This seems to be part of a broader, ongoing software infantilization process.
Empty states can't simply state a fact using text and maybe some sober picture to fill space: it needs to show a cute robot, dog or whatever.
Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful.
Buttons can't use text anymore, they must show cryptic icons even when there's plenty of screen space. Figuring out icons' meanings is left as an exercise to the user.
Such cutesy syndrome doesn't affect error messages only. Customer service and even replies to angry reviews got infected too.
Besides the obvious inappropriateness, what makes this especially ridiculous is the amount of wasted human resources.
This surely can be valuable to certain audiences, but I wonder what makes them think this should be the standard way of doing things. Even banking apps, supposed to be serious, conservative and stable, are falling prey to such disease. The only thing I can think of is an army of executives not having the faintest idea of what they are doing. Just blindly following trends inflated by years of cheap-VC-money-fuelled BS, and putting a bunch of kids in charge
I think this and a bunch of the comments decrying making software interfaces friendlier confuse the catalyst with the cause. The problem isn't having friendly, or even cutesy elements... it's using those things inappropriately.
That copy makes any reasonable user more aggrieved by the situation. In some products and some situations, starting out some negative user notification "well this is awkward" might make sense, but this isn't it. It is poor design and the problem is the poorness of the design, not people trying to make software more approachable, generally. It is exactly the sort of thing a competent designer would avoid like the plague, and was almost certainly put in there by a developer or project manager trying to make it look "designed" by ham-fistedly copying elements from products who actually hire designers, and that usually precedes abject UX failure.
> That copy makes any reasonable user more aggrieved by the situation.
It's interesting, I find myself feeling this way about automated messages expressing (simulating?) emotion, too. I get that we want to "humanize" some of these interactions, but when Amazon shows me an automated message that says "We're sorry! Your package is running late" it makes me vaguely annoyed because deep down I know that there are zero human beings anywhere that are feeling the slightest bit sorry that my package is running late. As a result, it feels dishonest and disingenuous.
Sure, but again, I think this is confusing the catalyst with the cause. What bothers you is that a giant automated corporate machination is telling you that someone cares about this problem when that's not true. The problem isn't the friendliness of their design-- it's that they're lying to you. If they said "your late package is a giant problem for our scheduling audit algorithms which automatically deployed significant resources to remedy the situation so there's no need to activate the grievance process in our customer service labyrinth" they'd still be lying to you and you probably wouldn't feel any better about it.
Honestly though, most users are not software developers and their interactions with software, both logically and emotionally, are quite different. Most of them would rather have an automated "I'm sorry" because it fits their expectations for service protocol. They also probably prefer a barista impersonally saying "Sorry, it's just going to be another minute" while making eye contact and noting your acknowledgement to their dryly saying "your coffee is late because you and other people in front of you had complicated coffee drinks" and walking away. Eveyrbody knows that the barista has no emotional stake in your coffee being two minutes late beyond it putting them in the weeds. That's not the point. It communicates "I respect you enough to acknowledge your existence and that your inconvenience is consequential" which is actually true in most cases. Outside of the tech business, few people realize the extent to which that is false at Amazon.
>Also the incredibly annoying use of emojis everywhere turning every document into a children's book...
Halleleuhjah! --I've found a friend.
I've been grumbling about and steadfastly refusing to use, emojis [and fucking TXT SPK] since forever. And I usually get downvoted into oblivion by people implying that I'm a miserable sod, or have no sense of humour. No. I'm just availing of the fact that human communication skills are supposed to have evolved beyond grunts and cave paintings.
Seriously. I've seen entire conversations on Twatter, Facebook and the like, where the whole lengthy "dialogue" has consisted of nothing more than bloody amojis and LOL, ROFL, LMAO type texting acronyms.
George Orwell had the right idea about a future where people were unable to use the language to communicate in any meaningful way. His only mistake was calling it Newspeak instead of Socialmediaspeak
Get used to it. We are entering into an era when using full stops at the end of sentences is no longer appropriate; it is considered curt and rude (and potentially "cheugy"? still don't know if that word is an actual thing) among the young set to do so.
Disagree. The problem with emoji is that it relies on the "font" used too heavily. What's worse is that these "fonts" are controlled by the device that you use. My prime example of this is the skull emoji, imagine sending your mom this: "grandma :skull: sleep during the movie".
To a youngster this simply means: grandma "deadass" (i.e. actually) slept through the entire movie.
Notice how different they are. I prefer using kaomoji more because:
1. its way more creative,
2. its consistent across devices (way more, anyways)
this sleeping kaomoji like "(_ _ ) . . z Z" will probably be rendered in the same way for 99.99% of the people that see it throughout the text's lifetime.
The outbreak of disturbing Bing AI responses with their heavy sprinkling of emoji definitely gives a negative impression. As you say, it’s emoji abuse.
Also the (over)use of "awesome", as in https://github.com/topics/awesome. Or just today I saw "$PROJECT is used by these awesome projects" [0], which just makes me shake my head. It is an immediate turn-off.
I feel like that’s just a-holery that should never have made it through PRs. It’s like writing “I bet you didn’t read this” in your high school book report.
> Buttons can't use text anymore, they must show cryptic icons even when there's plenty of screen space. Figuring out icons' meanings is left as an exercise to the user.
That's not really about "infantilization." Icons don't need translation (well sometimes they do, but developers don't usually care that much). So you can just fill the UI with icons and not worry about what happens when your menu bar is not wide enough for German or Japanese version of "Close current window".
I'm guessing you're younger, because old-school windows 9X blue screens absolutely contained a great deal of technical information. Granted a lot of times it was rather obtuse sounding, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, but it was a damn far cry from the Oopsie Poopsie messages of today.
Empty states can't simply state a fact using text and maybe some sober picture to fill space: it needs to show a cute robot, dog or whatever.
Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful.
Buttons can't use text anymore, they must show cryptic icons even when there's plenty of screen space. Figuring out icons' meanings is left as an exercise to the user.
Such cutesy syndrome doesn't affect error messages only. Customer service and even replies to angry reviews got infected too.
Besides the obvious inappropriateness, what makes this especially ridiculous is the amount of wasted human resources.
This surely can be valuable to certain audiences, but I wonder what makes them think this should be the standard way of doing things. Even banking apps, supposed to be serious, conservative and stable, are falling prey to such disease. The only thing I can think of is an army of executives not having the faintest idea of what they are doing. Just blindly following trends inflated by years of cheap-VC-money-fuelled BS, and putting a bunch of kids in charge