About three years ago, I found myself deep in a Figma rabbit hole, obsessing over blog design. Inspired by Microsoft’s Fluent Design, glass panels became my design language of choice – I was so committed to the aesthetic that I even added little “screws” at panel corners to emphasize the layered, polymorphic properties of the interface.
A Figma exploration from 2022.
This exploration became the foundation for my initial Actualise designs. For years, I’ve remained faithful to this vision of glass panels, acrylic boards, and textured diffusion effects.
Things look rather different over on the site now.
But something never quite clicked. The deeper I ventured into glassmorphism, the more I encountered its fundamental flaws. As those nagging voices in the back of my head grew louder, I found myself gradually steering projects away from the very aesthetic I’d once fell in love with.
The Readability Trap
The issue isn’t that glass panels or translucent effects instantly destroy readability – it’s the exponential complexity of frontend logic required to handle every edge case. Consider this: when my UI sits on a solid, light background, everything looks pristine. But when users scroll onto darker backgrounds, we need to invert content colors and adjust glass tinting. Add a noisy, content-heavy background, and suddenly we’re reducing transparency and obscuring background elements.
Apple’s Human Interface Design Guidelines echo this adaptive approach, and these patterns aren’t revolutionary – they’ve existed since opacity became central to UI/UX methodology.
But here’s the catch: that’s three conditional behaviours for just three scenarios, ignoring any combinations or permutations. The manual development work required to optimize component behavior – essentially clawing back the readability sacrificed for aesthetic appeal – quickly becomes overwhelming. Apple's doing everything they can with developer deep dives to make sure everyone knows what should or should not be done. I suspect developers will soon realise it's way easier when it's simply not done. See: Windows Vista.
The Material Paradox
Glass is inherently hard and inflexible. Apple’s “Liquid Glass” concept seems designed to counter this coldness, introducing mutability and flexibility to soften the material’s unwelcoming nature.
It’s undeniably beautiful. But beauty that doesn’t invite interaction misses the mark.
Glass cannot be pressed or deformed in reality. Users instinctively connect digital elements to real-world counterparts, and the more skeuomorphic a design becomes, the less room users have to form these connections organically. When design becomes overly prescriptive, it stops being user-centric. Beauty must be perceived by the user – you can’t simply slap them in the face and declare “IT’S BEAUTIFUL!”
Maybe I’m being a little too cynical, but I doubt many people find pressing hard on a piece of solid glass a welcoming thing to do. Compare that to Google’s Material 3 Expressive – which encourages malleability and fluidity as its main draw.
Today, people increasingly see their devices not as tools, but as extensions of themselves. - Google
It becomes apparent that one is a natural evolution of human interface design – to emphasize style and emotion while enhancing usability – and the other is almost self-indulgent in the pursuit of “beauty”.
The Copycats
You already know some C-suite fellas are hounding their design team to start work on their “fluid water” design language for the next OS. It’ll look suspiciously, conspicuously, shamelessly, like Apple’s.
Please don’t do it. Just this once.
Apple’s pretty much led the design of Android OEMs for the past decade, and its not until recently did Google and Friends find a little bit of confidence in themselves, and a little bit of stride. Many brands found their own mojo, their own design philosophies, and adapt from the learnings of their own users. But for every brand that upholds its own principles, there's usually 5 more that just says "I'll have whatever Apple's having." "Apple can do no wrong."
Is this where their paths diverge? Is this where Apple’s design team gets their dose of doubt from the community?
Honestly, it might be up to the Android brands, and if they’ll take the knee to their new glassy god.
Shattering Impact
Many friends assume I write about Apple events because I'm a fan. Honestly, this whole controversy should make my motivations self-evident.
When was the last time a UI design change ignited the entire internet like this?
Apple's influence on design is undeniable — countless designers and professionals treat them as the north star of human interface design. It's no exaggeration to say that every modern UI traces its lineage back to iOS 7.
Over the past few days, I've witnessed a flood of doom-and-gloom takes about UI's future. There's widespread debate over whether user interface design has been "solved" — whether we've reached some theoretical endpoint. Others argue that homogeneous UI across our digital devices stems from stagnant hardware innovation. They're probably right.
Some claim Apple is playing the long game, seeing something we don't in transparent interfaces—preparing us for a spatial computing future. Also likely true.
But here's the thing: so much of UI remains trapped by user familiarity. We use home screens because we're accustomed to them. The "back" button lives in the top-left corner not because it's ergonomically superior, but because that's where it's always been. Why not place it at the bottom for better reachability? Because our monkey brains would revolt and flood social media with outraged screenshots.
Consider this simple example: How many apps do you currently have installed?
Let's say you have three pages of applications. Finding your desired app requires 2-3 swipes, plus another second to scan the page before launching TikTok. But what if you used the search bar and typed "tik" instead? No swipes, fewer taps, instant results.
As we download ever more apps, why hasn't the search bar replaced the entire home screen concept?
There is so, so much yet to be achieved with UI. I'm not sure if the most pressing priority is giving every single element it's own diffusion pattern.
Reflections
Three years ago, I fell in love with glass panels because they looked beautiful. Today, I'm walking away from them because beauty without purpose is just decoration. Apple's latest design controversy isn't really about transparency or readability. It's about an industry that's forgotten how to question its own assumptions. The real tragedy isn't that glassmorphism might fail, or that every Android OEM will inevitably copy Apple's homework again. It's that we're designing interfaces for familiarity instead of functionality, choosing aesthetic comfort over genuine innovation.
That said, it remains to be seen if Liquid Glass will pay off. After all, as many observers have noted, Apple seems to be gunning for a post-screen future, where seeing things behind UI elements might prove to be useful.
Meanwhile, the search bar sitting unused at the top of our home screens is proof enough that the best solutions are often the ones we're too afraid to try.