Flat UIs hard to navigate, even for youngsters

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-cause-uncertainty/

"On average participants spent 22 per cent more time (i.e. slower task performance) looking at the pages with weak signifiers," the firm notes. Why would that be? Users were looking for clues how to navigate. "The average number of fixations was significantly higher on the weak-signifier versions than the strong-signifier versions. On average, people had 25 per cent more fixations on the pages with weak signifiers."

The firm dispenses with the counter-argument that users were "more engaged" with the page.

Oh yes, not being able to find your way around websites just means you're engaged with it!


https://www.fastcodesign.com/3058094/the-problem-with-flat-design-according-to-a-ux-expert

But her favorite quote comes from a young adult–under 25–talking recently about navigating a flat web design: “I don’t [know what’s a link]. I just start clicking and praying that it works.”

Who would've fucking guessed Windows NT 4.0 is more usable than the modern web?

How much longer do I have to wait until this design bubble finally pops and everyone goes back to traditional UIs?
Even my god damn bank is overhauling it's user interface with flat bullshit.
Fucking kill me.

>>17
I don't think that your implication that coordinating certain techniques in order to draw the user's attention as an exclusively superflat thing is really valid. In fact, I think you're looking at it wrong. Superflat is pomo--it's brutalism, utilitarianism, not an alternative to skeumorphism and not simply minimalism. And skeumorphism not only encompasses but, in my opinion, exceeds much of the qualities of superflat, in that what's required to make a superflat design is just as much the kernel of that superflat design as it would be a skeumorphic design. If I can be really, really pedestrian for a moment, what if you were to reconstruct this site, tinychan, visually? Well, you would probably introduce a certain colorset and then the general shape of things, and then you would have a flat UI. You could stop there. Skeumorphism is what happens after that. The most obvious example being the borders that mimic reliefs around each thread but also the tiling brick image of this site's background. Skeumorphism exists in excess of superflat. Superflat should have never been codified, because it's really universal. It's the basis upon which every other design choice prior to that was built on. In the same reductionist sentiment, aren't all illustrations really just glorified geometric shapes of different colors and sizes on a canvas? They are. And it's ultimately those shapes and colors that are really necessary, but they need more form in order to be palatable. They have to have that excess.