
Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design:How the Trend Slowly Decreases User Efficiency - Illotus
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure/
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qewrffewqwfqew
Love it. Well said.

This trend of design fashions negatively impacting usability has become so
blatantly visible across the web (and apps, and desktop interfaces) during
this century that I've become quite curious what psychological/organisational
effects are at force.

Are there historical examples of the same tendency that can be examined?
Tools, signage, forms or public spaces becoming a progressively more difficult
and less usable mess under the aegis of "making things easier for users"?

~~~
carsongross
_Are there historical examples of the same tendency that can be examined?_

Absolutely. Look at modern architecture. Try to figure out where the entrance
of a modern building is:

Old De Young:
[http://photovalet.com/data/comps/CSF/CSFV13P14_15.jpg](http://photovalet.com/data/comps/CSF/CSFV13P14_15.jpg)

New De Young: [http://www.thesfnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/deYoung-...](http://www.thesfnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/deYoung-Museum.-Photo-courtesy-cisl.edu_.jpg)

Immense damage has been done in the built, visual and design world for fear of
looking bourgeoisie.

~~~
qewrffewqwfqew
> for fear of looking bourgeoisie

Nice characterisation, I might re-use that.

Surely somebody has done a study of this effect. In web and software design
it's particularly hilarious (in an I-want-to-cry way) since so much good sense
has been written (Tufte etc) which is completely discarded by these trends. I
expect the same is true in architecture, only I'm less familiar with the
literature of that domain.

~~~
carsongross
I don't know of any studies, but I found "From Bauhaus to Our House" a
worthwhile read:

[http://www.amazon.com/From-Bauhaus-Our-House-
Wolfe/dp/031242...](http://www.amazon.com/From-Bauhaus-Our-House-
Wolfe/dp/0312429142)

It discusses how Gropius started off with more of a continental arts-and-
crafts outlook, but that increasing competition for the intellectual and
political purist high-ground lead to what we call, despairingly, the
international style.

A similar dynamic has played out with software UX: people were producing
garish (but usable) UX with drop shadows, etc. and along came the anti-
bourgeoisie puritans. They had a point, of course (they always do) but their
solution was worse than the original problem.

------
dvh
> Users are forced to explore pages to determine what’s clickable. They
> frequently pause in their activities to hover over elements hoping for
> dynamic clickability signifiers, or click experimentally to discover
> potential links. This behavior is analogous to the behavior of laboratory
> rats in operant-conditioning experiments.

------
andybak
The worst thing about this trend is it also affects usability on websites that
do provide sufficient (albeit subtle) cues.

It's like raising the general UX noise level from previous experiences which
over time will train people not to trust their initial instincts.

~~~
collyw
It amazes me how much time people spend on their mobile phones. Tiny screen,
half of which gets taken up by a crappy keyboard (on screen keyboards are
technically quite amazing, but a normal keyboard is way more usable).

If I want to book something, or basically type more than a few lines, give me
a desktop (or laptop) any day.

------
systoll
The analysis of the 'mobile footer menu' case study seems a bit misguided.

Sure, everything on that image looks about as clickable as everything else.
But the user didn't click on everything -- he clicked on 'Shop', repeatedly.

Why?

The article mentions 'language' as a 'contextual clickability clue'... but
language is much more powerful than the cues whose absence the page laments.
The non-exist visual (un)clickability signifier doesn't help... but language
is the overriding issue in that experience.

It's widely held that If something is clickable, it should have a clear &
reliable 'information scent' \-- it should tell you what clicking it will do.
People don't click on things because they're clickable -- they click because
they think it'll do what they want.

 _The converse is also true_ \-- If something has a clear 'information scent',
it should be clickable, and should do what it implies it will. Information
scent makes people _want_ to click on things -- and they'll be disappointed
even if they immediately realise they can't click.

In the case study, the user clicks on 'SHOP' because 'SHOP' is where he wants
to go. (there is a 'shop' page on the site, BTW). Clearer styling would make
the experience less bad, but the only real solution is to _make SHOP
clickable_.

------
jasode
This is my understanding of how we ended up with today's flat UIs with _less
affordances_ even though many (most?) users dislike them. HN can tell me if I
was told incorrectly.

1) GUIs in 1980s like MS Windows 1.0/2.0 had flat design[1]. The buttons were
flat. No drop shadows. The "flatness" was not a deliberate design intention
but simply the first iteration of a graphical UI to supplant text mode DOS
console.

2) In 1990s, MS Windows 3.0/3.1 introduced 3-dimensional sculpted buttons. An
visible improvement in UI affordances. Windows 95 further extended the 3D look
where whole window edges, etc had sculpted look.

3) This era includes the Apple Mac OS X GUI ("Aqua ) that had 3D look and
buttons had depth. It includes the Steve Jobs quote, “one of the design goals
was when you saw it you wanted to lick it."

4) The zenith of affordances is reached with Windows Vista/7 "Aeroglass" where
windows could cast translucent drop shadows on the desktop. Effects like that
required heavier computation such as "alpha channels". Hardware-assisted
(premium graphics card) was required. Desktop computing power (both cpu and
graphics chip) to deliver all this GUI effects was not a big deal. This was
the time period before "skeumorphism" became persona non grata.

4) iPhone/Android mobile phones come on the market in 2007/2008 with low-
powered CPUs and precious battery life. Now, things like painting 3D heavy UI
and rendering translucent drop shadows are seen as a massive extravagance. A
waste of cpu & battery power. In 2012 Windows 8 and 2013 iOS 7, everybody
removes the last 20 years of 3D GUI affordances and makes everything flat
again.

5) To make the GUI consistent between mobile phones and desktops, Microsoft
makes the desktops flat as well even though there is abundance of computing
power. Therefore Windows 8/8.1 looks like Windows 1.0 again[1]. The Apple Mac
OS X is also flatter but at least they kept the windows casting drop shadows.

What's interesting is that the marketingspeak from Microsoft/Apple/Google
about "flat design" talks about it being "modern", "clean", and "fresh". To
me, it seems like it's really all about the current limitations of mobile
phone cpus and forcing a UI consistency to the desktop users. Basically, it's
punishing the desktop users by enforcing the lowest common denominator across
device platforms.

Hopefully, we'll get a new trend where everybody will go back to styling GUI
elements with some hints of "clickability" without gratuitous skeumorphism. We
just need some balance.

[1] flat UI in 1985:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+1.0&source=lnms&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+1.0&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

~~~
anon4
You're right up to about 4). The iPhone had more power than 95-era computers
and definitely could render buttons with bezels.

It's just a design fad. iPhone removed a few decorations from the GUI to make
it fit better on a small screen, then people just had to out-minimalise Apple
and it all culminates in Windows 10's display settings dialog where resolution
settings is hidden behind a clickable "advanced settings" label typeset with
tiny font in grey on grey background.

~~~
jasode
_> You're right up to about 4). The iPhone had more power than 95-era
computers _

Well, Win95 computers got never-ending electricity from a wall-outlet. Mobile
phones expending cpu cycles on "unnecessary" GUI styling wastes _battery_
power.

You're right about the other justification: a mobile phone's "UI buttons"
shouldn't waste pixels on boundaries (e.g. bounding rectangles). It just needs
to be spaced far apart enough for fingertip width. Unfortunately, this design
makes it impossible to distinguish between text that's just a "status" as
opposed to a button that executes an "action".

~~~
anon4
Those pixels are always drawn anyway. And a phone's biggest battery killer is
the screen which... is on if you're looking at it. So, either your biggest
power draw is already on, or there's no reason for you to put any pixels on
screen.

~~~
jasode
_> Those pixels are always drawn anyway. _

In terms of LCD being "on" vs "off", yes, they are always "on". However, the
pixels for _extra_ GUI effects must still be "computed". For example, Apple
recommends that the "parallax" feature can be turned off to help conserve
battery power. Parallax requires cpu computation to "draw" even though those
pixels are always "on".

It's the same concept of disabling screensavers on the thousands of servers in
datacenters. Even those those pixels are always on, computing the drawings in
screensavers consume cpu. Multiply the waste that by thousands of servers and
the company is paying extra electricity bills for no reason.

