Asklemmy

Saying “1 week ago” or “1 month ago” instead of just saying the date. Dude, I want to know if this happened in August or September.

Massive whitespace. So many websites just feel like a PowerPoint presentation with their large-sized fonts and large amounts of space I have to scroll through.

Makes it very hard to find information sometimes.

Touch screens in cars.

When I'm driving I need a tactile immediate response that is easy to understand without looking at it.

Touch screens are for controls that change so you can take advantage of the dynamic nature of a screen for the static needs of a car and the immediate feedback you need, make them the worst possible solution.

Disappearing scroll bars.

More like a meta trend but the whole "let us redesign the look of everything for no reason every couple of years" thing gets old quickly.

As for actual trends, the one where they put all the options into one menu even though there is plenty of room to have individual buttons.

When marking something to copy and paste. You start marking the text and drag to the right. If you drag too far to the right, your highlighting goes away and everything to the left of where you started becomes highlighted. Why would anybody ever want that behaviour? It is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to do.

Gonna trim my litany of complaints about modern trends down to my top 4 gripes:

1. Websites that look like CVS receipts with their excessive left/right padding. Some L/R padding is desirable, but the degree to which it's done now is typically done to cram a bajillion ads in the margins.
2. Excessive padding for UI controls. Looking at you, specifically, O365, but others are guilty as well. I use a desktop with a precision pointing device, so I don't need or want a UI designed to be poked at by hotdog fingers.
3. Unhelpful error messages. "Oops, something went wrong". Ok, but it is it a "me" problem or a "you" problem? Should I do anything, take any specific action, retry, or just twiddle my thumbs and hope someone else fixes it?
4. Chatbots that pop up on websites asking if you need help.

Bonus: Any time an email, website, or other online source has "click here" for a link. It's 2023. People know what a link is and what to do with it. All that "click here" says is you don't know what you're doing as a designer/publisher.

Icons without labels.

Just add a small label underneath. It's not hard. It makes your app way more usable. Please...

This is less a design choice and more the reality of package-based architecture, but - menus that I have to wait before interacting.

I spent most of my life being able to enter clicks and hotkeys as fast as I want, because they would queue up and the app would resolve them in order. Now I can’t type too fast after pressing the Windows Start button, because the start menu needs time to load before it can handle KEYPRESSES. Tapping Windows key followed by “Discord” will search for “iscord” or something if I type full speed.

It feels like every modern app is optimized for a slow person browsing one-handed on a phone.

Thin scrollbars. Why do I have to aim for a tiny area to click on a scroll bar? Other UI elements aren't that narrow.

The removal of borders on buttons. I don't know how many times I've been using a piece of software and haven't realized for a long while that some icon is actually a clickable thing and not just some UI decoration or something.

The removal of text in favor of icons. I hate having to memorize what all your icons mean in your app. Please just make text unless it's something insanely obvious. It's even worse when they neglect to put tool tips to tell you what the icon is supposed to mean

Dark UI patterns being socially acceptable. If someone advocated for or implemented a greyscale cancel button next to a vibrant and bold accept button then they should be tarred, feathered and disowned by their family.

The left side gutter that, I fear, is a trend still in it's infancy.

Dear Microsoft: I'm never going to launch apps from within teams or outlook. Why they fuck would I, that's what your terrible OS is for. Stop it.

On the desktop, a lot of programs have been removing and hiding capabilities to look more like tablets and phones. This sucks, as I'm using a desktop which has the room to show all the fiddly bits.

The trend to make an ad link suddenly appear right where and when the user is likely to press.

Does non-pausable videos count? I can’t understand why apps like instagram, which exists to show pictures and videos, has the worst picture and video handling of all time. Can only magnify pictures by pinching and it only works while you’re still touching the screen. Can’t pause or restart a video. Want to show someone a video? You have to scroll to another post and then back to the video so it starts again.
I like the idea of instagram but the actual reality of it is utter, utter dogshit

Websites that do not let me copy/paste my password in from my password manager, and break the auto-fill functionality.

Additionally, the ones that make you change the password every sixty days because they don't let me copy and paste the newly generated one in... It just feels like they're begging me to try to use an insecure one.

Those carousels on Netflix/Prime TV apps displaying the trailer if you stay 1sc on an item. So annoying, forced to keep moving back and forth to watch the movie image

Fromt the top of my head:

• all kinds of pop-ups wanting to guide me through their software/website latest features, giving me pro-tips or recommendations I didn't ask for

• notifications about shit I didn't subscribe to

• a virtual assistant icon in the corner showing a message that it wants to help me or talk to me

• autoplaying videos (bonus points if it's a video unrelated to the article)

• cookies pop-ups

Anything overlaid on top of content, especially those chatbot bubbles.

Also, "No, thanks"/"Remind me later" options on popups where they should be "Fuck off and don't show this ever again".

That shit where something on the page loads a few seconds later than everything else and shifts whatever I’m trying to click on down

Ultra slim scrollbars that auto-hide on a traditional monitor with a mouse or trackball input device.

“Mobile first” wich results in overly large buttons and font sizes and empty space on desktop.

Layout shifts. You know the ones where you go to click a button and an ad appears at thst exact moment, so now you have to close that garbage, and try again.

On mobile: multiple top and bottom tool/nav bars that automatically show/hide themselves when you scroll. They’re invariably more irritating than if they were just pinned at the top of the page (or perhaps viewport, but ideally page - I can scroll to the top of I want it back)

On desktop: animations tied to scrolling.

Anywhere: any kind of popup, modal, etc that I didn’t click on something to get. Please fuck alllllllll the way off.

Continuous scroll websites. I want a sidebar or a menu that lets me jump to the exact information I'm looking for, I don't want to scroll through your entire life story to find the hardware specs.

Dynamically expanding UI widgets that push other content down. Used by Google search for suggestions which always leads to misclick links. Portainer and cloudflare dashboard also does this.

Minimizing to tray by default when you hit the x button.

Especially when there is no way to change the behavior.

When I can't middle mouse it right click to open a button in a new tab. It makes it harder to get back to the exact same spot, loaded how it was, to repeat the same task for the next button.

When you have a web page with only an input box. You can't do anything else on that page except input into the box and yet the cursor isn't automatically placed in the box! You have to put it there first.

• Buttons without text
• Hamburger menus
• Desktop sites acting like mobile pages
• Fixed scrolling (you either scroll to specific points, or you don't)
• Specifically in multiplayer games, SHINY BUTTONS EVERYWHERE LOOK HERE NO ACTUALLY HERE ALSO THERE

This is mostly a thing on touch interfaces. When the UI designers think 100% of the screen needs to do something when touched. Like if an app pops out a form for you to fill out, don't let your palm touch the margins because there's a good chance it will close the form and delete everything you put in it. It's ironic that this is mostly a thing on the platforms where it's the biggest mistake. But it's horrible on PC too. I'm not sure what the proper way to refocus is but my habit has always been to click on whitespace because it's such an easier and therefore faster target than a taskbar. Too bad there are twisted shadow realms where our concept of whitespace doesn't exist.

For similar reasons I can't stand those "in-app" browsers either. God forbid you need to reference something in the app while using the in-app browser. Whatever page you were on, whatever you entered, it's gone with no warning. I avoid these whenever possible but I swear that despite all in-app browsers being "powered by chrome," the option to open the actual page in the actual browser is obfuscated in a different way every time. I barely use any apps anymore and it's still never where I expect to find it.

Also in the same genre of frustration, the way Android (idk if iOS is like this too) automatically clears out RAM is really inconvenient sometimes. I have a special emotion that only activates when I go back to an app from another and it reloads, losing everything.

Crap like this makes using a mobile interface feel like handling a live bomb sometimes. We use the term volatile to describe either memory that dissapears when power is lost, or software that's prone to crashing. But software also has a varying risk of your shit suddenly being lost without anything unintended occurring, and it just feels fragile. I don't know if we have any language right now to describe exactly what this aspect of software is like, but I love apps and programs where my work always feels safe.

• Flatness. UI controls need to be recognizable.
• Theming/styling. A button should look like button.
• Lack of menus. Discoverability is poor if you don't have a list of things in an obvious place.
• Gestures. Lack of discoverability.
• Information density. I don't care about huge margins and filler pictures. Content shouldn't be crammed, but space should be used efficiently.
• Mobile first. Especially if mobile use is only a fraction of actual use. Or maybe even if it is the majority of users, but not majority of use (operations, hours).
• Simplicity. Make simple things simple, but hard things possible. Removing features can make your software useless.

Flat design. I don't know what a button is anymore. Often I randomly click through an UI to see if it's a clickable element or just a text box. Please give me back skeuomorphic design.

Not really a trend, but Material You and things that look similar. I don't want the background of my app to be a colour with the vibe of brown.

When Websites have a random part where scrolling down scrolls to the left.

A persistent bar at the top that takes up what feels like half the screen with 100% zoom on a standard 1080x1920 monitor.

Sidebars that can't be retracted, especially in desktop applications.

Is it just me who likes rounded corners?

Infinite scrolling. Sometimes I want things to end. It's fine if I have to click "more" but I want to know when I've reached the "end".

Also many apps/sites forget where I am it I leave, so if I leave and then go back I'm in the middle of a mess.

(I'm fine for it to be an option, I personally don't like it but I don't care if folks who like it keep it.)

the overall ambiguity across all UI is what annoys me, tho maybe I'm too oldschool.

what I mean, around 15-20 years ago, the UI elements had defining qualities. borders were 3D as well as buttons. they stood up from the surface, had some 3d effect to make you instinctily feel that you can push that block. and this was consistent; things you could click on were 3d. you knew you can click on a list header, it looked like a button.

scrollable content always had a scrollbar. now it appears if you bring your cursor to the place where it should be, but you don't really know for sure is it scrollable or not.

links were blue, with the pointing finger cursor.

and things like these. Granted, oldschool UI is considered ugly nowadays, but it was functional. you opened a native app for your system, even if you never used it before, the UI gave you clues on at least how to navigate or operate the given software. it was familiar on all systems.

I don't feel there is a unified UX guide for today's computers. at a point, everyone went with their own interpretation of "modern" and "clean", caused (previously) vital UI qualities disappear. everything became "flat".

which, on its own isn't bad, of course.

White space.

So many UIs in my education programs and my work as a teacher just fucking love to leave huge piles of unused space and hide the options I am looking for in a drop down menu off a drop down menu.

Use the space. Give me buttons. Take options out of menus in menus in some absurd, backwards attempt at achieving "minimalism", because you don't understand what the word means, and make a UI that minimizes the time between when I load the thing, and when I get to what I am here for.

On touch centric UIs, it makes me absolutely insane when people have a button or something I might want to tap below a thing that has to be loaded and can be variable size, so I go for the button that does what I want and between my decision to touch it and my finger moving, the thing loads and I tap it instead.

Fuckin stop it. Make the thing that loads a static size or put the button above it. If your buttons jump all over the page after you initially display them, I hate you.

Designing everything for mobile first and de-prioritizing desktop. I'm on a desktop/laptop 90% of the day and it's infuriating to interact with a mobile looking interface on a desktop browser. That and a lot of platforms limit features you can access on desktop so you're forced to use their mobile app.

Single page websites with only a few marketing blurbs, stock photos/meaningless graphics elements.

I want to know actual details about your product or service, so naturally I explore the menu... and every link takes me right back to anchors on the single page with its useless blurbs. Aaaaagh!