¡Hola! I have not written anything in a while so I thought that this topic would be interesting to start once again. You know how the current trend in design is towards…less? Or maybe flat would be a better word. I think the reason for this could be that the current users has lived with flat screens most of their life, so it would make sense that people would start to gravitate towards more flat designs. And honestly I also like flat designs for most things, specially if they are made with a color gradient of some sort. ¹ Even this website has mostly flat designs. Contrary to the widespread usage of these flat designs, my personal experience using a flat interface to study for hours is not that great. I feel that staring at sharp, flat and even colorless panels and buttons is more difficult than studying using a book. I know that is widespread knowledge, but I think that the light-emitting rectangle is not the only problem, and that the design of the user interface is also a factor.

I tried to test my theory #

I use KDE Plasma as my computer’s desktop interface. It has a pretty flat design, but really well polished. I like using it stock, but I decided to try applying a theme that would not be so flat in design. That is how I arrived at the Expose theme and the Windows XP SVG icon pack. The icons in particular make a really big impact. I finished my classes for the year, and so far I think this theme had an impact. In my experience using the theme, I think I could focus more with it, and moving the windows around felt easier due to the blue gradient in the title bar and the taskbar. I plan to continue using this.

Default Breeze Theme	Expose Theme