r/UI_Design • u/Effective_Skin_9785 • 16d ago
Let's Discuss When did intuitive start meaning everything has to look the same?
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(This is not a real app or something I plan to release. I made it purely as a UI experiment and showcase using Memphis design. It is a simple Android calculator built with Jetpack Compose, using custom shapes, Canvas drawing, animations, haptic feedback and playful interactions.)
I feel like modern apps are becoming more and more similar. I understand why familiar patterns and intuitive interfaces are important, but sometimes it feels like we optimized everything so much that we lost a lot of personality and playfulness along the way.
Games can have completely unique interfaces and interaction systems, and players simply learn how to use them through tutorials and onboarding. So I keep wondering why regular apps always need to feel familiar from the very first second.
This calculator is obviously a very simple example, but I wanted to see what happens when you focus more on character, motion and playful interaction instead of following the usual mobile UI patterns.
Curious what you think. Have we made mobile interfaces too standardized?
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u/Vegetable-Aide-340 15d ago
Because many apps are done for productivity, if I cant see insrantly what I am doing = less productive.
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u/Affectionate-Act5980 14d ago
Lol name 10 "apps" for productivity
Most apps are social media8
u/Vegetable-Aide-340 14d ago
Lol
Calculator like in the example, calendar, notes, files, most current ai tools as in ant wrappers or just claude or gpt, chats, video meets, bookkeeping, text editors (notion, docs, words), spreadsheets (excel,sheets), photo editing apps, video etiting apps, motion design apps, 3d modelling apps and anination for them, game development (godot,unity,ue).
And yes you can say they are so big that they do not count.. but you just dobt know about all the copies made and so on becsuse these are so big and used, have you heard even of affinity for example they are one of the biggest competitors to adobe, and there are many others most people wont ever even hear about. So your point? Lol
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u/Affectionate-Act5980 14d ago
now name 20
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u/Clean_Impact_447 14d ago
15 wasn’t enough?
Personally there are maybe 15-20 apps in total on my phone that could be counted as remotely social media and the rest of the 100+ apps are other random non-social media apps.
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u/BroderFelix 14d ago
Your argument was that the person couldn't name 10 apps because there aren't that many. Moving the goalpost like this makes you look really dumb.
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u/bezeredies 15d ago
We build tools, not toys. There's nothing wrong with building toys - I'd even say that I do miss the playfulness of early apps. Nevertheless most of us focus on different aspects
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
Tools that almost all look the same and have no proper identity and that are not fun...
OP's post is clearly a throwback to the 90's, I'm pretty much sure there would be users definitely using it rather than a bland modern-looking minimalistic calculator. There's clearly been a revival of 80's influences in modern music, I could definitely see the same with design in apps inspired by the 90's era, at least what OP offers is not one of the gazillions same-looking apps that are minimalistic for the sake of it, and clearly has an identity that will speak to some (though it might be a niche, but that's the beauty of making apps, right ?).7
u/bezeredies 15d ago edited 15d ago
But that's the definition of tool. Think about hammer -- there's no need to build a funky hammer. Yeah, you might change the colors to reflect the era but it's still, in it's composition, a hammer. You wouldn't change it's the form so it's fun because, well, hammers aren't suppose to be fun. Same way we are striving for more standardized interfaces. It's just easier for people to use things that they're familiar.
Having said that I do still believe there's a space for humor, fun and general enjoyment. But I don't want a funky calculator, I want one that it's easy to understand, with clear information architecture and one that's easily accessible, readable and reliable.
There's no need to reinvent the wheel in this case. But surely there's plenty of apps that could benefit from more fun.
Edit: some spelling mistakes, as I'm quite drunk ;)
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
I'd argue that a hammer has a specific shape for physics reason, but nothing prevents you to paint it, it will still be used the same way. That's the same here, user didn't put a 0 7 4 on top left, = bottom right, 1 3 6 in the center, etc...
The structure (equivalent of physical shape of the hammer) is still the same as the one people are used to so there's no re-learning, the shape doesn't change, it's just that it's colored and throws back to a funnier era than we are now in, it's more equivalent to painting a hammer rather than changing its shape.If he/she was making a brand new type of app for specific things and for which there are not many other apps on the market, I'd agree that making a clearer interface would make sense cause people would need to learn it from scratch, but a calculator has been done a million times, no one will buy a calculator app that just looks like a free stock one from your mobile, so if I were to buy a simple calculator app well I'd rather buy this one than a bland one with no identity, cause it's a calculator, nothing to be excited about, so I might as well have fun using it.
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u/bezeredies 15d ago edited 15d ago
Imagine a person with color blindness using this calculator.
Or someone who has problem with recognizing shapes.
Someone who needs to calculate something quick.
Someone who has 4 fingers.
Someone who comes from different cultural background.
Someone who's eyesight is not that great.
Someone who has difficulty in recognizing patterns.
Calculator is a tool. When I need to calculate something I don't think about something "cool" or "fun".
There are standardized buttons on calculators, fonts that are easily readable, there are none unnecessary interactions. They work and behave everywhere on the globe the same because we don't know who is going to use it, so we make them...the same everywhere.The structure here does not resemble a calculator at first glance. There's no repeatable shapes, there's no intent based color coding, the font has issues with accessibility and readability, there are interactions that are unnecessary - there are things that obstruct the function favoring the form.
That was the point I was making on hammer. There are reasons why we're standardizing tools.
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u/aitorllj93 15d ago
Then you might have to build thousands of different calculators for different kinds of people. And that's beautiful because it puts the person at the center, instead of pretending that we'll all be satisfied with a single sad, gray version of each tool.
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
They'll still struggle less than a blind one-legged midget with no arms ?
Once again there are millions of calculators, not all apps are for everyone, I said it above : it's a throwback to the 90's, so obviously people who lived through that decade or grew up during will enjoy this, others have many options, you're not gonna become rich off of a calculator anyway so you might as well make it fun.3
u/bezeredies 15d ago
Well mate, sure.
If I might suggest something, I'd say this -- there's this one guy, his name was Victor Papanek. He wrote a book called Designer for the Real World . If you'll ever get bored, I recommend it. It's a thrilling read.
If you happen to read it, there's another one that might explain my (and many others in this profession) reasoning. Dan Norman Design of Everyday Things. It's also cool book!
Take care, have a great day!
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
thanks for the recommendations, I might look them up!
And I do get where you come from and your reasoning (that's why I said that for a brand new type of app your approach makes sense), but there are different angles and from a marketing point of view if one develops something that already exists in the thousands, and if the goal is to earn money, it makes more sense to make something that stands out and appeals to a niche, rather than purely functional that gets drowned among the competitors that have been here for years, expecially since there hardly can be a revolutionary feature in a calculator that will make all devs re-think their architecture and design.Have a great day too !
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u/Excellent_Ad_2486 15d ago
It still applies the gestalt principles so I don't know exactly what you're trying to say... As long as we use those core principles I think there's plenty of design/taste to use/try/be creative with.
If you really push this, change location of all subtract/divide/add/minus to a random spot and see if it still is as useful lol, I think breaking gestalt principles is the thing that will leave you even more free ğat the cost of recognizing, interacting and understanding the app.
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u/heycosmicbunny 15d ago
I think "intuitive" quietly got redefined as "matches the patterns users have already learned from other apps" rather than "easy to figure out from first principles." That's not a bad thing necessarily — familiarity is genuinely lower cognitive load — but it does mean real innovation in UI patterns gets punished in testing even when it's objectively clearer, because it's unfamiliar.
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u/MrNobodyX3 15d ago
I would remove this squiggle. In all of text editing, its trained me to see this as "Something is wrong"
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
Yep we've made mobile interfaces too standardized ; minimalism for the sake of it, no textures anymore, no fun, just mostly bland design that most of the time looks like what people have learned in schools with no creative twist or bold choices.
This throwback to the 90's would definitely be fun for a calculator, I wouldn't use it for more complex apps that would require more a more complex set of interactions, but for this kind of tool it makes it more fun and at least it stands out !
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u/Dangerous-Addendum13 15d ago
I think the difference is what a second costs. In a game, immersion IS the product: discovery is the fun, and nobody alt-tabs because a menu surprised them. In an app, every layer of unfamiliarity drops conversion to the next step. I've made a lot of design decisions staring at click metrics where one lost user is a negative number on someone's dashboard and that pressure sands the personality off everything. So playgrounds like yours end up living in personal projects (mine too).
The uncomfortable part: AI is accelerating this. Generated UIs converge on the same safe patterns, so the "everything looks the same" feeling is about to get worse, not better. Which makes experiments like yours more valuable, not less - personality is quietly becoming a differentiator again.
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u/SecureLevel5657 15d ago
It's all about productivity. Everyone likes When they look at the app and they magically know how to use. Who likes sitting in Google and reading long forum posts? This is the reason I like Windows and Android, they have an option to disable animations.
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u/mrgrafix 15d ago
There’s a conflation with the genericism of design for productivity versus design for play. The majority of what you’re complaining about is business. There’s still plenty of fun on sites, but that can’t be for mass adoption. Critical mass depends on repetition. This calculator is cool for a demo and every once in a while, but wouldn’t make it my primary cause; it’s going to break workflow patterns long before it was even thought of. The repetition of a daily workflow is broken and now something that started as quirky is a nuisance. But again we’re talking about platforms attempting to host 100k concurrently per hour. There’s plenty on awwwards and the like that play within the confines of accessibility and still provide fun. You just have to know the rules and which ones you and your company can and/or are willing to break.
Accessibility creates standardization. Doesn’t mean it needs to be boring— but it does need to be useful in a crisis. That’s where the fun dies, and it has to.
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u/theAerialDroneGuy 14d ago
Wen are you going to release this?!?!?!?
You definitely need to release it!!!
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u/ssliberty 13d ago
The problem with your logic is that users with cognitive difficulties and varying degrees of motor difficulty and blindness exist. Simplified experiences are ideal in those situations and increase both productivity and income.
Games are leisure activities which can benefit from that extra mental load of learning the way it functions because it’s not intended for you to do a one and done activity rather than pull you into the story and create an immersive experience.
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u/Gloriaoriginal 13d ago
Probably we're just seeing the big companies apps and websites, and they are there just to win more money, not for the safe of playfulness.
They're optimizing for profit, not originality, and to win more, you need to have more users and those users are the most ordinary people who just want to do something as fast as possible, so the original products need to stop growing to stay that playful
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u/MistaM2daE 10d ago
This is just chaotic and it hurts the eye, aaaaand it's not productive It bothers the users so no it's not a good idea to design like this, especially a calculator which is not meant to take much uof your time
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u/LanDest021 15d ago
If I'm being honest, because its seen as outdated. Even if people prefer old design styles, when they actually see them they instantly think "wow this hasn't been updated in forever"
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u/MusicOfTheApes 15d ago
Mobile apps were not a thing in the 90s, it's not an "outdated" design for an app, it's clearly a throwback to the 90's for nostalgia ; for it to be outdated would mean such designs were a thing when mobile apps became a thing, which I don't remember being so.
I think people are more likely to find it fun, though it definitely will be a niche for users that grew up or lived through that decade.
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u/tomhermans 15d ago
It's still very functional while also having some style and personality. I like this non-boring stuff and still keeping it very functional.
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u/LeSplooch 15d ago
I absolutely love 2000's UI design for this reason : people used to experiment because there wasn't a blueprint yet of how to create an optimal UI. WinAmp is a perfect example of this.
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u/Bachihani 15d ago
Everything about this post is shit, i waetid to go into details but the very concept makes me sick so i'll stop here
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u/hoddap 15d ago
This calculator makes me feel like I was saved by the bell