Asklemmy @lemmy.ml phantomwise @lemmy.ml 23h ago

What are the modern design trends you hate most?

What are the modern design trends you hate most? Feel free to rant! Mine are:

Physical buttons are out of fashion, now EVERYTHING must have a touch screen instead! Especially if it makes the appliance more inconvenient to use. Like having to press a flimsy touch screen ten times to scroll through a washing machine's programs instead of just turning a physical knob and pressing a physical start button.
Every website looks like it's made for a phone and was vomited by the same app in slightly different flavors of vomit. And then having the nerve to tell you to download the mobile app 😑
Why does everything need to be an app by the way? Especially when the only advantage the app gives you over the website is that you're not constantly spammed with messages telling you to use the app... Are you making your website shittier on purpose so I feel like I have to use the app?... I don't WANT your app, you can shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
Actually EVERYTHING looks like it's made for a phone... Like what's the deal with all those hamburger menus on DESKTOP software? Please just put a regular menu and same me some pointless clicking, it's not like you're lacking screen space. I especially hate that those menus can't be opened from the keyboard like regular menus. You know, "keyboards"? Those things that people on DESKTOPS use?
All phones look the same. All laptops look the same. It's boring as hell.
Laptops must be as thin and flimsy as possible. Bonus points if you can't even fit an ethernet port.
I'm so sick of rounded corners everywhere... 😭

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Giant fucking (landing page img|carousel)s

Cutesy (error msg|splash screen) illustrations

Camera bumps . Wanna lay your phone flat ? Requires case now !

This stupid fucking thing :
- I despise giant image carousels on landing pages so much...
Car centric cities by far. Bring back walkable neighborhoods and give me options to move around instead of only being able to be stuck inside a car
Rounded corners. Everywhere. They lose so much space, especially on small screens, and everything feels crammed.

No personalization anywhere. You used to be able to completely customize social media profiles, to the point of editing your page's CSS directly.

Modern OSes (except linux or BSD based ones which are not android) also have no color or personalization. You usually have the slabs of white on light mode, or the slabs of blak on dark mode, with only one color you can choose for some details.

JavaScript animations on every. Single. Website. I have an old phone (because I don't like modern stuff), and it struggles with almost every modern, animated site. Is it really necessary to add all that js and animations?

No headphone jacks or expandable storage on modern phones. It probably costs cents to add those features. I know phones don't usually have expandable storage because it makes you buy a new one once you fill all your storage, and I know they don't have audio jacks because it makes you buy the company's wireless headphones, but I need those features in my phone.

Why does everything have to be a web app now? Have people forgotten about actual softwate, that you own, that doesn't need internet to work, that uses almost no resources and is faster and has more features than a web app? We got everything backward. Sites that should be webs like reddit will ask you to download their apps, while microsoft will try to code Word in javascript and sell it to you as an "upgrade".

I hate subscriptions with passion, especially for software.
- There's so much javascript everywhere... A few years ago I used to be able to browse the internet with the NoScript extension, and it only required a few allows now and then. Now NOTHING works without javascript, and each website needs you to allow 20 others websites for it to work...
- I've tried COSMIC DE Beta on Pop!_OS on an older laptop I have around, and the feature I'm looking forward to most, that I've seen and experienced from my mininal usage of it, is the ability to easily change colours from settings. Not just accent colours, but window colours, text colours, etc. From what I recall, I could, for instance, recreate Hot Dog Stand, the Windows 3.1 colour theme, right from the system settings app, no third party downloads
FUCKING MATERIAL DESIGN AND ALL IT'S RELATIVES!

FUCK YOU, WHOEVER DESIGNED THIS SHIT.
- I don't mind that someone designed it, but the people who decided that it would the new standard and the ONLY standard design should be shot. In the legs. And left to bleed out on a raft above a shark tank.
- Didn't like material design prior to Material 3 very much
Prompting.

Remember the day where you have to type commands on a terminal to do anything and some guy came up with "button" and "windows" and suddenly you could print yo document with a single click ?

Oh, cool, let's bring back the trend of speaking to your computer through a text area !

Fuck LLM.
The advantage of an app is that they can use more permissions etc to spy on you even more compared to your browser.

And don't forget the biggest plus; they can also sell your data! Isn't that wonderful?
- Also you can't force an app to close for real and not access the internet to do heaven knows what, unless you install specific apps to force close them and control them, which most people won't do since they don't even realize that an app is not really closed when they close it...
Smart everything. I’m buying second hand TVs simply so they are not marketing to me as soon as I turn it on.

Terms of design I feel like since postmodern we have had a bastardisation of flat design which was really mostly suited to information design but it got shoved on everything hence the monochrome blandness. On the other side we got a bastardisation of arts and crafts maybe where people tried to digitally replicate traditional methods, we got hand lettering stamping etc. then they swished them together and true design got shoved out the window in favour of , how can we grab the users attention, to
how can we hold the viewer captive, to
How can we force the viewer to absorb, to The how can we annoy the viewer so much they will pay to just read/view in peace.

I am not sure what this design movement will be called
Electronics that are damn-near impossible for anyone but a professional to repair.
- Electronics that you can't even TRY to repair because there are no screws, the case is just glued together. I had to use a flat screwdriver as chisel along with a HAMMER to open up some dead devices like mouse and controller to see what was inside 😑
- I've recently determined for myself, specifically for this reason, any devices I want around my home for the future I plan to build myself.
  
  A project box, a raspberry pi, and a few components can go a really long way.
I loath the modern obsession with minimalist, utilitarian design. Everything is just a white, black, or grey slab with no artistic thought put into its form. Buildings, homes, cars, clothes, electronic devices. It's almost like a capitalist version of brutalism. Even the design of user interfaces is usually a pile of flat, washed out rectangles now. It's like the soul has been sucked out of everything we make, reduced to it's most basic form. It can feel anti-human at times. Like the world has collectively decided that beauty is a waste of time.
Interrupted garden paths. Like stepping stones in lawn. Just put a continual path. Stepping stones are terrible for access and maintenance. Just grass or just paving would be preferable.
Webpages bouncing stuff around as various elements load in.

Back in the day, the space would be reserved, so if something hadn't loaded yet, that space would be blank.

Nowadays, you'll be reading something (or worse -- trying to click on something), and it'll get bounced around because some other element of the webpage got loaded in.
- There’s a special place in hell for CSS flexboxes
- This trend is, incidentally, solely because we a higher percentage of programmers knew what they were doing.
  
  It's easier to build a webpage, but more people can make them worse quality, now.
The trend toward subdued color palettes. Every new home is decorated in "millennial gray." Most cars are black, white, gray, or silver. You have to go out of your way to find bright, colorful clothing or furniture. It's incredibly boring and I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way.
- that's one of the reasons I specifically picked a bright lime green for my car
- I really thought we’d have a vibrant post pandemic ‘roaring 2020’s’. Seems like it wasn’t handled right and so we’re sort of still stuck in the same doldrums.
- Most cars are black, white, gray, or silver.
  
  I fucking hate these new vehicles with the paint that has no sparkle to it, especially the horrible grey one. So called Putty ass-whips
  
  Your link made me remind one more thing i absolutely hate: TALKING HEADS. Like bloody hell TV and video was made to present visual content and comments and the same time, not for me to look on some selfappointed youtube personality yapping just so his video is few minutes longer wasting my time.
  
  Also podcasts, audiobooks and generally the trend to make everything audible. I mean i do not mind this by itself, but i would love to have a transcript so i don't need to wade through hours of senseless yapping and unfun banter to find the info i need to.
  
  It looks like primer and the car is unfinished
- Don't worry, it will. I'm a designer and the one thing you can count is all of us designers get bored every few years and flip things around. That's how buttons keep shifting from rounded corners to square corners every few years.
- It's the shape of things, too. They have no character.
  
  I was shopping for door knobs recently, because all the knobs in this house are spherical and smooth. They're impossible to grip. We have a disabled person in the house who struggles to turn them. Gloves slip right off.
  
  At the hardware store is an entire aisle full of doorknobs, but nearly all of them are the exact same smooth spherical shape. The rest were ugly rectangular lever styles that work but look very industrial in a home that's mostly natural textures.
  
  Somehow all these brands, finishes, locking features, price ranges, dozens of product variations, and literally only two doorknob shapes. Both so minimalist as to be almost impractical.
  
  I had to settle for the lever style for one door, and just put grip tape on the others.
  
  Everything being extruded, quickest to make crap is getting ridiculous. Even the expensive stuff looks like IKEA.
  
  I miss craftsmanship and artistry.
  
  In many places doorknobs are being phased out of codes precisely because they aren't accessible like a lever style is.
- I hate that. I had my home built to spec a few years ago. The exterior siding is cedar shake stained a chocolatey brown with forest green trim, and the interior is white walls but with natural wood trim, pale golden laminate wood flooring, and two tone hickory wood cabinets, and the interior doors are all just natural wood unpainted.
  
  I’ve leaned into the wood aesthetic with my DIY standing desk and custom pine desktop stained a dark red oak color, among various other earth tone color hints, and splashes of brighter decoration here and there.
  
  Was going for “cozy cabin/cottage” and I think we nailed it. It’s very rustic.
  
  I really hate the modern trends of white, black, steel, and glass.
- Yeah it's so depressing when everything looks dull and muted everywhere 😬
Completely flat chiclet keyboards on laptops. It drives me absolutely insane because I can barely tell if my fingers are aligned with the keys. Thanks, Apple!

Hidden controls on desktop software or desktop websites (ex: hidden exit, forward, and back controls on picture galleries)

Hiding or collapsing scrollbars on desktop software

In general, it seems like there's a major trend in design of form beating the heck out of function. It looks pretty! Who cares if you can actually use it or not?
- I'd argue it's less "It looks pretty" as "It looks modern(TM)"...
All new cars look the same and are way bigger than necessary
I used to be able to point to ling's cars as a holdout of fun web page design, but they've changed v.v

https://web.archive.org/web/20110108151026/https://www.lingscars.com/
Flat pack furniture. Everything being reduced to the cheapest to make and cheapest to ship.
UI elements that expand and cover up other UI elements when you mouse over them.

"Flat" color schemes where you can't even tell where one UI element ends and the other begins.

Infinite scroll instead of pagination.
QR coding everything. It has it uses and is practical in certain use-cases, but don't use it everywhere.
- saw a mall once that didn't have its hours printed or posted anywhere and only had a printed-out QR code u had to scan if u wanted to check the hours. turned my ass right tf around and never came back.
- Maybe I'm paranoid but it also seems very insecure. I've been to some restaurants where they have the menu as a qr code and you even pay for your food from the website. What's to stop a bad actor from creating a fake version of your website and stealing card data? They just need to create a qr sticker and put it on top of the one on the table.
  
  That’s actually a huge problem and I don’t get why it is not talked about more. We all learn about validating links in emails and are very careful about clicking anything there. But QR codes we just scan and open without thinking.
The home, back, and switch app buttons on Android being replaced with that bar like on the iPhone.

I especially miss the back button, swiping from the edge of the screen is nowhere near as ergonomic. It also replaced the ability to reveal the side panel by swiping from the left edge, so now you have to tap the hamburger menu way up at the top left corner of the screen for it, which requires either your other hand or you have to shimmy the phone down your hand until you can reach it.

Also, when you have a full screen video playing, you have to swipe up once to reveal the bar, and then again to actually close out of the app. That made sense with buttons but why the hell is it still the case with the bar?

Double tapping the switch app button to switch between the two most recent apps was also more convenient than swiping up to reveal the app manager and dragging the window to the right, and when you want to go to the previous app, whether it's on the right or left side of the current one seems to depend on how long you've been on the app for, which means you can never build up muscle memory since it changes all the time.

Another case of Google trying to imitate Apple's UX but seemingly not actually doing any of the usability testing and polishing that Apple does, and generally making it both worse than Apple's implementation and worse than what was there before.
- You can bring back the old control scheme! You can even flip it which my gf uses cause it's easier for her to reach.
Corporate Memphis, and I’ll get ahead of the curve, whatever its successor is. Probably some kind of AI-chic.
- Milano mepphis was one of the last hurrah of post modern. A decent trend at least. Corporate Memphis is an abomination. It’s like meeting Clint Eastwoods great grandchild who has a mullet, has no option on anything, and works as a real estate agent. It’s not wrong but lack of character and conviction is such a bore.
- I suspect Corporate Memphis is partly successful because it works with ambiguous skin colours, so it automatically ticks diversity boxes without the artist having to think too hard about representation.
  
  My prediction is that the successor will double down on that. I hope it's cartoony style anthropomorphic animals.
houses designed as if they were some private plastic surgeon's office;

neopentec churches with black walls.

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