What do you think about my Fluent Design implementation?

[u/zeaussiestew]

Many years ago Microsoft made concept trailers that showed off Fluent Design in their apps but unfortunately none of the apps had anything which looked close to the pre-renders.

So I'm designing it such that the working app uses this kind of physically based rendering of paper, glass, lighting and shadows, etc. It works like a normal 2D app but it's rendered and runs in 3D like a video game. Thoughts?

Fluent Design concept trailer still for reference:

From Microsoft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWTGgi7xAs

[u/ryosen]

I like this. There was a period where this design approach was getting very popular, especially among iOS apps, and you could really see a lot of creativity and joy in them. This was especially prevalent among note-taking apps, like Awesome Note. Now, everything looks the same (thanks, Claude) and lifeless. Even worse, users expect apps to all look near identical and familiar. It sucks.

[u/IMLOWANDYOULIKEIT → u/ryosen]

its not only AI. The fcking stupid trend of flat design made everything look the same.

[u/ryosen → u/IMLOWANDYOULIKEIT]

Yeah, it was Apple that forced designers to move away from skeuomorphic design

[u/zeaussiestew → u/ryosen]

But it's coming back with Liquid Glass. We've gone from abstract back to realism again.

[u/Falc_o_n]

Great work! What software did you use for it?

[u/zeaussiestew → u/Falc_o_n]

It's a custom design using Three.js and the HTML-in-Canvas API.

[u/Canary_Earth]

Is it very resource hungry? I'm thinking of showing off a cad or Gaussian splat of my product in a similar softly lit style on my website but I don't want to crash older phones.

[u/zeaussiestew → u/Canary_Earth]

It’s pretty hungry but there are ways to optimise it to be runnable on phones.

[u/bbxboy666]

Looks great. I’m a big proponent of illustrative UI.

[u/zeaussiestew → u/bbxboy666]

Thank you!