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Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

To me, Gmail Classic is this original look: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/priority1....

I loved the "Original Classic". Every update since has worsened the look & feel.

When Steve Jobs passed away, the whole software industry took a gigantic step backwards in design. There are lots of great designers in the world (have a look at https://dribbble.com/ ) but the people who hire designers often can't tell a great designer from a mediocre one, and that's how we end up with the not-so-great design of the current generation of software, including those from Google and even Apple.

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Stop it, you're making me nostalgic :(

But you're totally right -- the use of color to clearly separate areas instead of white everywhere? Buttons with clear text instead of inscrutable gray icons? "Compact" lists that show your info instead of a whitespace fetishization?

I miss the old days...

Same here! I've never understand the unclear, indistinguishable UI design trend, what a big step backward...

Wow. Actual black text on light background. Compact, readable, high contrast. I wish we could have designs like that instead of this modern grey text on grey background garbage.

Steve also had his hand in plenty of awful design decisions with the skeuomorphic turn OSX took [0] being one of them.

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/1670760/will-apples-tacky-softwa...

I see skeuomorphism as an excellent idea.

The human mind is built to build models... We are constantly building models of the world and predicting how that world will work. When you have a digital world that has no rules where every time you do something it behaves in a new and different way it's surprising... and it is also really stressful. Your mind can't build any models. That makes it hard. Everything is an adventure. But when you are trying to get something done you don't want an adventure, right? We want things to behave in a predictable way. It'd be like, sometimes I put something on the table it doesn't sit there, it flies up to the ceiling.

Skeuomorphic design helps users make mental models. The above paragraph is actually a from Google talk on Material Design! They understood the theory well, but their implementation is lacking.

You might like the book "The design of everyday things" if you haven't read it already.

I find bauhaus design and understanding affordances etc much more interesting than abstract and non functional design.

As another note, usability testing with irregular computer users with a skeuomorphic design vs a "flat UI" produces such crazy results in favour of skeuomorphism.

Gmail Simple Html Mode still looks somewhat like that, and is blisteringly fast

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h

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