Apps, Stop Infantilizing Your Users

Actually... I like this stuff. Moreover, why <i>does</i> it bother people? It&#x27;s just some cute drawings. If you don&#x27;t like it that&#x27;s reasonable but to actually get upset over it is just weird to me.<p>This has got to be some weird cultural thing. I&#x27;ve never been myself, but from what I&#x27;ve heard, Japan doesn&#x27;t seem to mind cutesy drawings everywhere.<p>If they just mean the flat design itself, I understand even less what the problem is.

Meh, I thought this was about apps that dumb down functionality and suffer from overly-clever syndrome. Can we have a thread about that instead? :)

I find these cute and beautiful. As someone who cannot draw well, I appreciate graphic designs that attract people and make things a bit more fun where necessary. Computers and websites are already scary and difficult to use for most common people. Humanizing them in ways like these could possibly reduce the intimidation factor and get the message across to people. I would actually welcome more of these in consumer facing sites and services. They may probably not sit very well in enterprise settings, depending on the service and audience.

This stuff only occasionally jumps out at me as being &quot;too much&quot; although overall I dislike the CalArts style.<p>I remember installing Docker.app on my Mac and the installer said they&#x27;re &quot;whale-y&quot; happy to meet me (along with a cute whale drawing), which caused a reflexive eye roll from me.<p>I just wanted to get Docker on my machine.

I agree this is a problem. Market pressure forces companies whose primary goal is growth to cater to the widest audience possible, which closes the door to more sophisticated messaging and UX, I think. This is one reason I prefer community-built software.

Not a big fan of this style, but it&#x27;s either cute illustrations or stock photography that looks like stock photography. With illustrations you can at least keep the look and feel of everything consistent.

Counterpoint: I don&#x27;t mind it.

I do have a complaint about it, but not because of the specific art style, but rather because they add so much unnecessary pictures that it wastes disk space. If they are animated, it wastes processing time too.

the rant doesn&#x27;t establish how the presence of an art style results in the &quot;infantilization&quot; of users.

God the ukulele music.