But what hadn’t occurred to me is that it doesn’t matter if it actually does make it easier to use, all that matters is that it makes the average person think it’s easier to use. In reality, a user must take time to learn any interface, whether clad in faux leather or not. The skeuomorphism in iOS plainly tricks people that might otherwise walk away, convinced that they can’t learn something new, into putting in the time required to get acclimated to a new interface.
For every one designer pointing out flawed and unnecessary ornamentation in iOS, one hundred non-designers, normal people, are tricked into thinking they understand something new.
But this is violated as soon as that person walks up and tries it and the thing doesn't work the way they thought they knew it would.
Skeuomorphism can help when used properly. If something looks like a button, I know by metaphor that pushing it will do something. What's really tragic about Apple's recent use of skeuomorphism is that it often doesn't make any metaphorical sense, and is also horribly ugly.
But I think we should move on. The people that need skeuomorphism as a crutch are dying out. The new generations are growing up with digital interfaces. We're artifically limiting what we can do by simulating physical things.
Matias Duarte, designer of WebOS and Android 4.0, talks about embracing wholly digital interfaces and how it's the underlying philosophy for Android 4.0 and up. Check out this interview if you haven't already:
http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/18/exclusive-matias-duarte-i...
I have and it's a great interview. It's actually got me really excited about what I thought would be a fairly pedestrian OS upgrade.
But I still don't think it goes far enough. I think there are certain conventions that make sense for a handheld device with a touchscreen. What I talk about in the blog post is for desktops, though. I think for ergonomic reasons, a display that's separate from the input device is necessary for 'real work.' From that starting point, there are a lot of wholly digital ideas that can make computing a lot more powerful and productive if we embrace it.
Point is, actually, that it will be no more difficult to use than a UI with plain graphics, so if the (ugly) leather makes people feel better about it, why not?
No, I still don't like it, but the thesis in the article makes sense.
That’s mostly true for iCal and Address Book on OS X, not any iOS app. Those are generally well thought out and they usually at least don’t deceive. Yeah, iBooks for the iPad shows pages left and right that never change, no matter how little or much of the book you have read (which is monumentally stupid) but that’s a little thing.
It's worse with OS X, but iOS has its share, too. iBooks is just one, and it's not just the page stacks. I'd argue that the whole skeuomorphic interface is misplaced. I find the page-turning animation to be a useless, nostalgic novelty. But not just that, I've seen someone get confused by the fact that in landscape mode, each page is printed on both sides, while in portrait mode, only one side of each page is available/printed on. How do you get to the other half? Of course, there are more glaring problems with iBooks. Like scrolling in parts of a page of a book? Pieces of pages that are buttons? A bookmark that's a button?
More examples: Calendar for iPad. (Leatherette buttons? Really?) Notes app. (Marker Felt makes me want to throw up.) Contacts.
For every one designer pointing out flawed and unnecessary ornamentation in iOS, one hundred non-designers, normal people, are tricked into thinking they understand something new.
But this is violated as soon as that person walks up and tries it and the thing doesn't work the way they thought they knew it would.
Skeuomorphism can help when used properly. If something looks like a button, I know by metaphor that pushing it will do something. What's really tragic about Apple's recent use of skeuomorphism is that it often doesn't make any metaphorical sense, and is also horribly ugly.
But I think we should move on. The people that need skeuomorphism as a crutch are dying out. The new generations are growing up with digital interfaces. We're artifically limiting what we can do by simulating physical things.
Here's my first attempt at thinking about what the implications of wholly embracing the digital medium are: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-o...