yeah. I meant, it’s a nice proposition, but if it were up to me, I’d pass, even though I wouldn’t mind a dark UI version.
IMO it’s too far on the “sketchup - photoshop” scale.
On one hand, sketchup, quirky icons, colourful, easy to recognise, wanna move something ? it’s the red cross (yeah sure it’s four arrows… c’mon, it’s a red cross).
on the other hand, in photoshop, I have students who don’t recognise icon meaning anymore. I tell them to grab the eraser, it’s a weird black and white oblique rectangle.
When SU revamped the interface for the web edition, they simplified stuff, made it more minimalist, only three colours. And already it’s a lot, I don’t like using the web interface, I have to ACTIVELY look for tools, decipher the icons, instead of going with visual memory. the tape is not yellow anymore. stuff like that. Sure, it’s clean and modern, and for a new user, it’s no big deal. but for existing users, such a design change could be a LOT.
Here are two similar redesign cases we’ve seen recently that are, again, in my opinion, not great
Again, the blue ones are stylish, the concept behind, cool. but looking at the 3 red ones, without the names, it had a logic. If I told you back then “there is one for 3d volumes, one for 2d plans, one for changing the aspect of the volumes”, most people could have guessed that the red 3d cube is for the 3d volumes and the flat icon with lines and letter the plan one.
Looking at the blue one, you loose that logic, it’s all 3d, Style builder’s icon makes an S, it must be Sketchup then, and this time the 3d cube is layout.
That’s the risk of going too far in the uniformisation and minimalism of UI. it’ll end up looking great in the demo, but not as intuitive for users.
(that one needs no explanation)
on paper, in theory, sure. harmony, all you want.
in practice, it’s hell. it’s all pretty much the same, especially icon size. I’ve stopped teaching about the 4 icons in the toolbar, it’s easier to show them the menus. most people see a blueish hexagon in all cases.
again, nothing against your work as a theoretical exercise, it’s clean, it’s neat, but it becomes so clean and minimalist and uniform that it looses its ease-of-use. Professional softwares don’t have to be at the tip of the design trend. they have to be efficient. if you used the colour code from web/go/ipad, it would make a fine dark version for these I think (there is a reason why SU’s team still used red as a contrasting colour, and not just shades of blue. the red in the web icons is actually important to see what the icon will do)
yeah, I re-edited my post, added a comparison red/blue SU icons to mark my point that you can have good looking smart design and yet not so great UX.
well if people are allowed to make “objective” and “unbiased” criticism of sketchup, I don’t see why other can’t make similar praises. it cuts both ways.