[johnqian]

This was a really great read.

There's a few comments here saying something akin to "No, design trends are totally random, some hotshots decide they want to be different and then everyone else mindlessly follows". I got similar feedback when I wrote in an earlier HN comment my take on why flat design is popular now. I actually empathize with the sentiment because it reminds me of how I used to feel about wine tasters. To me, all wine tastes equivalently like poison. So when people express their complex, nuanced wine preferences, it's easy for me to feel like they're pulling something out of their butts, just saying what they think they're supposed to say.

If my taste in everything was similar to my taste in wine, I would probably still believe this. But I've realized that when it comes to UI/UX design, I am one of the pretentious wine tasters. And I don't feel like I'm making stuff up or mindlessly following trends. The trends genuinely make sense to me; I think they'd happen in the same order in a parallel universe. Design is an optimization problem, and sometimes new technologies or patterns of human behavior change the optimal path for a wide spectrum of products, leading to trends, or what this author calls "vibe shifts".

Of course there are mindless trend followers, just as there are people who parrot opinions on wine they didn't really form themselves. They may be the majority. But they don't disprove the existence of something real.

[dahart]

> when people express their complex, nuanced wine preferences, it's easy for me to feel like they're pulling something out of their butts … but they don’t disprove the existence of something real.

Yes! Most such preferences in my experience have been people pulling something out of their butts, whether it’s wine or web design. But then there are rare cases where it’s real. When I go to expensive restaurant that serve different flights of wine depending on the chosen food course, I like to sample the “wrong” wine in order to validate they claims they make. Often it makes little difference, but two restaurants in my life stand out in my mind as having wine pairings that were truly good, and when I sampled wines outside the pairing it was obvious that it didn’t work. I buy that amazing wines and amazing pairings exist, and also believe that people who actually know what they’re talking about are few and far between, so I can’t easily trust what someone says.

[CuriouslyC]

I think this is easily disproven by looking at other areas of functional design besides computer UIs. Architecture is a good example - it's obvious there that while there are some things that are optimizations, a large part of the churn in architecture is style. You might claim the modern trend of having lots of large windows to emphasize natural light is an example of an optimization, but that is only "modern" because the materials and processes to affordably make big pieces of double pane glass are modern. Otherwise, the brutalist monstrosities of the last 30 years are completely a stylistic choice. Ironically flat icons and brutalist architecture share a lot in common.

[johnqian]

I think you defended my point for me with the glass panes example. Price is definitely a part of the optimization formula. In fact I think most trends in architecture are much easier to explain than in UI because they’re so clearly enabled by technology.

I don’t know much about brutalism, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a dominant trend. I feel most expensive new buildings are pretty and efficient in ways that weren’t feasible before. But when there’s a mainstream, there are rebels.

An interesting thought experiment is what buildings would look like if resources and labor were infinite—if we could essentially 3D print buildings. Whatever designs come out of that may be what we trend towards.

[CuriouslyC]

The architecture is a big reason people take vacations in cities like Prague or Barcelona. It makes people feel good. Mainstream modern architecture is boxy (because of the next point), "efficient" (measured in cost to produce, mostly) and not even remotely built to last. It has no character, and doesn't consider the emotional value of living in a unique space.