<story><title>Flat UI Elements Attract Less Attention and Cause Uncertainty</title><url>https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-cause-uncertainty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chenster</author><text>Thank you, Lord! My prayers have been heard. I&amp;#x27;m just happy that I am not the only one who got rants about the flat UI. It really should go away. The flat design was born from Microsoft Windows phone Metro UI, if I recall correctly, then other designers quickly jumped on the wagon and claiming it&amp;#x27;s the next greatest and neatest &amp;quot;UI revolution&amp;quot;. What a joke! It totally sacrifices usability. The outcome? A horrible user experience, and job security for the designers.&lt;p&gt;Link to Flat design:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_design&lt;/a&gt; It was indeed  first introduced by Microsoft with the name Metro Design.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft is moving away from the notorious Flat UI to Fluent Design: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.firstpost.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;news-analysis&amp;#x2F;build-2017-microsoft-evolves-beyond-flat-ui-with-its-fluent-design-language-3702669.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.firstpost.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;news-analysis&amp;#x2F;build-2017-micro...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdtsc</author><text>&amp;gt;  It really should go away.&lt;p&gt;It will. Designers will come up with a new thing pretty quickly. In that respect I guess they are probably no different than developers. Nobody likes to end the year with &amp;quot;yeah I just maintained this piece of code last year&amp;quot;, instead it has to be &amp;quot;yeah the code the last team wrote was crap, so we tore it all out, replaced with a fancier later framework, added some features on top, etc&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Presumably people in charge of design at these big companies get paid decently, so there is some internal pressure to deliver something. So no matter how good, fast, clean the current interface, is there will be an unveiling of a &amp;quot;cooler &amp;#x2F; newer &amp;#x2F; fresher&amp;quot; interface. But I think the fundamental reason reason is most likely because of a need to create work to justify salaries.&lt;p&gt;This happens in software, in design, and probably many other fields. Managers, department heads, directors, CEOs they all play this game. Sometimes everyone in the game realizes what&amp;#x27;s happening but they just go along because it works out for them (well sometimes it doesn&amp;#x27;t work out, but then they blame the customers ;-) )</text></comment>
<story><title>Flat UI Elements Attract Less Attention and Cause Uncertainty</title><url>https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-cause-uncertainty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chenster</author><text>Thank you, Lord! My prayers have been heard. I&amp;#x27;m just happy that I am not the only one who got rants about the flat UI. It really should go away. The flat design was born from Microsoft Windows phone Metro UI, if I recall correctly, then other designers quickly jumped on the wagon and claiming it&amp;#x27;s the next greatest and neatest &amp;quot;UI revolution&amp;quot;. What a joke! It totally sacrifices usability. The outcome? A horrible user experience, and job security for the designers.&lt;p&gt;Link to Flat design:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_design&lt;/a&gt; It was indeed  first introduced by Microsoft with the name Metro Design.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft is moving away from the notorious Flat UI to Fluent Design: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.firstpost.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;news-analysis&amp;#x2F;build-2017-microsoft-evolves-beyond-flat-ui-with-its-fluent-design-language-3702669.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.firstpost.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;news-analysis&amp;#x2F;build-2017-micro...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>copx</author><text>I have always hated this fashion with passion too. For &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; it makes UIs less aesthetically pleasing &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; harder to use.&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons why I still use Windows 7 is that I like its 3D transparent glass-like look and utterly hate the flat design of later versions which I would call soulless and ugly. And the UI elements are harder to distinguish for me.&lt;p&gt;That being said, many people &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; like it, and I am not aware of any studies about how many people like it &amp;#x2F; don&amp;#x27;t like &amp;#x2F; don&amp;#x27;t care in general.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for us flat UI haters, that horrible design trend will go away the same way it came - as a fashion. Fashion by definition does not last. Sooner or later flat design will inevitability be considered old and unhip too.</text></comment>