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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Huge disagreement here. Maybe true for something critical like the control board on some heavy machinery.

But for something like a phone or messaging app, I want to see the return of fun, creative, and unique. We had such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and then it all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.

I want to see creative menus back, I want to see whacky UIs like windows media player skins back. Ultimately for basic stuff of low importance like your phone, the most absolutely optimal UI doesn’t matter, much like I don’t care for the most absolutely optimal furniture. Its visual appeal matters.

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My phone is the control board of my life. It is critical infrastructure and serious.

No one is getting mangled in machinery if I take 100ms longer to send a text message. There’s time to spare to actually enjoy the design.

911/112 calls are still made via phones, and I have to say that even making a simple phone call has, at times, become highly problematic on these new and very complex smart-phones.

With that said, my pants' pocket still manages to somehow initiate the "emergency call" procedure every couple of months or so, I have no idea how that happens (I don't even know how I'd do that with the phone placed in front of me).

> Pant's pockets

Yep. I keep making accidental emergency calls too. Another interesting incident which happened only once:

I accidentally opened instagram, a group chat, and changed the background to bubbles or something like that, all with my phone in my pocket. I guess I put my phone into my pocket unlocked by accident because I can't imagine accidentally typing my PIN.

But what if animated and "playful" do not make the UI enjoyable?

>We had such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and then it all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.

I agree with the huge disagreement. That 2006-2013 era was, in my opinion, horrendous and takes the second spot as an offender just after “peak flat”.

However, I never denied that visual appeal matters. But design is how it holistically works, not how it looks.

Maybe, at some point, some team will get back to Dieter Rams 10 principles and hammer it into an UX experience. We were so close in the 90’s.

Maybe we can agree on: make the os maximally unobtrusive by default but include options to customise to taste?

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