Human-Aware UI

This post was born as a comment on a Reddit thread discussing “What UI Design lessons could Libadwaita learn from Apple’s Liquid Glass?” in the /r/gnome community. Here is Apple’s presentation as reference.

Sometimes frontend engineers and UI/UX designers tend to overlook how important animations are to make apps or websites feel as if they’re aware there’s a human using them. Not only from an eye-candy perspective, but from a usability point of view. Of course, as with design in general, it’s all a matter of balance and getting things done in the right amount. Too much of it and it can be worse than having no animations at all.

Back to Apple’s Liquid Glass, I think they nailed the concept of organic-feeling animations. And the use of more complex shaders to create materials for the UI is a novel concept, at least in desktop/mobile interfaces. I loved the minute 8:20 where they showcased the edges of a sidebar panel being aware of the colored elements surrounding it. It’s all part of this “awareness” I’ve described. Gabe Newell describes this awareness (15:40) as part of the design philosophy for Half-Life and video games in general in a beautiful manner.

The only thing I’m not completely sure about is the amount of blurriness and glass effects all over the place, or too many rounded edges. I feel like they are greatly exaggerated in some places. Window borders have a more pronounced roundness and it feels strange. But the rest of the concepts they brought to the table are, to say the least, super interesting.

And about Adwaita, I think it is one of the most polished UI/UX experiences I’ve seen in a long time. It feels comfy, spacious, with the right amount of elements on the screen. They don’t make me think that much and I can actually focus on what I care about. There’s always a gem to be found at apps.gnome.org. None of this would matter if people and developers weren’t following it. Which is another interesting testament about the success of Adwaita: the community actually adopted it and is using it as they should, even making the app icons feel part of the same family, despite being developed by different people and groups.

That level of cohesion achieved by Adwaita, for an open-source project that doesn’t have the budget big players like Apple have, is a huge win. It speaks for itself. We need to remember that they don’t have the luxury of changing guidelines or features from one month to another, and this carries repercussions on design decisions. With low to no budget, you have to be careful not only with your own GNOME team, but also with the rest of the developers making applications for it. Flat designs are easier to implement from a development standpoint in both frontend and backend. This helps attracting more people to the ecosystem, to do more with less. Something which is absolutely needed in Linux in general, at least for now.