Minimalism was my most beloved concept. It saved me from my habit of Over-thinking and Over-detailing. I learned to relax more and panic less, all thanks to Minimalism. But every idea has some limitations. On a particular day, I said goodbye to minimalism.
And this post is a tiny version of what conspired that day...
An Urgent Upload
Time is a rare asset. And I had a short time-window to handle a bit of online work. You should know that I liked using Cloud Storage and File Transfer apps. But the following experience made me abandon them as well.
So, I was trying to upload some photos to a globally popular Cloud service. But for the first time in my life, I could not see the Percentage Progress of my file upload.
And I was shocked after noticing the same lack of transparency in the Notification Bar!
First, I thought that I was hallucinating or the app was misbehaving. So, I cleared its data and even tried removing-reinstalling it again. But there was this stupid loading screen, just rotating on its own. And once you lose the track of Percentage Progress of your file upload / download; you cannot predict how much time to wait for it.
The Bigger Joke (that makes me cry)
We live in the age of Smartphones with 16 Megapixel (MP) to 32 MP camera. Even if you are at 13 MP or 8 MP, your device captures the photos at a size of 3 to 8 MB. You need to set your Camera for lowest resolution to save photos at normal size.
So, you would expect every Cloud Service platform to respect this fact. And tell you if your file is uploading or downloading, and at what rate?
Guess what, for the 'efficient' design philosophies or other ideological madness... more and more Websites, Apps and Programs are stopping the Proper Loading Screen. First, they eliminated the horizontal progress bar, which tell you the speed of Uploads-Downloads, quality of connection and Percentage Progress of transfer.
Then, they added a circular ring which rotates like a Hypnotism Necklace Watch.
But you could always check your Notification Bar / Panel for verifying the Percentage Progress of your Data Transfer. And even that feature has become a stupid 'loading without any details' bar.
A Deeper Introspection
After uninstalling the Cloud Apps (and 'disabling' in some cases), I paused for a moment and asked myself, "When did I start following Minimalism?"
I don't know. But the attraction for the so called 'Modern' Designs might be one reason. For starters, I agree that a flat design or less details can increase the loading speed for webpages. Similar aspects are true for Software and Apps. Minimalism in Coding and Designing makes sense on technical grounds.
But this is real life. It does not matter how beautiful or fun your ideology is, if it is creating problems on a practical basis.
Minimalism has its place and time. It's one thing to make something user-friendly; it's another thing to remove the practically useful features just because they 'feel' crowded.
If designers believe in the Perceptional Contrast and force us to read their Narrow Light-Grey Small Fonts; then we have every right to accuse them of One-sided Obsession with Minimalism.
Slow or High Latency Internet is as Real as Oxygen
I don't care if I am being 'close-minded' or I am just yet another fool, who doesn't understand Modern UI Design. Hear this out, I make full use of High Contrast Settings in all of my devices. So, I read only the pure Dark Text. If the content has Too-Thin Light-grey fonts, I leave the website in Zero seconds.
I did a college degree from an engineering branch. So, I know that there is no such thing as Perfect Statistics. Thus, I do not care a bit about the Research in contrast.
And if some mad humans are using 100% or 0% brightness, no amount of Designing is going to save their eyes.
Here is the key point: I don't have a Broadband or Fibre Optics internet connection. I am your average joe with a 4G / LTE+ internet connection. And even if I had a fast net-speed, I am not the type who will tolerate a Hypnotic Loading Screen without any data about what's the progress of my Uploads and Downloads.
So, I have clarified my stance.
As for the Minimalism blind-believers, enjoy your ideology. "Some people mis-use Flat Design and Minimalism," that's a lame excuse. If there was no such hype around 'clean' or 'minimalist' design philosophies, the designers would at least stop to consider what the users feel.
In fact, I had once read that a designer team was actually proud about "not listening to the users" and doing their own design-principles thing.
Personally, I leave every website which is busy loading HD Background Image of great height. Why should I care about your 'Services' prompts appearing after I scroll for 5 seconds? Please, keep those Animate or Transition effects limited. I would say so.
Endnote: Now, I feel less frustrated
Manually uploading each file as an Email takes more steps. But if you use many browsers, at least one of them will have Upload Download Progress Bar, which is not infected with Minimalism madness.
As for the Essentialism, I am not so sure. On one hand, Essentialism promises to keep all important features alive. But my insecurities exist for the obvious reasons. If Minimalism can be overdone, why won't Essentialism believers behave the same way?
Anyways, typing this post has made me feel better. By the way, many browsers have High Contrast plugins. And you can always edit your Accessibility settings in your Device Settings menu.
So, go and try to read without sacrificing your eyes for the Self-Declared Experts of Design Philosophies, Minimalism or Perceived Contrast.