[pdenya]

Flat design looks lazy more than anything. I appreciate the effort good design takes and sometimes it's best to just get something simple out there quickly but I'd rather see browser defaults than styled buttons that purposefully have no hover states and callouts that really don't call out.

[goldfeld]

Simple doesn't equal lazy. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing else to take away" --Civilization IV voice-over guy.

[icebraining]

«Have you ever looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane, but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.»

-- Antoine St. Exupery, Wind Sand and Stars.

[pdenya]

I don't mean simple is lazy in any way, I mean what I said: "Flat design looks lazy". Not having hover states for your buttons looks lazy. Not making it clear to users what pieces of the page they're meant to interact with looks lazy.

[muan]

For the purposes of making things clear, "not having hover states for your buttons" and "not making it clear to users what pieces of the page they're meant to interact with" have very little to do with flat design as a style, the exact same things can happen with skeuomorphic design as well(suggesting of skeuomorphic is the contrary style). Your 2 examples sound more like a lack of user experience consideration rather than a poor design style decision.

[chrisdroukas]

> Civilization IV voice-over guy

That would be Leonard Nimoy - best known for his role as Spock in the original Star Trek.