There are several design conflicts with the new UI, which affect UX readability.
I would ordinarily type up a full design analysis, but given I'm unpaid, you can accept some pictures instead.
I feel like your design team has had a read of Googles design language, which is inherently terrible for a desktop layout, but someone has then butchered that design further.
Vertical bar to the left, which is used to seperate server list and server channels / friends list. If continued through the profile bar, would not be balanced with the profile photo (equal margins), and goes “through” the name space. Yes, the vertical bar, does *not* go through the profile bar at any point, but for viewability and comfort, it looks bad.
Profile bar and chat box are misaligned, all in favour of the chat status of “x is typing…”. From a design aspect, you're sacrificing symmetry and good design practice, for what is arbitrarily useless information, which could easily be placed elsewhere. Additionally, when too many users are typing, you don't continue the message with a list of all the users until the entire Chat Status width is consumed. Instead, you replace the Chat Status with “Several people are typing”. Which means there is always wasted space, in favour of an awful design choice. Terrible trade-off. Personally, I'd recommend moving the Chat Status ABOVE the chat box. Providing the somewhat useless information in a way that doesn't interfere with the design layout.
This dividing element is an additional pixel thicker than all other dividing elements.
The server list icons on the left, should continue to the top of this bar, with the category and search bar being to the right of the icons at the top, this reflects the design language with the server list, channels and active window used within in the main element of the application.
Here is an example of the above:
There are other design choices which could be improved, and if you want a better analysis, let me know.
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