion of what this means.
It always ends up being an exploration to balance a vast set of variables.

Maybe Apple is completely right in making macOS more iOS-like, since
familiarity is one way of staying out of the way, and they seem to want to
focus on people who own an iDevice, but no Mac. But their current take on it
has me worried that they've lost interest in accessibility (in all meanings of
the word) as a design goal.

~~~
systemvoltage
Google Meet - the mute/hangup buttons are hidden in the bottom bar in a
completely undiscoverable way

1) Why hide them? It is like hiding the steering wheel in the car and popping
it out when you need it.

2) Why not make them discoverable?

3) Why can't we give a little bit of real-estate to the _most_ important
interaction - to unmute yourself before speaking - a permanent place in the UI
by sacrificing sleekness a little bit?

This is not just aesthetics, far from it. There is so much horrible
UI/UX/Service/Whatever-you-wanna-call-it in the world. It is filled with it.

I could write a 10 page article about Twitter's UI/UX. It is full of obvious
improvements like this. It doesn't take an expert to notice these and they're
not off for a debate - there is no subtlety or subjectiveness here.

People like yourself are rare and not that common. Most UI/UX folks are all
about following design trends, aesthetic sensibilities and injecting personal
taste into products as if it's some kind of a creative extravaganza.

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yodon
Skinny jeans are in -> Skinny jeans are out -> repeat.

Listening to designers try to justify why neumorphic is better than
skeumorphic is better than oldmorphic is better than someothermorphic is like
listening to teenagers try to justify why whatever jean leg style is currently
"in" is fundamentally and absolutely better than whatever jean leg style their
parents wore. It's just fashion, nothing more, nothing less, and certainly no
more a revolution in UX than a 10% increase or decrease in the amount of
fabric in the legs of a pair of jeans.

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recursivedoubts
They took button drop shadows away to punish the contemptible user.

Now they will bring them back, but with so many shadows and edges that our
poor, beset-upon user, who just finally figured out where they can and can't
click on a field of identical boxes called "flat ui", will experience vertigo
as they try to mentally process what can and can't be done with this quasi-3d
world that is presented to them.

The design community always manages to surprise.

~~~
ironmagma
Well, to be fair, I don’t think we ever really figured out the flat world.
There is just no rhyme or reason to it; there are no affordances, so you can
only learn via trial and error. Pretty much the worst system possible.

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michelb
The examples in the article are horrendous.

I'm not a fan of the current flat, 'material' design, but I do have
reservations about "MacOS Dribbble". I hope the contrast issues will be fixed,
and icons will be more in line with each other. In the end the UI needs to
comprehensible and get out of the way of what you are trying to do.

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gumby
This article defends change for the sake of change (even the style is named
“neu” — new). But let’s take it seriously for a moment:

Shadows and lighting are actually cues we take into account when finding
physical switches, handles, etc. yet adding them to the screen uses a lighting
source “origin” that is unrelated to the real world. We literally look through
a screen into an alien world.

What if our phones and computers had adequate ambient light sensing that the
shadows _can be_ Aligned to the environment? That the shadows on the screen
point the same way as the shadows of the keyboard keys, or of something
sitting on the desk or against the wall behind your screen?

That might actually make an interface easier and more intuitive.

~~~
m463
> What if our phones and computers had adequate ambient light sensing that the
> shadows can be Aligned to the environment?

That is an interesting concept. I suspect the only times it would work would
be when you are sitting near a desk lamp or are outside in the sun
(directional light from a points source). Otherwise you will likely have
omnidirectional lighting.

You could use the accelerometer, which would either work like those dynamic
backgrounds.

Personally I'm OK with "flat" stuff in predictable places like the macos
menubar - all things in a constrained space are either drop-down menus, or are
for information with clickable settings

But in free-form where anything can appear, always on shadows for buttons
might be boring but they are GOOD.

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Nextgrid
That "neumorphic" music player they show as an example is absolutely
horrendous.

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fnordsensei
This truly will be the year of WinAMP on desktop.

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keenmaster
Apple is easing its customers into AR, where 3D design will truly be seen in
3D form and won't just be an illusion.

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rswail
Aside from snarking at UX/UI designers and what is perceived as artistic
pretension, there are some interesting thoughts and direction for this new
style.

Assuming that AR is something that is coming to our UIs, head up displays in
vehicles, AR via cameras in our phones, potentially moving to eye level, this
new design language, with the concept of icons and affordances using lighting,
might be an interesting approach.

When you're overlaying reality with digital additions, having them lit
appropriately, taking into account the ambient lighting (not just the levels,
but the directions) and using that to place the elements makes them much
easier to understand.

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vidanay
Maybe those 3D buttons can be rendered dynamically with the real sun as the
light source so the shadows and highlights are constantly changing?

That'd be cool.

/s (in case it's not obvious)

~~~
PinkMilkshake
When I saw some of the example icons my first thought was what my phone will
look like if all the app/icon designers don't agree on which direction the
light is coming from.

In some examples the light is coming from above you, in others it seems to
come from "north" of the screen, and another from north west.

~~~
ironmagma
That's a problem that would affect normal drop shadow design as well.

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kolyaio
For me it's more like uglymorphism, I really think these icons looks ugly. I
don't believe I'm saying it but I think that apple need to learn from MS with
their fluent design. I understand that they trying to add shadows and
dimension to flat design. I think they really distracting and look kinda like
90s.

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woah
I wonder if there’s a forum full of sewing machine engineers somewhere railing
against how useless fashion is and how you can’t beat a good old fashioned set
of woolen monk’s robes for warmth and functionality

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KCUOJJQJ
IMHO companies should include older designs, or allow people to adjust
everything. So Windows 10, for instance, could come with the designs of 10, 8
and 7.

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Razengan
It already does.

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sidpatil
As far as I can tell, Windows 10 doesn't natively allow you to use the older
window decoration styles—you'd have to purchase 3rd party software to do so.

~~~
Razengan
That was a snarky dig at how Windows still has different styles and paradigms
from different eras in different places. Menu bars, tool bars, control panels,
and so on.

