Hey there!
I have just watched this video on Youtube, where the Nothing OS UI is brutally criticized by this person.
Personally, I found very interesting the first thing she said, about the quick settings:
It should be better organized. The two upper buttons (wifi and bluetooth), take up a lot of space in the second swipe, and I personally found to be lacking is that the brightness bar is not on the first swipe of the menu.
I mean:
Many times I tried to access it quickly, but I always have to do another swipe. I don’t know if that thing is customizable or if it is enforced by Android.
And also, why Wifi and bluetooth seem have another button inside? The others buttons once selected, just change their background into white, while wifi and bluetooth have an icon button. I tried so hard to find an explanation, if someone know, please tell me 🤣 is it to visually differentiate?
Let’s continue…
She show us how she would have designed the UI:
I agree with the part about the bad distribution of the hour at the top compared to rest of the tools (like battery, day, wifi etc.).
If we have the hour at the top-left, and icons at the top right, why when we swipe the menu, they go down? In addition, I think she’s right to put the date next to the time. So now we have a balanced bar, as we can see in the previous screenshot.
Although, she share with us, her second swipe of the menu:
And now, we can see that, she has moved the top bar (hour, icons, date…) a little bit down, so the hour and date are bigger. Do you personally like that? I personally think that should be static.
Also, I agree with the overly limited color palette for the wallpapers too. I mean, why can we choose just these 10 colors?
I don’t think that a color picker would be a great idea (something that personally, reminds me of Windows 98), but maybe a more extend palette would be great.
However, I can understand why, I suppose that majority of the people will set a photography of their own cat (like me 😁 ) but It would be cool.
Now, from here, I have to disagree with the rest of the video.
Firstly, I don’t understand very well either when she talks about the problem of monochromatic icons. I mean, it’s just a plugin that you can change, you have also the not fully monochromatic iconography. But yes, they serve to avoid distractions so is obviously that you spend time to select your app 🤔 I mean, you decide, so you’re giving to the user the possibility to choose his own user experience.
Monochromatic:
Mixed:
On the other hand, she repeats over and over again that “Is that really hard to follow your own design style?”.
Well, she refers to convert absolutely ALL the UI in dots, while a basic Design rule is that we have to create contrast, that’s why a brand usually have two differents typographies, many times Serif and Sans Serif, to create that contrast.
Consistency is the key, but without falling into monotony.
I mean, If the logo is made of dots, the calendar date is write by dots, the Icons are made of dots, the clock widget is made of dots… At this point, we would find the typography strange, because we would expect to see it also made of dots because (ironically) it doesn’t follows the consistency of the dots.
But all that, just saturate the structure and the design (below, the UI she showing us)
And the last one… We all want colors, I’m the fist fan of leds. But Imagine to have a phone that light it up like a disco.
You pass to have a modern, accurate and premium design… to a cheapest phone who can buy on whatever phone market on your street, of questionable origin…
So, I launch the same bold remark to this girl:
Is that really hard to not crossing the fine line between bold design and tackiness?
Personally, I will answer yes.
As users, we are really critically and moreover when we have between ours hand a brand which try to distinguish. In that moment, we are super critical and we think how we could a better design.
And in one hand, that’s really cool, I mean we start discussion and we increase the passion of technology and user experience.
But I insists, I like that people show their own vision of the facts because users are the main point of UX/UI. I definitely enjoyed watching this video and see the dedication she had.
What do you think?
