Wow. That somehow explains why we end up having very dull monotonous icons in many things today. One of the GUI desktop applications in my company had a redesign for a new release, and they opt to go for the Material Design[1] icons. I remember that being a Google thing for their Android UX, so I thought it couldn't be that bad.
When the icons are actually used in the application, they look so... bland. They also look mostly similar to each other, basically being rectangular outlines with rounded corners, that it takes slightly longer to recognise which one is which, compared to the more traditional, colourful icons. (I wonder if colour blind people have always felt this way)
I should've prefaced that our application uses Qt5 Widgets as the UI, with hardly any styling. That may have contributed to the icons looking so out of place. If we had used a more metro-looking theme (like the ones used in Adobe PS) they would be a better fit. But our main users are engineers and scientists, who I assume would prefer more traditional-looking UI (see for example Paraview).
Meanwhile, I have no problems with the same icons being used on my smartphone. I guess this is because on smartphones, icons are larger and more easily distinguished even if they're monochrome. And they can afford to be larger because they're mostly used in main menus or swipe menus. In contrast, in desktop applications they always appear on screen (in the toolbar), and monitors are usually further from your eyes compared to smartphones, and you can't afford to sacrifice precious screen estate just to accommodate distinguishable icons.
When the icons are actually used in the application, they look so... bland. They also look mostly similar to each other, basically being rectangular outlines with rounded corners, that it takes slightly longer to recognise which one is which, compared to the more traditional, colourful icons. (I wonder if colour blind people have always felt this way)
I should've prefaced that our application uses Qt5 Widgets as the UI, with hardly any styling. That may have contributed to the icons looking so out of place. If we had used a more metro-looking theme (like the ones used in Adobe PS) they would be a better fit. But our main users are engineers and scientists, who I assume would prefer more traditional-looking UI (see for example Paraview).
Meanwhile, I have no problems with the same icons being used on my smartphone. I guess this is because on smartphones, icons are larger and more easily distinguished even if they're monochrome. And they can afford to be larger because they're mostly used in main menus or swipe menus. In contrast, in desktop applications they always appear on screen (in the toolbar), and monitors are usually further from your eyes compared to smartphones, and you can't afford to sacrifice precious screen estate just to accommodate distinguishable icons.
[1] https://material.io/design/iconography/system-icons.html#des...