Too much monochrome in Lollipop?

[RickPJ]

Does anyone else feel that Lollipop has gone too far with the monochrome styling of notifications and popups? It started with KitKat and a preference for monochrome icons in the notification bar. There were some good reasons for this, mainly AIUI to do with transparency (although I preferred the icons from my older apps that were still coloured).

But now Lollipop seems to have gone even more monochrome. My beef is particularly with the extended notifications on the lock screen, and the popup-down for incoming calls and alarms.

Colour is a great cue to help you know what something relates to without having to look too hard. You probably identify the launch icons on the home screens as much by colour as anything else. Now in Lollipop I see a list of notifications from apps on the lock screen, but at a glance they all look the same. I have to look closely to see whether I've got an email, an SMS, or an app's just been updated, etc. If these were coloured I'd see much more quickly, which would help me know whether I needed to deal with it immediately or not bother unlocking the phone. With multiple notifications it would make it much easier to differentiate (and help avoid tapping the wrong one!).

The other issue is the new incoming call toast. It's definitely better than taking over the screen, but everyone knows that to answer a call you hit green, and to reject you hit red. But we get no colours, instead the words "answer" and "dismiss" with monochrome icons. It takes close attention to pick the right one. Same with the alarm. Trying to read the difference between "dismiss" and "snooze" while in a blurry-eyed state without glasses on a fully dimmed screen while lying in bed is far from easy!

I just feel that graphic design aesthetics have overridden proper usability concerns in the mansion of Android development. Is this just me, or does anyone else agree? If so, how do you feed these concerns back to Google so they might take some notice?

Rick
Nexus 4, Lollipop 5.0

 

[codesplice]

I'm actually a pretty big fan of the flatter Material design, and I honestly prefer the notifications being monochrome for the most part. It makes the lockscreen (in particular) a lot more pleasing to my eye, at least. A whole bunch of notifications with different colors would be a lot more likely to overwhelm my delicate senses.

I don't really receive many (if any) calls, so I'm not even sure that I've encountered the updated incoming call notification.

 

[jaj324]

They had to copy iOS 7

 

[MLSS]

I like it

 

[Omar Days]

i like it too. Think it looks excellent

 

[RickPJ]

Question: what's more important to you guys - how pretty it looks, or how quick and easy it is to use? Just curious.
BTW, I just found another thread where people were complaining how ugly the lock-screen notifications are. [emoji53]

 

[codesplice]

Question: what's more important to you guys - how pretty it looks, or how quick and easy it is to use? Just curious.

Ideally, it should be a good balance of the two. By and large, I think Lollipop has that. I find myself enjoying just using my phone a lot more than I did before the update.

That said, 4.4->5.0 is easily the largest single change that Android has ever received. Just about everything is different. There are bound to be a few things that could probably be handled better. Personally, I think that most things have been improved - and that's not just from a "ooh, ahh, let's stare lovingly at my phone" perspective but from actually using it to get things done.

 

[nickdalzell]

Lollipop i can assure you, is nothing like iOS 7. it's not even a flat design. the new icons are far more colorful and have 3-D polish. While it's not exactly the same as having a leather bound contacts app, a tape player podcasts app, or a poker table for Google Play Games, (lord, i miss all of it personally--it means a lot when an app developer puts so much effort into making an app with such detail on such a nice screen! today it's as if they design apps in MS Paint.), it's still better than the horrible rehash of flat design (it's been done before, remember Windows 1.x? Mac OS System 6? Amiga OS?)

iOS 7 was puke ugly, too neon and pink. iOS 8 fixed a lot of that even though i still think that floating rainbow bubbles in Game Center is WORSE than green felt--at least the latter looked like a casino poker table, aka it referenced the 'games' while floating bubbles do not make me think 'games' one bit. Android Lollipop despite its name is far more 3-D and polished than iOS 7 or Holo used in Android from 4.0-4.4.4.

As for the quick toggles, they've always been monochromatic as far as i know (unless you used TouchWiz or Sense where they then had color, either green or brown.)

If there is one gripe about Android (which isn't exclusive to 5.0--though 5.0 did make it worse) it's the over-dependence on gestures. i'm unable to remember all of them (i'm not so sure i know all of them) or what they all do, but i am always certain i'll later trigger the wrong one by mistake and have something undesirable happen (such as wipe an entire comment to AF in Chrome, or up and tell my device to close everything, or delete all my photos, or something else). I'd rather tap an icon or button or settings menu, and only swipe up and down to scroll. making for example the menu hardware key go away, or having inconsistent icons for the settings (is it three dots? three horizontal lines? what? make up your mind!) or worse, no settings icon at all (pulling a hidden sidebar out in Google Play Store for one) just makes for a frustrating user experience in my opinion. I still find myself trying to find Quick Toggles by swiping down from the upper right, and realizing i know have to swipe down from center twice to get there.

While many arguments have been made to ditch skeuomorphism, not too many could make any claim that a skeuomorphic UI was hard to use or frustrating to use. at least i never had any problem navigating iOS 6 or under. but i am still confident that Android 5.0 is the first step in bringing skeuomorphism back, and this is just a starting point.

 

[jaj324]

I've used them both. IOS and 5.0 look similar.

 

[nickdalzell]

iOS 8 maybe. i can't use iOS 7. it looked that bad. if 5.0 resembled anything remotely similar to the nightmare of flat design that iOS 7 was, i wouldn't even touch my Nexus 10.

iOS 8 took the neon away, improved some colors, gave us some new backgrounds (at least i noticed some new stock wallpapers in my iPad Air and iPhone 5S) and the UI itself reverted some to the iOS 6 age (the in-call style, the slide to end key, etc) and some icons have *some* 3-D back, though not to the extent of iOS 6. the frosted glass look is now a simple transparency. there's a whitish leather texture in the Notes app, and Calendar sorta looks more like the one used in iPhone OS 1.)

Android 5.0 'Lollipop'

Apple iOS 7

I don't see anything remotely similar.

If anything iOS 8 looks closer

 

[bjacks12]

I thoroughly enjoy Material Design. For one, seeing the black status bar go away is nice. I hope more devs get rolling with that(although I fear they may take the lazy way out)

Question: what's more important to you guys - how pretty it looks, or how quick and easy it is to use? Just curious.
BTW, I just found another thread where people were complaining how ugly the lock-screen notifications are. [emoji53]

Question: What makes you think that because we want one, we don't want the other?

Lollipop is very easy to use.

BTW, mentioning that you found a thread where some people agree with you is not conclusive. I'm sure you can find a thread where people think alternative medicine is viable.

 

[RickPJ]

Question: What makes you think that because we want one, we don't want the other?

I didn't say you don't - or can't. I was just interested which you give more priority to. Say when evaluating a new release, which are you looking for first? There's no right or wrong.

Lollipop is very easy to use.

As is KitKat. I don't find that overall there's much difference. Some things have been improved, but others are more difficult.

BTW, mentioning that you found a thread where some people agree with you is not conclusive.

I didn't suggest it was. I just noted that while all the replies in this thread have indicated a preference for Lollipop as it is, there do seem to be others who agree with me. They're just not here! But as I said, it's preference, not right or wrong.

It would actually be nice to have some user preferences for this kind of thing, as in say KDE. I wonder how long it will be before Google rewrite the design rule book - again!

 

[RickPJ]

I'd just like to return to my original topic, which is one specific aspect of Lollipop, not the overall design, i.e. monochrome notifications and popups.

Currently when I pull down the notifications I see a mixture of coloured and grey icons, depending on the app. The coloured ones are mainly Tapatalk (which I'm using now), and (perversely) Google+. My eye is immediately drawn to the coloured ones, and I recognise what they relate to. The others merge into a grey blur, and I have to look closely to even understand what app they're from (and usually read the text 'cos the icons are barely distinguishable).

That's my point. It looks nice but actually makes visual comprehension harder.

And as for that alarm clock banner - I can't imagine that anyone tested it to actually wake them up in the morning!

 

[Omar Days]

And as for that alarm clock banner - I can't imagine that anyone tested it to actually wake them up in the morning!

Huh? What do you even mean? The alarm clock since Lollipop has woken me up without fail.

 

[jaj324]

Huh? What do you even mean? The alarm clock since Lollipop has woken me up without fail.

Same here. My Nexus 7 has been my alarm clock for a while now. Works perfectly.

 

[RickPJ]

Sure, the alarm sounds without a problem, but have you tried picking Snooze or Dismiss when the screen is dim and you've just woken up? Especially if you normally wear glasses and don't have them on :-(

 

[MLSS]

Don't use snooze and haven't had any problems turning it off....

If you don't like the stock alarm, you can easily download another one

 

[RickPJ]

If you don't like the stock alarm, you can easily download another one

Sure, of course, but that's not really the point.

What I'm doing is challenging Google's assertion that "everything in Lollipop has been improved". Maybe most things, but not everything for everyone. I wonder what Android "M" will bring? More improvements presumably, some of which might be reversions of things in "L".

KitKat introduced lock screen widgets, hailed as a great feature, but now Lollipop's taken them out again. Why? Few people used them. That's not a problem for me, I set some up but also found I didn't really use them. But maybe some users really, really liked them, and are p'd off that they've gone. Who's right?

By the next release Google might also decide that notifications are better in colour, and revert the change - who knows. It will be hailed as an " improvement ", but what would everyone who likes the current monochrome say?

No-one gets everything right all the time, and it's hard to cater to all tastes and requirements!

 

[Omar Days]

Sure, the alarm sounds without a problem, but have you tried picking Snooze or Dismiss when the screen is dim and you've just woken up? Especially if you normally wear glasses and don't have them on :-(

Yes every morning. Swipe right to turn off, swipe left to snooze. And I wear contacts/glasses too, so I really don't get how anyone can be so confused about a simple app/function.

 

[RickPJ]

That was KitKat - easy! Not Lollipop, you have to tap the left or right side of the grey pop-down banner at the top of the screen. Swiping it just removes the banner, the alarm keeps ringing. In which case you have to pull down the notification to action it in the same way. That's why I find it a retrograde change.

Or have you got a different Lollipop from me? (Nexus 4)

 

[jaj324]

5.0 on my Nexus 7 is swipe left to snooze (my favorite) and swipe right for off.

 

[RickPJ]

In which case they've done it differently between the tablet and phone :-( I have a 7 but it hasn't received Lollipop yet (carrier delay probably, my 4 is Google direct).

The phone is the same system as for answering phone calls, which is designed not to obliterate what you are doing at the time - fair enough. That's OK for an alarm that pops up while you're also using the device, but not so good when it's on daydream (nightdream?).

Clearly needs more work ...

 

[MLSS]

You can't make everyone happy, that's just how it is so I'm kinda confused as to why you seem so upset. I don't have the best eyes in the world, but I have no problem seeing notifications on my status bar, and haven't had any issues turning my alarm off when I wake up.....

My point about mentioning that you could download another alarm clock is valid because that's one of the great things about Android. CHOICE!
You can always root your device and then be able to make all kinds of change get to your status bar (visit the all things root section for your device).

I hope Google keeps finding ways to improve Android so who knows, maybe they will add a color choice for notifications on the status bar down the road.

 

[RickPJ]

I'm not upset, just having a discussion about where I perceive that the new version isn't necessarily better than the old. It has been and always will be the case, I've seen countless upgrades to lots of different systems in my time (and been involved in developing and delivering some), and no-one ever gets everything right every time.

I do install different apps and shells where I find them better than stock, but generally over time the stock version gets better, leading to less need to rely on 3rd party. From time to time it goes the other way, which I feel justifies raising a flag and saying "is this really a good idea?".

I'll probably take a look at alarm apps anyway.

 

[MLSS]

I have used Timely in the past. It's a good alarm app