SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the designer-egomania-vs-user-ergonomics dept.
In a not so recent (2015) study Flat Design vs Traditional Design: Comparative Experimental Study scientists measure the performance of current and past interface styles. They reference multiple past articles and studies (some freely avaliable like Ref 3 or Ref 11) so they are not walking new ground, just measuring some more.
Some interesting background:
The density of screen information [in flat design] is often extraordinarily low [10].
...
The main criticism was that flat design ignores the three-dimensional nature of the human brain, which is extremely sensitive to visual cues linking interfaces to the real world. The removal of affordances from interactive interface objects means that users regularly perceive interactive elements as non-interactive, and non-interactive elements as interactive.
Despite these limitations flat design is becoming more and more common, and criticism of experts in HCI [Human-Computer Interaction] and usability is generally ignored by the software industry and graphic designers.
They used different tests: finding a word in text, finding an icon among others and finding clickable objects in a webpage. The process included eye tracking and recording of mouse motions. Subjects were students below 30 years old and already using similar interfaces, so effects in older or disabled persons were not studied. Font tests showed similar times, but worse cognitive load (derived from eye motions) for flat style. Icon tests showed worse times and mental load for flat style, a more complex task pushing the brain out of semiautomatic mode. Webpage tests were also against flat style, with high miss and false alarms indicators.
The conclusions were clear:
Our experimental study supports the opinion expressed by many HCI and usability experts that flat design is a harmful tendency in area of user interfaces, and should be replaced by interfaces based on the design principles developed over decades of research and practice of HCI and usability engineering.
Now we have more proofs that "flat design is inferior to traditional design", we aren't just whiny users opposed to change that don't understand what is going on. Based in personal experiences, and those of older persons around me, my conclusion is that any "UI/UX expert" that keeps parroting the modern interfaces is just a fad-following graphic designer at best (I expect more from those too... but they keep on disappointing me), and in any case should not be allowed into the HCI field. There were other studies, and this one is around 4 years old, so maybe it's time to get back into saner styles. Not that I hope things will improve quickly, after realizing that — since this study — things have slid more and more into simpleton mode.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @03:36AM (4 children)
example? I'm too lazy
(Score: 3, Informative) by Ken_g6 on Monday February 11 2019, @04:18AM (3 children)
Apparently, iOS [wikipedia.org] is a flat design. [wikipedia.org] The opposite seems to be skeuomorphic design. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday February 11 2019, @06:48AM (1 child)
Only if you're using a pretty peculiar scale. Both flat and skeuomorphic designs sit right next to each other on the braindamage scale. Something like Ubuntu Emerald or Windows Aero, depending on your OS preference, are at the opposite end of the scale.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday February 11 2019, @08:53AM
You seem to think that if one end of the scale is bad, the other end must be good. But in reality, that's rarely the case; the good stuff is usually in the middle. If on one and we have starving, on the other end we have overeating; both are bad. If on one end, we have parsimony, on the other end we have wastefulness. Again, both bad.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @02:07PM
skeuomorphic design always turns painfully anacronistic, with kids under the age of 40 mystified by a UI made entirely of floppy disks, filmstrip reels, walkman UIs, slide rule radio dials, just madness.
Meanwhile I like UIs that expand my possibilities perhaps in an abstract manner, not a VRML representation of a retro-experience.
With a side dish from gaming of the old tradition of marketing bitmaps and background images being a little fancier than the actual game experience such that the initial assumption is the skeuomorphs are mere visual candy or eye fluff, now wheres the real (probably ugly) UI elements?