I'm still really frustrated by Discord's new UI changes. The colour hover effect, the changes in padding, and the lack of dividing line between user posts - they're all accessibility nightmares because they make everything subtly more difficult to read.
Remember when UI wasn't this flat-colour-fill wankfest? Because it's getting harder and harder to remember those days.
more thoughts on UI design
UI design has been trending towards distributor control/presumption over user control for a while now that by this point people just roll over when software/OSes get harder to use, and distributors know it.
I'm going by memory here, but design trends feel like they went like this:
- mid-90s: Limited system-generated bevels. Functional, perhaps overly so.
- early-00s: Everything looked like gimmicky kids toys. Chaotic and confusing, though you still had the functions if you could find them.
- mid-00s: Toothpaste tubes. Everything was gradients and bevels. Structurally more like the early-00s again, but more about big icons than text.
- 10s onwards: what, YOU own YOUR software? lmao. User customisation gets harder, shapes and presented information cut down further and further.
