Another trend on similar lines is putting cutesy / jokey text in mobile app changelogs. The people who don’t care what changed likely have automatic updates switched on anyway and it would be nice for the people who do care to actually know what changed.
The worst offender I have found is Lemonade Insurance which doesn’t even tack on the obligatory “bug fixes and performance improvements” at the end.
From the discussion "This seems to be part of a broader, ongoing software infantilization process. Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful."
What kind of shallow charicature of a tough guy do you have to be that seeing colours makes you feel like a baby and that cheerful is a bad thing, something to be stopped?
> "Besides the obvious inappropriateness"
Obvious?? All tools should be monochrome, and everyone should feel like they work in a funeral parlour? If it was supposed to be cheerful it wouldn't be called work? It must have been the colourful offices[1] which stopped Google from making any money, I guess?
That is a very uncharitable interpretation of that comment. Nowhere did they state that seeing colors makes them feel like a baby. Nor did they say everything should be monochrome.
Is it so surprising that people expect tools they use for business to look and act professionally?
> Nowhere did they state that seeing colors makes them feel like a baby.
Actually, that was a pretty reasonable translation of this line into low-brow speech:
> a broader, ongoing software infantilization process. Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful
The connection between these sentences is fairly clear: software is being infantilized and part of that is that everything has to be colorful and cheerful. Hence OP's translation into "seeing colours makes you feel like a baby and cheerful is a bad thing".
The translation into more casual language was rhetorically valuable in that it accentuated their broader point about how stuffy the original author sounds.
(And yes, I'm intentionally using stuffy language here because the casual language OP used seems to have whooshed.)
For what it's worth, my 'translation' would be, "The strong aversion to less colorful designs seems childish, and may go hand in hand with designs that treat the user as inept. I don't like being treated as inept or incapable."
That's the same thing; "the aversion to less colourful designs seems childish" - no it doesn't. When the Queen of England wore pink, did you say "her aversion to less colourful clothes makes her seem like a child"? When someone buys a red Ferrari do you think they didn't buy a muted gray Ferrari because they seem childish? When a builder drives a yellow JCB do you think they wish for a gray bulldozer because colour is for infants? When Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel do you think it was in a fit of infantile pique that he didn't make it monochrome? When a doctor recommends you eat a rainbow coloured meal of veg, do you think that seems more or less childish than only eating beige mashed potatoes and white fish? When a street sign says 'no entry' do you think the red border makes it look more childish than a black border? When someone has a blue can opener is that more childish than a metal can opener?
> "may go hand in hand with designs that treat the user as inept"
May, may not. Is orthogonal to.
> "I don't like being treated as inept or incapable."
What a chain of reasoning. "I don't like being treated as inept (fine), so to remind myself how capable I am I need to not look at colours otherwise I will fantasize that other people are laughing at me (not fine)".
First, it's not that the UI is colorful, it's that many designers seem unwilling to make UIs that are monotone or subdued. That's different from disliking color for whatever reason.
The designer choosing that certain (more monotone) color schemes are not permitted could be conflated with designers making other decisions on behalf of the user, such as assuming the user would prefer fewer options for the sake of simplicity. ("Treating the user as inept")
I don't know what the OP meant exactly, but I still find your 'translation' uncharitable.
I personally like both brightly colored things, as well as more muted color schemes, depending on the situation. I don't personally think colors equate to childishness.
I can however empathize with someone unhappy that their personal aesthetic preference seems underrepresented, and feels that UI designers are making more choices on their behalf than they'd prefer.
> "it's that many designers seem unwilling to make UIs that are monotone or subdued."
That needs some citations. "Dark mode" is the theme du decade. Most things have dark modes or night modes - operating systems, productivity tools, websites, chat programs, game menus, developer tools, browser chrome, mobile and desktop, traditional and apps.
> "The designer choosing that certain (more monotone) color schemes are not permitted could be conflated with designers making other decisions on behalf of the user, such as assuming the user would prefer fewer options for the sake of simplicity. ("Treating the user as inept")"
If you're exhorting me to have a charitable interpretation of the above comments, why aren't you taking a charitable interpretation of the designer's intent? [And why is fewer options connected to 'inept'? Do you feel inferior when there's only one lightswitch in a room instead of 8? Because somehow more options automatically means more competence? In any situation, the amount of possible options is enormous and the amount of useful ones is a tiny part of it; the most likely thing is that more options are acreted by lack of design and kitchen-sink driven development and are useless or time wasting, rather than considered and useful].
> "I don't know what the OP meant exactly, but I still find your 'translation' uncharitable."
> "I don't personally think colors equate to childishness."
Then why are you defending the claim that they do?
> > "I don't personally think colors equate to childishness."
>
>Then why are you defending the claim that they do?
Without wanting to put words into gp's mouth. I assume because he understands that different people have different preferences. And some don't want to get forced into other peoples preferences. Actually, gp said it directly:
> I can however empathize with someone unhappy that their personal aesthetic preference seems underrepresented, and feels that UI designers are making more choices on their behalf than they'd prefer.
Wow, what a website as well. It literally takes 20 seconds to load the homepage for me. And then the background randomly changing color as you scroll? I'm not terribly picky with design, and I get that its more of a design demo, but it is seems so overdone as a whole
"Whoops, sorry! This wasn't what you were looking for!"
"Oops! You broke the internet. We are trying to fix it."
"Are you lost? Let us help you home (link to home page)"
https://www.callbruno.com/en/404
Just treat me like an adult and tell me what's wrong. Preferably with a googleable error code.