Original question text by @[email protected]
What are the modern design trends you hate most? Feel free to rant! Mine are:
- Physical buttons are out of fashion, now EVERYTHING must have a touch screen instead! Especially if it makes the appliance more inconvenient to use. Like having to press a flimsy touch screen ten times to scroll through a washing machine’s programs instead of just turning a physical knob and pressing a physical start button.
- Every website looks like it’s made for a phone and was vomited by the same app in slightly different flavors of vomit.
- Actually EVERYTHING looks like it’s made for a phone… Like what’s the deal with all those hamburger menus on DESKTOP apps? Please just put a regular menu and same me some pointless clicking, it’s not like you’re lacking screen space. I especially hate that those menus can’t be opened from the keyboard like regular menus.
When someone puts a house up for sale and all the photos of the house are photoshopped in some way, with fake added furnishings in every room. I’d so much rather see an empty room than that fake shit. Or hell, even if it’s not empty, show me the current owner’s shit, I don’t care.
Boring flat dark design interfaces.
I miss the CDE colour scheme. The BeOS funky 3D icons. Buttons that look like buttons. Tabs that look like tabs. Now everything is just flat, bland and monochromatic. It’s sad.
What the hell is it with the Sterling Archer window borders? Y’know, where the active window is black, and the inactive windows are slightly darker black?
You can choose any colour, as long as it’s black.
Electron apps. Write native apps. I don’t need a simple todo app using 300MB of RAM.
The problem is that when we rely on capitalist companies to produce the software we rely on, they will reduce cost as much as possible. This leads to them not wanting to pay for separate teams to develop native desktop applications on Windows, macOS or Linux.
While I hate Electron apps as well, they are how Linux became much more able to run these proprietary apps society depends on. We know the capitalist companies wound’t invest in native Linux software, as the user base is too small.
If only you could write cross-platform native apps otherwise.
Many tool sets let you do just that. Qt works fine.
The removal of bezels on phones, the camera cutouts sometimes have issues and its all together worse, just for a technically larger screen, and Apps, so many apps are just packaged web browsers, but with more access to private information and such.
I don’t understand why they need the have the lenses in a bump. Just make the phone a bit thicker with a bigger battery
Yes this is so dumb. Razor thin phone with massive camera bumps. Who is asking for this?
Especially when the first thing you do is get a case to protect the cameras and make the phone sit level on a table
I think that’s kind of the thing. They can’t physically make the camera any smaller, but they assume you’re going to make the phone thicker with a case. So it’s a compromise based on customer preference.
Well ideally they would just make the phone more durable without a case, and the full thickness of the camera filled with battery, headphone jack, etc.
Seriously so much smartphone design is based on initial appeal, not actual usability.
For me, the issue isn’t just about durability, it’s also about how a cheap clear TPU case is way grippier than the metal or glass of the phone itself.
I love my Xperia, still has bezels and it makes the phone easier to hold imo
Every appliance, monitor, speaker, clock, really anything that plugs in has to have a blue LED.
Got a modem from the cable company installed in my bedroom, the indicator lights were bright enough to read by.
Get some blue-tack and blind all those blinkers!
The lights have use, I cover them with black electrical tape to dim them sufficiently
The problem I have isn’t so much that they’re blue, but that they’re bright. I have flashlights with modes dimmer than the average modern indicator LED.
- No error messages, ever. Because apparently users hate information with all their heart and are at risk of burning down cities if they ever find out what the fuck went wrong with an application.
- Disappearing scroll bars
Disappearing scroll bars
Isn’t this triggable in most OSs? Unless we are talking about mobile, which I lean towards disappearing because of screen sizes.
Worse than useless error messages are useless error messages that try to be cute/funny.
Uh oh! We made an oopsie 👉👈 sowwy we wost your data
Two buttons on the bottom of the window:
- “It’s okay fam!”
and
- “I’m a grumpy meanie who doesnt understand things happen!”
Users have somehow been trained to ignore and dismiss error messages. Probably from getting too many ad pop-ups.
Users are lazy AF and hate to read. No matter how instructive the error message, some people would rather open a helpdesk ticket because “the computer isn’t working again”.
It says right there your USB drive is full and suggests deleting some files to free up space, Karen! 🤨
Users have always hated computers but they now must use them and treat them as appliances.
When my parents needed a new computer, I told them “no hp ever, and don’t buy an anti-virus, it’s built-in now.” They obviously knew better than me and asked the salesman instead. They bought a hp computer with a McAffee subscription…
Rounded screen corners.
Infinite scroll
Enshitification of search results when shopping
Planned obsolescence
Give me back my God damn full keyboard and headphone jack. (Phones)
Apps/websites that log you out too frequently for no good reason
They all have 2 factor authentication too. Sometimes I just want to be in another room than my god damn phone.
touch screens aren’t a design trend. they’re a way to save cost.
websites that scroll wrong, and then they stop dead on some animation. Automatic nope on the product.
It’s very hard to find unique colors these days. Everything is becoming color graded for digital. That means everything starts looking the same because screen displays are limited, especially in the web.
Is that because Color != Material? That computer colors is an oversumplification of physical material surfaces? Is it the fact that colors are rounded to the nearest integer (commonly) within a 0-255 range for R,G and B? Or both?
I wouldn’t expect it to be the rounding; either it’s a material thing or they’re talking about colors that can’t be represented inside the RGB color space.
Apartment complex websites that photoshop (outright lie) about what the apartment is like and you’re not allowed to see the actual place before renting (current tenant is still there, or the manager/owner just doesn’t want you to see even if it’s empty). And - there’s so much competition for apartments in the area you either sign the lease sight-unseen or you live in your car.
I’ve done OK in some of these. None were what the website pics and descriptions offered, but they were still OK. Some others, though, turned out to be absolute broken down dumps. And every single one of these places have great online reviews. Imagine that.
time to get a cheap toy drone and start taking the pictures yourself
“Have you tried our new layout?”
“Did you know you now can…?”
“We’ve hidden this from you, but don’t worry! Click here to see them”
“News: We’re launching a new product!”
“Looking for X? It is now here!”
“We upgraded you to the new view. Revert to the old view?”
“Enable integration with (our other product) for an enhanced experience”
“You may not have permission to view what used to be on this page”
“Take a tour”
“How are you liking the new settings screen?”
“You will be automatically moved to the new X, no need to do anything”This is basically every Discord label or button text ever.
I guess I’m too thick to see the complaint here.
It’s too chatty.
Too chatty, stuff getting hidden from the user which makes it less useful yet still cluttered, change for change’s sake, teasing at notification nightmares… There’s a lot to dislike in OP’s post!
