Liquid Glass Design or Kitsch? | Hacker News Reader

Liquid Glass Design or Kitsch?

ia.net

9 pointssamsolomon12 comments

So far as Laokoon goes this weekend I went to a track meet [1] and took pictures of people throwing the discus for the first time. I made plenty of images that were evocative of Greek sculpture but I think that's because Greek sculpture was motivated by athleticism. (Unfortunately the protective net made all of these images confusing)

If you take an average frame out of a sports game you don't see a clear story -- in basketball, for instance, you can catch the ball leaving the hands of the player or you can get the ball going into the hoop, it's not so easy to make a picture that unambiguously tells the story that № 15 scored a basket.

One answer to that is give up and say "a good portrait is a good sports photo" and that works, the other is to catch a special moment from a special angle like this shot [2] where for just a moment the ball kicked up a plume of dirt so you know the batter bounced the ball right in front of himself and the presence of a runner on third base adds to the tension. Nothing distorted there at all!

[1] https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114883139153288563

[2] https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114849463914827733

I will just say it is wasteful. I watched a presentation from the Apple conf and thought, do we (as humanity) really need that? Is it just another thing that was invented to justify the ever growing computing capacity on mobile devices that can no longer be put to any reasonable use?

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

I am very happy that I actually tried to use new iOS 26. It is just couple taps away for registered developers. I think it is a very nice redesign.

But focusing on the 'glass' component is very reductive in my opinion, and shallow. It is much more about overall layout overhaul. I, for one, think it feels much more easy and modern, a welcome upgrade. I am a programmer, not a designer. Functionally it feels better for me.

title is missing a separator, e.g. "liquid glass - design or kitsch?"

> It’s as loud as it is predictable, and the insight you get from first reactions on Social Media is as meaningful as any carnival music.

Poor readability was one of the main insights from the feedback you've so casually dismissed. And it was backed up by screenshots/recordings, which this post have none of besides the usual useless waste of an art filler.

> Readability is a concern.

Oh, wait, so it was actually pretty meaningful insight!

The problem with the initial social media response is every possible critique is loud, regardless of how valid it is, so you're left in the same place you started: trying to find what, out of anything, is actually a problem.

It's like trying to get the hour of the day from something which just responds back a list of all 12 and then claims it's valuable because 6 (or whatever) was actually one of the things brought up in the list.

That's not true, following your analogy, many posts had the actual clock photo with an added red arrow pointing to the hand! And you don't need much expertise to evaluate readability once your attention is focused on it, so no, you're not left in the same place even if you see a hundred more posts saying the opposite and posting all the 1-12 numbers.

Of course, you also have plenty of assessments like "bold" and "fresh" where your view is as fluid as liquid glass because, well, there is little substance behind them. But then this is no different from non-social media articles.

Whether correct posts appear or not is besides the point when the problem is posts for any hand position also appear.

If you already know how to filter these for things that make sense and don't make sense then going through the posts doesn't help. If you don't already know then it doesn't help to do so either.

> the problem is posts for any hand position also appear.

This is not a problem, I've specifically described how it's not (you can read off a photo, so other posts with numbers can't confuse you), so you need to address that instead of repeating the same claim.

> If you already know how to filter these for things that make sense and don't make sense then going through the posts doesn't help.

It does, the posts supply you with information, that's a net increase in your knowledge after you've applied the filter! Someone says it's not readable, you see the screenshot, apply your own filter and come out with more knowledge about the new design. Then you see posts "i can read just fine, it's great", apply your filter and ignore this

You couldn't even come up with an analogy where it doesn't work, and it also worked in this specific case of liquid design.

I think the likely outcome is you and I disagree what the problem with social media is in this context. You are sold there is no problem so long as some valid posts exist (i.e. so long as you can eventually extract something) and me/the author seem to be sold the problem is the loudness of invalid posts (i.e. if you can filter the social media posts accurately then you already have the tools to evaluate the design more directly for less work). No amount of showing how select posts can be useful is going to impact my perception and no amount of talking about invalid posts is going to impact your perception.

all words (many fancy), no visual examples

design has completely replaced usability with faddish "innovation", silently bolstered by management trying to come up w/a reason for people to go through another upgrade cycle

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