@matthiasdebaat - Before HA I spent 8 years with SmartThings and they too adopted this design style (or very similar). It drove me literally up the wall because it became my only option and limited the number of devices I could see (at a glance / per screen) dramatically. When I moved to HA about 1.5yrs ago I loved the ability to fully customize my dashboards and the ability to show a large number of devices/entities in a small space.
While my “design” is definitely not the most attractive, it is highly functional for me. This is an example room:
(on mobile, the 3 columns are stacked so yeah, there is a bit of scrolling - please add HTML style anchors to enable jumping to specific parts of the page!)
Having this amount of information and controls using the new UX would be incredibly aggravating. I am therefore happy to hear that the new UX will NOT replace or remove our ability to build custom UXs as it is fundamental to a lot of users.
IMO, Smartthings made the big mistake to standardize on their average user with 15 or so devices… please do not ever do the same. The number of devices that homes have will only grow so the need to be able to show information and controls with increased density will also grow. I currently have about 50 views spread across 4 dashboards…
The new UX is likely great to add new users coming from other ecosystems as everyone seems to have the same design, but I don’t see myself ever adopting it as long as I have an alternative. I quit ST due to their limitations on device count (~200 at the time) and their unusable “Material Design” app. It was so bad I did anything I could to avoid ever needing to open it, including having more than a dozen Echos around the house.
Sorry to say, im absolute no “Phone” user( i use my phone mainly for it’s purpose Calls, and now a days also 2 factor auth. and services like mobile-pay, I Dont bury my head in my hands and phone daily) actually lots of people don’t , i prefer Laptop, PC-Monitor(larger), with or witout touch-screen) and TV-screen, and your “little” Larger-Screen example is way OFF, seriously, so much “white-space” or should i say waste-space, there are lots of people here (edit: in the Forum, under various topics) who have shared some of their “Views”, take an impression of that in your way forward, instead of digging your self deeper into the “folder” of current trend/paradigm from Google/IDevices and what ever, Microsoft ran into a Wall with Windos 8, Doomed like Vista, and still obviously some people seems to get the idea that this is what will “stick” be trendy in the Future, because this is what the people want …NO, this (above) is just another example of what some people want to force other people to use.
I think what this post and the one after it are saying is that we shouldn’t trade form for function.
A slick-looking default UI is a worthy goal. It will help “wow” new users and influencers. Getting more people to look at HA is a good thing.
But far more important is retaining existing users. Like every other application in the world, there’s a learning curve. Once you’ve figured out what the product can do, you start needing more functionality than what that pretty default screen showed you. Things start getting more complex. You need to easily navigate between all the different features. That clean initial screen with all that white space just doesn’t work any more. All those “are you sure” pop-ups start to get annoying. Having to go to “advanced” menus or dig down through multiple pages becomes frustrating. You want everything to be at your fingertips, not have to repetitively click, tap, drag, open, close and type.
At that point it’s not “pretty” any more. Yes, it might intimidate the beginner. But it’s actually doing what the user needs. Isn’t that the real goal?
As I read this thread, this is only a design for the default dashboard, ie the auto generated dashboard. You will still be free to design your own dashboard.
Thanks! First steps are made by introducing the Tile card. You can use that one to build your own dashboard in the meantime. We’re iterating in small steps, so you could see some changes every release. Can’t give you an ETA when and if all of this will be released as this concept.
My input as a user: give us a choice when setting up a new instance of Home Assistant. One choice would be the fancy new UX being displayed here and the other would be the current ability to take control of the old-style dashboard and tweak it to our liking. Another suggestion is to allow us to more easily tailor the UI elements to our liking; I personally dislike the rounded corners of the UI and want to be able to simply select an option in the configuration to make them sharp.
Sorry to say but the proposed dashboard layout is useless to me. I belong to a group of users who want to have a glance view of the whole house on the main screen and the ability to control major functions without the need of scrolling kilometers of inefficiently used UI estate or jumping through an excessive number of sub-pages.
Here is my main dashboard for mobile devices. You can see the state of windows and lights and temperatures in every room. Also, special items which are don’t fall into those categories may be displayed (trash collection, Christmas tree, or mini-lamp in the bedroom). I can turn off all lights in a single room by long-press on the room icon all lights in house with long-press on the house icon.
Of course, if I need more details, I can click on the icon then every entity has its own representation (following this design).
What benefit could I get from the new design? Significantly less information at glance, need of finding items by scrolling down.
Unfortunately, today’s designs, with an attempt to cover mobile, touch, and desktop devices at once with single code (responsive design) suffer a lot with ergonomics. While ergonomics is a part of science, I admit that not all of us have to take care of that. For example, someone may prefer rainbow-colored, rounded half-screen size buttons with comics-like icons over quick and efficient access to most functions. And it’s fair to say that people have different needs.
And this is the point: HA should not focus on creating another fancy dashboard that satisfies only part of the user base (mostly newcomers). Users who likely will change their minds in a year or two. It should focus on providing as flexible as possible framework, which gives an opportunity to create any kind of dashboard to anyone.
Saying that I have in mind custom:button-card as a great example of flexibility. It allows achieving almost everything you can think of.
Having such a framework would provide an opportunity for dashboard creators. And at that point, I’m not against having different dashboard-styles to choose from (in a way we can select themes today).
But please do not replace a current dashboard with a new one every time you came up with an idea to match current so-called “standards” or “trends”. HA is not a fashion magazine.
You and I, as existing users, don’t get any benefit from this change, since it’s for a new installation only, as I understand it. Even then, it’s not going to directly impact us, since we can obviously change it to something that’s more to our liking.
At first I’m afraid it will be not without impacting existing installations (either custom or default dashes)
At second every newcomer turns into existing user eventually. How long it will take they found this dash not meeting their needs?
Ahh and I can imagine the next step will be using this whole pinky stuff in HA settings and development sections which look is not customizable. Personally I would keep those sections look as system-like as possible
I got here when trying to quickly find out where HA UI dev is going in the future just to make sure… I hope i haven’t seen this… There is just about everything I dislike: Round corners, pastel colors which make feel sick and insane space-taking mobile-style layout. I guess under the surface there are more insanity like oversized sliders when looking for history etc. etc.
I already run HA more or less in headless PLC-style mode because of recent UI developments and if these are really going to be released, I do everything I can not having to use HA with it’s native UI anymore.
Positive side of things is that during 2023 the time I have spent on the forum nor HA installation has drastically decreased. I do only some necessary maintenance and check some sensors, otherwise I’m pretty much avoiding to see it at all.
I think the “filter” type chips at the top are a really handy. I also appreciate the floating/persistant media player at the bottom of the screen. Also, the chin bar “tabs” seem easy to navigate without taking up too much screen space.
Great looking prototype! I came across this looking for a figma asset library to mock up some new dashboards quickly, but am glad I found this.
would qualify.
