[1] Windows UI satire https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1003593821723267072?s=...
[2] Honest redesign http://tonsky.me/blog/github-redesign/
It's not sexy, quite the opposite but god does it run electricity through my fingers. I feel like i would use the shit out of it.
Is it association and familiarity with the old windows UI or does it follow human nature better?
Ask any 16 year old (like my son), who came of age having no context for what the windows 95 UI even looked like. Shocker, he vastly prefers flat interfaces, ie. like the design of Notion.
The problem I see in this github redesign has nothing to do with the fact that it's flat. It's tougher to use because it's just bad design. The three columns make it insanely dense in terms of information (eliminates any hierarchy) and adds in weird red underlines (which typically mean "error") for no reason. Also the button styles are all inconsistent in the final version.
The first part of the article was great, the second part he started going off the reservation. I think he's strong in terms of a UX thinking but lacks the skills of visual designer who would better implement his thinking visually.
I really, really hate that 99% of all UX designers are basically graphic designers who are good with visual flourish but without the tiniest bit of interest into half a century worth of HCI research into what makes interfaces visually easy to read. So they end up with whatever graphical look is hip without understanding the usability consequences. That may make a page look good as a whole in the "conforms to current graphic design trends", but it destroys the ability to organize the individual elements.
EDIT: Also, skeuomorphism when done right can be pretty, and if you really want you can still combine it "flat" design by using hints of shadows and depth for better readability - look at games like Snake Bird for examples of that. In general I agree with Bret Victor that the best place to look for good interface design these days is successful computer games, because if it doesn't feel right to play (that is: interact) with, the designers tend to throw it out, and it is the most likely place to see experimental interface design.
Windows has standardized and reused GUI elements across every application. So it's immediately clear what's a button, tabs, a subwindow, and how tab hierarchies work (notice they have a bounding box on the tab contents they will change).
Modern web-design disregards all of this because it prioritizes being visually pretty over being easily-recognizable.
Anyway the old Win UI was extremely clear in creating visual hierarchies, when not too many layers were on the screen — modern UI tends to be optimized for a way larger amount of layers, or the opposite, a hyper reduced hierarchy complexity (not the ergonomic / perceived complexity)
I'd love to see a breakdown of what creates this clarity, like how the OP has for every element type.
I know it might seem like an exaggeration but I was physically invigorated by it.
