Apps, Stop Infantilizing Your Users | Hacker News Reader

Apps, Stop Infantilizing Your Users

jordankoschei.com

13 pointsjordankoschei19 comments

Actually... I like this stuff. Moreover, why does it bother people? It's just some cute drawings. If you don't like it that's reasonable but to actually get upset over it is just weird to me.

This has got to be some weird cultural thing. I've never been myself, but from what I've heard, Japan doesn't seem to mind cutesy drawings everywhere.

If they just mean the flat design itself, I understand even less what the problem is.

I'm an adult, that's why I've worn a suit since high school.

Why do you wear a suit? And what gave you the impression that adult means wearing a suit? Children wear suits, too.

A suit is the same as these cutest decorations in these apps -- an elevation of a certain "look" over functionality and utility, in hopes that people will overlook your flaws in substance because of the way you look.

I am also an adult. I go to work, I pay taxes. Exactly what about being an adult means you must get upset about cartoons?

I am on with the cultural thing.

Maybe some fellow Indians can comment on it, every time I get to do trainings created by an Indian company, they are full of such cutesy drawings and Flash like animations.

I'm in India and work in the tech sector, but I've rarely seen cutesy drawings in presentations or trainings. Most of them I have seen are dull standard PowerPoint bullet points. At least the larger companies, both Indian and foreign, don't seem to be into it. Animations and garish graphics could be found on many websites, including the various government maintained sites.

Meh, I thought this was about apps that dumb down functionality and suffer from overly-clever syndrome. Can we have a thread about that instead? :)

I find these cute and beautiful. As someone who cannot draw well, I appreciate graphic designs that attract people and make things a bit more fun where necessary. Computers and websites are already scary and difficult to use for most common people. Humanizing them in ways like these could possibly reduce the intimidation factor and get the message across to people. I would actually welcome more of these in consumer facing sites and services. They may probably not sit very well in enterprise settings, depending on the service and audience.

This stuff only occasionally jumps out at me as being "too much" although overall I dislike the CalArts style.

I remember installing Docker.app on my Mac and the installer said they're "whale-y" happy to meet me (along with a cute whale drawing), which caused a reflexive eye roll from me.

I just wanted to get Docker on my machine.

I suspect the problem is that the app does need some kind of visual style, but the biz and engineer people aren't artists, so they have to hire an artist, and the art world is overrun by the "CalArts" style garbage.

I agree this is a problem. Market pressure forces companies whose primary goal is growth to cater to the widest audience possible, which closes the door to more sophisticated messaging and UX, I think. This is one reason I prefer community-built software.

Not a big fan of this style, but it's either cute illustrations or stock photography that looks like stock photography. With illustrations you can at least keep the look and feel of everything consistent.

For a lot of designers and UXers, adding delight/magic to an app means adding cutesy illustrations and wacky animations. Delight for me is when an app does more with less input from me.

Counterpoint: I don't mind it.

I do have a complaint about it, but not because of the specific art style, but rather because they add so much unnecessary pictures that it wastes disk space. If they are animated, it wastes processing time too.

the rant doesn't establish how the presence of an art style results in the "infantilization" of users.

It gives examples of drawings that immediately call to mind toddlers' picture books, with simple bright colors and exaggerated facial features.

Anecdotally, the very first illustration evokes, to me, the feeling of being talked down to. It's almost ugly in its extreme childishness.

God the ukulele music.

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