Does KDE need to hire professional designers? UI looks outdated

Brainstorm
1

I’ve been using KDE for a while and one thing that keeps standing out to me is the overall design. To me and many others in the community, the UI feels somewhat dated—almost like it’s carrying a 90s look and is very chaotic—while other operating systems and desktops (e.g. GNOME) feel more modern and polished. Most likely because they have professional designers while KDE doesn’t.

It often gives the impression that KDE’s UI was primarily shaped by programmers who focused on function first and design second (or not at all). I can’t help but wonder if KDE could benefit from bringing in professional UI/UX designers to give the desktop a more cohesive and contemporary look.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

2 Likes
2

We do have some professional designers (like @Anditosan) and they are currently working on a revamp called “Union”… I think. Andy can give you more details.

Edit: I have been informed we have semi-pro designers. The VDG is doing a great job though.

12 Likes
3

My usage of PC hasn’t changed since 90s - mouse, keyboard, monitor, open program and use it to do stuff you need to do. So I’m not sure what needs to be changed.

And lack dozens of features, can’t be (easily) set to look like normal desktop - highly customizable start menu (+multiple options), system tray (highly customizable), window list with names in panel task manager (or other options), different panel settings in multiple monitors, custom shortcuts (at least not in a way KDE can), etc.

I saw a video of a new user trying KDE and is disappointed at first, as it looks like Cinnamon. I mean, it looks like PC desktop environments are looking for the last 30 years. That’s the standard UI.

If I wanted GNOME or MacOS look, I would use GNOME or MacOS. Though I see many people are modifying KDE to look like those. And that’s OK, as long as it’s an option, preferably not the default one. PC is for work, not to look at it.

I did comment that I don’t like Dolphin looks in Plasma 6, but as long as it has same functionality as before - who cares.

16 Likes
4

@crossroads I’m afraid this is exactly what I am talking about. Other desktops have moved on to a more modern look.

Sure but modern cars do not look like cars from 30 years ago, the design and aesthetic has moved on with the times. Shouldn’t that apply to desktop environments too?

KDE strength is definitely in the way it can be changed, tweaked and customized. But it doesn’t mean it cannot look good and modern instead of cluttered. It would still greatly benefit from a professional UI designer’s touch. For example, look at GNOME or MacOS. Beautiful looking systems because they hired the best designers.

5

Isn’t Union a style engine, rather than a revamp of the UI? It’s programmer stuff, but for sure would push design forward by making styling simpler.

This seems contradictory: praising KDE for its customisability and asking for better design is different from praising KDE for its customisability and using systems lacking customisability as a counterexample. Saying that KDE has “worse” design because it has worse designers sounds like an insult, and it’s totally not the point: design and customisability are difficult things and best way to tackle this is to propose changes.

3 Likes
6

@Samuele All I am saying is that those 2 things are not contradictory. You can have both full customisability and modern looking design. I don’t see why we couldn’t have both. It just takes more effort to make it look good and modern, with best UI/UX practices.

7

There is of course the matter of funding such people, continued funding I’d say.

I personally don’t find Gnome or MacOS modern in any way. Nor old. Different. More polished, sure. They have a more locked down and inflexible setup and more control over things. But I can’t stand using either one.

12 Likes
8

That sounds like a brilliant plan - and is one reason people prefer it to Gnome.

23 Likes
9

Yes, but there is another project led by Andy (who is a professional designer), but Ican’r remember what it’s called… Either way, they are revamping the look of Plasma and KDE’s apps, covering fonts, button designs, icons, the lot.

3 Likes
10

It’s called Plasma Next, if I remember correctly

2 Likes
11

I would rather not talk about modern cars, design included :smiley:

To be honest, I don’t see any drawbacks or non-modernity in KDE’s look. Or whatever makes it less modern than GNOME or MacOS or Windows 11. I can see that in e.g. LXQt, or XFCE, but in my opinion, KDE is modern as it can be. I mean, in openSUSE if you compare KDE UI/design with YaST, you can tell the difference. And yes, there are some inconsistencies, but overall design is just good (or better to say excellent, especially when comparing to others).

7 Likes
12

You might even say “too polished”. After the polish has been applied, only the corporate blandness remains, and the quirkiness and personality has disappeared.

5 Likes
13

I’m firmly in the camp where the overall look, feel, and customization ability of KDE are the reasons I use it. I do not care at all for the look of the modern OS’s generally characterized as “flat”. Is it possible to adjust KDE’s window manager, theme, whatever to look more like GNOME or any of the other desktops? I’d be surprised if you can’t get most of the way there with KDE without actually switching to another desktop.

13 Likes
14

Hmmm I see drawbacks; but I think right now there are more important wrinkles… for example, we still have menus, and whilst these are definitely OLD school, I vastly prefer them over the Hamburgler.

Plasma is constantly being polished, in many ways positively… but I despair at the number of ‘Mac’ skins that people upload to Pling in an effort to bring us all to love coloured circles in place of window decorations.

I did think they looked nice in the earlier skeumorphic versions of Mac OS, when they looked like glass spheres though.

I would welcome a change from the window decorations - often a mostly useless bar across the top of our applications which serve little extra purpose (especially in the absence of the inline menu that came with a Material decoration a while back).

15

Long time KDE user here. I like the window decorations, title bar, and menus. I use the “Air Black” decoration theme from the KDE store on both my machines (one of which is KDE Neon) and have been for years. It has kind of “glass sphere”-ish minimize/maximize/close buttons.

Guess I am just old-fashioned.

3 Likes
16

Modern platforms like macOS really are getting greater and greater. But only if you look at them from the right direction. If KDE stayed the same as it is, I’d be a happy camper.

9 Likes
17

I think Windows mostly looks crappy to me; MacOS looks fine, but from what I remember several features are well hidden (or not present at all). Can’t say anything about GNOME, as I haven’t used it for a looooong time.
In any case I’m very happy with the way KDE looks and prefer it to any alternatives I’ve seen.

Now maybe I don’t have a good referance frame, but what I came to associate with so called “Modern” UIs is that they:

  • ignore users preferences in favor of branding.
  • use up about 5x times as much space to display the same amount of data compared to old-school-UIs.
  • display settings inside the main-window instead in an extra dialog.

I hate all of these things.

If there is a way to make KDE look even better without resorting to this - I’m open to it. But I’m strongly opposed to make it more “modern” just because it’s the new fad.

5 Likes
18

For those of you looking to know and collaborate in our new design system initiative, here is a place where you can start:

https://www.youtube.com/@anditosan

You may not know this, but the visual design team is currently working on building a design system for Plasma. This, overtime, will yield a much faster way to deliver UI and features for users. It includes the redesign and alignment of things like colors, icons, typography, shadows and blurs and spacings. Those foundations need to be set in code as well. It will take time but we are working on this.

Once we have this work done, we will work on implementing a new window style using our new Union engine.

While this work is mostly on the surface or the UI, our hope is that overtime, it will make the development of new features and deeper changes in the system much easier to execute.

15 Likes
19

Some examples would be nice. What is exactly outdated? As a “pro user” or whatever console junkie we are called these days; I don’t really care on many graphical updates. They can be nice (and I’m not against making things look pretty) but function over form I would say. To have consistent feeling is important, to have good defaults, have things easily accessible etc. Literally don’t care if corners are round or square or if there are tints and gradients. To me features like accessing insides of compressed files in file selection is much more critical feature. Or having finer control over virtual desktops. I like the familiarity, in some sense the 90’s take on many things is spot on. Gnome for example is trying to be too different and “modern” and will get straight pass due that. Like the whole tablet-feel, yikes. It’s slowing me down. Same way as these modern task bars with just icons being centered etc. is such annoying as now I have to do multiple clicks and can’t directly see what is open and things move and pop everywhere etc. I still like the combine feature opening into list, because otherwise it be too big of a chaos.

I guess main takeaway is that I don’t see how Plasma is outdated, like at all. If it’s some text kerneling, dropshadows etc. what makes that feel, I feel like that is ignoring the most important part of DE. And that part is: making your life easier. And there I think the devs and Plasma design team has done marvelous job, cheff’s kiss. There is always someone with the buffer polishing things up and those little details do matter at the end. But saying it is outdated is kind of strong word.

I also understand as I have to do some interface design that I can get bored to perfectly fine view and do touch ups just because. Often because I’ve experimented with something new that is fancy and looks good and now everything else looks old, even if it works just fine and people love it. But to me it looks not as great it could be. So is that the case here? Not really “outdated” but could see touch ups here and there. Sure I don’t think many would disagree. But just changing things due getting bored is also double edge attitude. A lot of people get frustrated with big changes. Like in game design if you change balance a lot with item stats etc. you could see massive drop in players because they just can’t bother to learn it all again.

Long text for small point, lovely.

4 Likes
20

Depends on the aspect. There is one aspect of modern car design which is objectively worse and unsafe: flatscreen controls in a center console.

Is it new? Yes. Is it modern? Yes. But there is no tactile feedback and requires the driver to take their eyes off the road to adjust a setting like thermostat or music.

So much so the EU is adjusting safety guidelines to require physical controls again.

I know people who are looking for used cars older than their current model if they need to get a new one because they have physical controls you can use without taking your eyes off the road.

So modern does not exactly equal better.

For UI design, what people usually refer to as “modern” is flat, information-sparse design. This works great on phones with limited screen space. You need information presented to you in in a linear way.

Desktops are not phones, and allows for more information density. I’m not saying you have to flood every pixel with info, but try to allow for more info without making it as sparse as a phone. Modern design can make a desktop less usable. (Look at how well macOS Tahoe is going.)

Laptops are an inbetween, and this can go either way depending on preference. But you can still use multiple monitors with a laptop, and may have a larger screen where you prefer more density.

A problem with “modern” design is precisely this lack of info. Having broad areas of open space and requiring scrolling or changing screens to get information can increase cognitive load.

Another example would be hamburger vs. pulldown menus. The former usually shifts the entire menu out of view to show submenus, which again, increases cognitive load. On a desktop using a nested pulldown menu doesn’t lose your place. Could these interfaces be improved? Certainly. But no reason to ditch desktop metaphors entirely when they work surprisingly well on a desktop.

Also check out this Drum Machine app and this Sudoku app. Despite being two very different things, they have a very similar look so at first glance you have to spend more time to figure out what’s going on. This is not as much an issue with a mobile device where generally only one app is on screen at a time, but is much more of an issue where you have multiple apps open at the same time.

Basically design is hard. There is no “Modern” filter in graphics apps that magically changes a whole interface. “Modern” isn’t necessarily better in a lot of use cases. Many time it’s just chasing trends, which may actually be a detriment to everyone involved like a flatscreen panel in a car.

So a better question might be, “What current problems does this new design solve?”

8 Likes