Original question text by @phantomwise@lemmy.ml
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.
I fucking hate the waste of space on websites. I also hate topbars that follow me as I scroll down.
Showing ”2 weeks ago” or ”1 month ago” instead of the actual date. ”1 month ago” can be anything between 30 days and 60 days ago.
This makes my blood just boil. I can do math, you fuckers. I am aware of dates. I wanna know when this shit went online.
We use gitlab and I knew my coworker commited something yesterday, I deployed a new version yesterday but I wasn’t sure if I deployed before or after his commit. Why do they just show yester instead of a normal timestamp. Do these developers think we can’t read?
I honestly think a lot of it is that they have to keep twiddling with shit to have something to do.
These pieces of garbage have come across my desk as “requirements” too because they get copied and pasted from other “best of breed” apps from the web.
Most of the designers I’ve encountered in my day to day work love nothing better than to copy from other apps rather than actually think for fifteen seconds about how to design something.
* Sort by date *
* Sorts date alphabetically *
Looking at you Altium Designer
If all dates are ISO-8601 what’s the problem?
Because they’re not. Altium has them as DD.MM.YYYY mm.hh.ss.
Even worse: “last week/month/year” lumps everything together when you start the next week/month/year
The option is called “relative date” (as opposed to absolute date). On macos you can switch it off:
- open Finder, go to list view
- select very first item in hierarchy
- click on the little triangle next to the (folder-)icon to expand but press the option key wihle doing so
- hit “cmd” + “J” - a settings panel will open
- there is a tick box that says “relative date” that needs to be disabled (unticked)
- if you want to apply this settings as the new default setting for all finder windows, press the “apply as standard”-button at the bottom. All dates will show now the actual date instead of “today”, “yesterday” and such.
Oh you sweet summer child, thinking that will apply to most websites.
Tthis setting is not intended to apply to websites. With this setting you can change whether the date is shown as absolute (dd.mm.yyyy) oder relative (today, yesterday,…) for your own files on your computer.
I don’t disagree, but generally these have a hover property that gives the date.
It’s annoying when going through a list of multiple ”1 month ago” entries. Maybe I’m looking for an entry at a certain date. Aim with mouse, wait one second, repeat.
What I could easily visually identify in less than 1 second can take more than 10 seconds to find.
It also greatly increases the cognitive load of using the program. If there are many entries to look for, then it’s going to be difficult to keep all actual dates in memory.
”Where was the 14 April entry? I need to check again. Ah there it is! Now I need to compare it against the 30 April entry. Where was it again? It was just in front of me…”
Then mouse hover doesn’t work on mobile.
At least they usually show the real datetime on hover
- 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
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…
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!”
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.
A pair of buttons forcing you to choose Yes or Maybe later. The word is NO, assholes!
I want to find the marketing genius who started that shit and ask them, “do you want me to whomp you over the head with a rusty manure shovel? Yes or Maybe later?”
it’s pushed by CEO that don’t see a no as a no. Be it with customers or with people at the bar
Even yes or no infuriated me to start with… The words I would choose are “never ever”
It only accomplishes making me feel better, but it’s a side benefit I get from using the uBlock Origin extension’s “zapper mode” function: getting to one-click nuke these things and move on with my life like a normal person.
Material design. Everything must be so flat that you cannot see if it’s a button or just something highlighted.
Exactly, I can’t believe we are still in this since years, can’t wait for the next trend hoping it won’t get worse…
The “toggle switch”. In the past we had these checkboxes. A black square. If it had a x or check mark in it, it meant this option was active, otherwise not.
Now we have these fancy toggle switches. If it’s on the left side, is it on or off? What if it’s blue, or grey?
Left is always off, right is on. Generally a toggle switch indicates an immediate change, whereas a checkbox can have a delayed effect. Colours are optional but generally a colour indicates the switch is turned on.
left is definetly not always off. i am curious what you mean by delayed effect that cannot also affect a checkbox. especially if some cookie settings now havetoggles with three options, each one in a different color, some just slide between the rightmosg and middle option etc.
no matter what you say, this is not intuitive, a checkbox is! if there are more than two options, choose another ui element. foem over function is way too common for (at least my) comfort nowadays
Left is always supposed to be off. If not, the UI/UZ designer who made the page messed up.
What I mean by immediate effect is that a switch is supposed to toggle something instantly. Checkboxes are more common in forms, where you expect to submit your choices later.
Switches with more than one option are generally bad, agreed with you there.
Items are no longer made to last past their warranty.
They are made to last past the time you’re allowed to leave a review.
I’d like to leave a positive review of this comment, but the review period has expired.
Everything is a fucking service! NO, I don’t want to spend 2.99 every month on a app that reminds me to take a pill.
Even hardware products that basically are scrap metal if you don’t pay a monthly fee.
My alarm app would like me to pay 9€/y and it’s discount…ridiculous
Oh I HATE that. It’s outrageous
on the hardware products, I enjoy finding the early examples of them (where the manufacture stopped supporting) as project boxes.
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.
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.
Get some blue-tack and blind all those blinkers!
The lights have use, I cover them with black electrical tape to dim them sufficiently
1.) Everything is a “smart” device. Household appliances, as a general rule, should not be connectable to the internet or require an app.
Cheaper components, poor build quality, and lack of user serviceable parts are the primary reasons your washer and dryer last 10 years compared to your parents Maytag set that was still ticking away after 30. Cheap, unnecessary electronics, which don’t have as long a lifespan as mechanical timers and switches, only exacerbate this problem.
2.) Cordless tools as a means of vendor locking customers.
I feel like I should bring back this timeless Tumblr post. I do not want internet on any of my appliances, and nobody should.
I’m way more inclined to connect my devices if I can actually control them and not just have random seemingly pointless data about me harvested. But mostly we just don’t get that choice.
As an engineer, Home Assistant (purely local smart home hub) is fucking awesome and only gets better.
Smart is fine if and only if:
- Not the only way to interact with the device
- Supports open, local-only protocols like Zigbee or Matter
LED indicator lights on things that have nothing to indicate. Does an electric fan need an indicator? Will you be confused about whether it’s operating or not if it doesn’t have one? Oh, it’s in swivel mode! Good thing it told me that, or I might have thought it was swiveling for other reasons.
These indicators help in troubleshooting. If the indicator says the device should be swiveling, but doesn’t swivel, you know it’s broken. If there’s no indicator, you might think you’re just too stupid to put it in swiveling mode.
Old-fashioned switches, of course, solved this problem without LEDs.
Millennial gray interior design. Gray “wood pattern” laminate floor, white cabinets, black appliances. Just no color. It’s so depressing. For only $1600/no you can live in a 3rd story gray pod that’s still 45 minutes from where you work.
I actually love that because you can add your own color with paint, throw rugs, furniture, etc. It allows you to start from a blank canvas.
For contrast, my parents’ house has one bathroom with a mustard yellow toilet and yellow-and-white floor tile, and another bathroom with an avocado green toilet and matching shower enclosure. These were put in by the previous owner and date back to the '70s. They’re in perfectly good shape, so my folks don’t want to replace them, but it does force them to decorate those rooms with complementing colors, and they will never not look dated.
Ew, stop! That’s my actual life right meow.
Reject society, live in a bus painted however you want >:3
- When interface shifts around due to information update (e.g new bluetooth devices found).
- When primary content in a website is hidden behind hover effects.
- Expensive animations, blur and gradients with no functionality.
- When an app treats me like a baby and asks me 20 questions one at a time instead of giving me a menu of options.
- Excesive round corners
- Excesive padding on apps.
I just really hate when webpages take 10 seconds to load a cluttered mess of an interface with no sense of direction
Hiding your UX behind a series of next buttons, asking for more, More, MORE PII
- Excesive round corners
- Excesive padding on apps.
Its so you dont cut yourself on sharp edges or hit your head on the UI elements. If not the literal function than certanly ment to envoke the feeling of crib padding.
Yeah, they look and feel more comfortable but sometimes the go overkill and just lose a lot of space for nothing.
Oh Man, the number of times I deleted something because of the notification on top that shift everything down… Drives me mad.
Give me back my God damn full keyboard and headphone jack. (Phones)
Minimalism.
It’s everywhere from company logos, to fast food interior design, and now the vexillology community swears by minimalist flag designs.
The open floor plan was the beginning of our demise.
Almighty Profit Motive™ forbid we proles find any semblance of joy in our lives and - gasp - interact with the physical world around us in any meaningful and engaged way!
No, we must be deprived of all dopamine outside of our designated corporate brainrot centers.
