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  • josefjk@mastodon.social
    Oct 9, 2026, 9:31 AM

    i remember a lot of discourse which probably started in the 80s and 90s about how graphical computing was going to open this whole new logographic era of design, a spatial interactive era, where our tool-using, mud-pie-making, physics-simulating animal brains would be able to frolic in a virtual workshop of multimedia affordances and widgets. 30 years later, everything is Nothing, identical monochrome icons, text on abstract shapes representing Nothing, animating for no reason, conveying Nothing

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  • josefjk@mastodon.social
    Oct 9, 2026, 9:36 AM

    when people were accustomed to office stationery or drafting tables or the shop floor, computer interfaces used those symbols to explain behaviors. now the tools that everybody uses every day just look like nothing. just a rectangle with a screen on it. phones and computers and various shapes of abstract featureless glossy rectangle. sometimes in different colors. nobody's seen anything else. so it's no surprise that all our UIs just look like a series of abstract featureless glossy rectangles

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  • josefjk@mastodon.social
    Oct 9, 2026, 9:39 AM

    there's something similar with video games. the good video games are about someone noticing something structural or behavioral about the real world they find fascinating or fun, and trying to distill its essence into an interactive model for players. the bad video games are made by people who are trying to make video games just like the video games they've already played, because they've no experience of the richness of the world other than others' predigested models of it

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  • aliengasmaskaliengasmask@mas.to
    Oct 9, 2026, 9:44 AM

    @jk have you seen unity's ai game maker? Dont bother.

    Now everyone in the world can make their own personal rectangular corridor to walk down and shoot aliens.

    The future is a single corridor, a rectangular coffin that never ends.
    With another rectangle inside to manage your inventory of rectangles.
    You can take the rectangles with you.

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  • Hugo Millsdarkling@mstdn.social
    Oct 9, 2026, 6:55 PM

    @jk On the other hand, little has improved on the floppy-disk symbol for "Save". There's been many attempts, and I don't think I've seen anything which competes, given that the floppy disk icon has been used for that purpose for so long -- even people who've never seen a floppy know what it means. The symbol has moved from skeuomorphism to bare semiotics.

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  • Hugo Millsdarkling@mstdn.social
    Oct 9, 2026, 12:01 PM

    @jk I've found myself getting very confused when presented with eight icons, all abstract rounded bulky swirl sort of shapes, and *all in the exact same shade of blue*. From different companies, so it's not even like it's some kind of branding thing.

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