The age of UI conformity

I’ve spent a lot of time in Apple’s ecosystem. The hardware is gorgeous, the software used to be gorgeous. But because it’s completely locked down, I wanted out. I like pre-configured stuff, but I also like customizing it when it doesn’t work for me. Anyways, I left right before Liquid Glass came to my devices. I used to use a Mac and an iPhone, but I figured since I used Linux almost every day that I’d give it a real try; as for Android, I’ve been an Android user longer than I’ve been an iOS user, so there should be nothing surprising there. So, around the halfway point of last year, I started looking into alternatives. I tried a few phones (all except one were pre-owned), particularly dumbphones, but also a solid Android phone: the CMF Phone 2 Pro. I chose it mainly for the price, and despite its flaws, I actually really enjoy it. However, every phone had at least one problem: communication just did not work for me. I don’t know what on earth was going wrong, but a lot of calls and texts would just drop randomly. On every device¹. Some phones, like the Minimal Phone, had many more problems than this, but this isn’t a review, so I’m not going to go much further into them. As I’m sure you can tell by my journey through dumbphones that I want my phone to only be a phone. You’d think by being phones that only do phone things, they’d be pretty good at it. Unfortunately that’s not true, as I said above, so it was back to the iPhone. I don’t regret this decision; I can actually communicate with people now. I’m probably going to stick with this until the Fairphone comes to the US (for less than $900), GrapheneOS launches a device with their OEM partner, or until we don’t have to have smartphones anymore. I do want to report though that I’m happily daily driving Linux, thanks to Bluefin, and will never leave. Bluefin has two things that I want in an operating system: the ability to make a mess and not destroy anything², and all the software I could ever want³. Once again, this isn’t a review, so I’m not going to go much further into that either. I haven’t written anything in a while, so this is first section is kind of just a Year(s) in Review of sorts. Anyways, the main point of this story is Liquid Glass and what is going on with UI design nowadays. I’ve been back on the iPhone for a month or so, and it’s been pretty refreshing to send a text and get a response. But something feels off… why does everything look like that?

Liquid Glass

I think the idea of Liquid Glass is actually kinda cool. I think, however, it’s better suited for the Apple Vision Pro, which is where the design philosophy stems from. The design is much more suited for an augmented reality application than it is for the messages app. Having a little glass bubble that contains the name of the contact that you’re messaging looks weird and out of place. Why is it there? When it’s on a header, you’ve made it clear that it’s removed from the messages “below”; it’s a different surface. When it’s a glass bubble, it’s just… hovering above the messages? Why is it in that particular place? Why is it there in the first place? Also, what is the purpose of being able to see through it? I’m not going to be reading critical information through that stupid little glass bubble, so why is it clear? It makes sense to have “panes of glass” in a physical space; you probably have a reason to look through them. If phones became transparent (for whatever reason), then it’d make sense to have panes of glass in the UI. But right now it feels like just a GPU-intensive aesthetic mess. And by the way, I know I’m not the first and only person to say this, and I know I’m incredibly late to the party, but as I said I’ve been away for a while⁴. I’m just disappointed that we’re going this way.

I think augmented reality is a very cool platform; I can’t wait to see what the next 5-10 years looks like in technology, because I imagine a lot of progress will be made in that area. I’m a big fan of the Google Glass because it was (and still is) a pretty realistic glance into the future of technology. The UI, while somewhat “dated” now, was/is so well designed. The principles they established are very grounded, sane, and simple. And they didn’t just say it… they did it. There’s one line in the guidelines that I want to point out:

Don’t try to replace a smartphone, tablet, or laptop by transferring features designed for these devices to Glass. Instead, focus on how Glass and your services complement each other, and deliver an experience that is unique.

Don’t transfer features designed for other devices to Glass. That absolutely goes the other way. Sorry for the cliche, but you wouldn’t use a hammer in place of a screwdriver. So why are we bringing Apple Vision Pro design philosophy to non-AVP devices? AVP is revolutionary because it’s an innovative hardware platform, not because of the UI… the necessity of creating a new UI for AVP makes sense; there’s nothing like it (sort of). We’ve had smartphones for almost 20 years now and, yes, they look dramatically different now than they did in 2007, but they’re barely different from their counterparts from 5 years ago.

It’s spreading

In my homelab I use something called Arcane for managing the containers and images from a UI. It’s very nice, but they have a similar effect on the UI. To give them credit, it’s actually done well - the “frosty” effect makes it clear that it’s a separate surface. But why? Why does it need to look like Liquid Glass? They’re not affiliated with Apple; there’s not even an iOS app. It’s a web app! The more I look around, the more I see the same UI. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a completely novel UI, save for Plan 9 (which at this point is over 30 years old). Every website looks like The Triangle Website. Every app (tries, and usually fails) looks like the Apple News app. Every phone looks like an iPhone. Every car looks like a Tesla (this one’s a stretch, but basically they’re all a neutral color and have no distinguishing features). My point is that no one is trying anything new anymore.

I used to absolutely love Scandinavian interior design and minimalist architecture. It’s simple, but gets the job done. But the more farmhouses I saw, the angrier I got. I still respect it, but I want something like this:

Photo by Dmytro Shchetynin on Unsplash

This building was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser who is known for this style. I’m not saying everything should look like this; we’d run into the same problem, after all. I’m just saying I think we need more of this in a world of flat gray buildings. Maybe it’s not the outside of your house, but the inside! Or, make something whimsical that normally wouldn’t be, like a light switch. This goes for UI as well.

Where do we go from here?!

I think we need more people studying UX/UI design. And I’m not talking about how to round corners; I’m talking about old school System 7 UX/UI. Let’s take a step back to think about when a cursor should be a pointer or not (keep this in mind as you go along your week; you’ll start to notice that it makes no sense). Let’s throw out the idea that backgrounds can only be white, black, or some barely different shade of either of them.

I know it seems like I’m being a hypocrite here, considering this site is exactly the thing I’m defaming. But one thing I want to point out is that this site is effectively a digital book. My point is not that simplicity is useless; rather, it’s that we should actually put thought into why something looks the way it does instead of just making the same UI for everything. Some things should be simple, but we should also recognize where we can take artistic liberties, and make life just a bit more fun.