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.
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
I would like to change the radio station in a school zone and not run over a bunch of kids because I had to take my eyes off the road. Touchscreens are more distracting to use than my phone, which I don’t like to use while driving because it is distracting enough.
Touchscreens absolutely do not belong in cars and I hope my car with buttons doesn’t fucking die before the trend dies.
I agree. My car a Mercedes A200d from 2020 is a bit of a hybrid, it has a touch screen but also button controls to change things, but even those are a bit fiddly.
I love that it had a voice control feature that actually works so no I just press a button on the steering wheel and say “play classic fm” and it changes. Good for using navigation too as the less time you are using the screen the better.
- 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
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!”
Light themes as default. I don’t want to be maced with photons. Dark themes always please.
“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”I have been a software tester for a long time and I really fuckin hate these JS frameworks that try to reinvent the wheel but worse.
Like why is a fucking table now a bunch of divs? Why is a drop down (select) list a bunch of divs? With disappearing html blocks when you close the list?
HTML worked fine, why are we reinventing basic HTML but worse?
Because many of the frameworks, including Angular and React, were getting started while HTML and JS specs and the support of those specs were a giant hodgepodge MESS.
Why are so many things divs instead of standard components? Because for WAY too long, those components weren’t standard. Some browsers didn’t even fully support basic components or styling options that had been standard for years.
Why is everything a div? Because in many browsers, divs got the most feature support.
The frameworks seem nonsensical and dumb because they’re covering up a LOT of even worse things.
Not to say a ton of nasty things cannot remain, or new gross things crop up, but at least this one has a history that’s more interesting than, “they designed it poirly”. Nope, a lot of the problems have no design at all, or might’ve been worse with a more “standard” implementation!
Tables and select boxes have been standard for ages across all browsers what are you on about.
- the lets put a lot of shit in the title bar of our app trend. Fuck off, I use that bar to pull the window around.
- The idea that I should adapt to the technology, and not the other way around. Don’t force changes on me, especially when they’re only implemented to be able to slap a new version number on the box.
Removing or replacing decades old proven and studied ui elements because fuck you user.
I hate single page apps that force you to click on a post to see comments, and don’t let you open them in a new tab.
Dialogues that don’t require clicking OK to apply my selection. What if I change my mind or click the wrong thing?
Here’s a past annoyance: help text for BIOS settings that was like
Tronic memory catalyst conversion ratio: Sets the ratio of tronic memory catalyst conversion.
O RLY? 🤔
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.
* Sort by date *
* Sorts date alphabetically *
Looking at you Altium Designer
BLUE LEDs!! Because you don’t need your eyesight anyway, might as well completely blind you, right?
Oh, let’s make it even better. BLUE DISPLAYS!! Because now you fucking really can’t read it! Ha-HA!
Endless scrolling over pagination
Infinite scroll
Enshitification of search results when shopping
Planned obsolescence
websites that scroll wrong, and then they stop dead on some animation. Automatic nope on the product.
