

Authentic Design - porker
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/07/16/authentic-design/

======
crazygringo
One of the better articles I've seen on this. However, I still have a big bone
to pick with their conclusion, which everyone from Microsoft to Apple has been
parroting:

> a desire to curb superfluous decoration and to _focus on the content itself_

All this "focus on the content" is driving me nuts. The only time I really
want to focus on the content is while listening to MP3's, watching a slide
show, or browsing a webpage -- and that's what full-screen mode is for.

Most of the rest of the time, the whole point of the phone/tablet/desktop is
to _interact_ with the content -- to edit it, to transform it, and so on. I
don't want _extra_ clutter, but I _do_ want the buttons, the toolbar, the menu
bar -- I want to sit down at a program and _see_ what I can _do_ with it, not
look at bare "exposed content" and wonder where on earth I click/tap/swipe
from in order to reveal the hidden interface.

I want to know what's a button and what's a label and what's a textbox without
guessing -- I want affordance. I don't want everything that's part of the
interface to be whitewashed and homogenized and grayed-out until I can't tell
what's what, just so it can all be relegated to a neutral background so that
the content itself can be all "focused on" or "exposed".

I mean, pre-flat-design-era, people complained about plenty of crappy
interfaces, but I never heard anyone complaining that whatever "content"
wasn't "exposed" enough, unless they were IE users with 20 toolbars.

Sometimes it seems like half these new flat interfaces are really just made
for stores and TV commercials, so people can see bigger pictures of
professionally-taken "vacation" photos -- and the actual experience of using
them suffers for it. (Kind of like "cover flow" was beautiful in commericals,
but then I've never known anyone who actually used it for real -- which makes
sense why it was finally removed from iTunes.)

------
panacea
UI design has always been about abstracting away underlying complexity and
presenting a virtual wizard to manipulate the underlying code.

Would it not be more 'digitally authentic' to present 1's and 0's?

'Flat design' is as much an arbitrary aesthetic as 'decorative design', and
whilst I agree it's very pleasing and a sight for overloaded eyes, it's most
certainly a trend and not an objective improvement on interfaces usability
design.

~~~
brudgers
To the degree a flat design idiom such as Metro [or whatever it's called]
begins to admit text and favor it over icons, a reasoned argument can be made
that they are objectively better.

It is not just that the pictographic language of icons -, folders, floppy
disks, file cabinets, trashcans, glue bottles, scissors, clipboards etc. - is
drawn from a context largely irrelevant to large segments computer use today
such mobile devices, educational contexts and home uses. Nor is it that
elements such as the floppy disk are twenty years obsolescent.

The problem with the pictographic language rooted in skeuomorphism is that it
lacks a grammar. It has no rules of combination. There is no icon for copy and
paste - let alone one for copy from _context a_ and paste in _context b._

It is not entirely an accident that alphabets have been replacing pictograms
for three millennia. They are more flexible. Likewise, the iconography of
industrial buttons is rapidly disappearing both as a relevant context from the
workplace, and as a human interface. Industrial interfaces are increasingly a
screen and a keyboard [a keyboard is our industrial interface to an alphabet].

What is the most useful feature of the iOS interface? It would be hard to
argue for anything other than the touch keyboard. It has two important
features. Each icon represents a symbol rather than an action. Those symbols
have rules of combination which allow the expression of complex abstractions.

Your roommate can text "Scrunchie on door." They don't need to download "The
Let Someone Know You're Getting Laid App" from the app store. Neither do you.

The icon and skeuomorphism will continue to lose ground simply because they
are too brittle for general purpose computing. There will be specialized
contexts where they persist - just as pictograms are a useful way to describe
the way the Grants Mill Road winds over the hill. The sign before two
successive turns shows two successive turns.

Today, we are in a future where Grants Mill Road has been straitened as it
heads down toward the bridge, but some interface designer has not only
retained the sign but had it painted to simulate a brushed aluminum finish and
shading to simulate an embossed surface illuminated from the upper right.

Most skeuomorphism is cutting two inches off the potroast.

[http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsan...](http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsandpotroast/)

~~~
mark_integerdsv
You just explained flat design to me in the most utterly convincing fashion.
Seriously, The Penny Has Dropped.

What I can also see now is how utterly piss poor most if not all the current
flat designs are at even beginning to approximate the effects that you are
alluding to.

I totally buy your version of FD but I have yet to see it implemented. Do you
have any examples perhaps?

~~~
brudgers
I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this answer, but I think it indicates where I
am headed.

At one end of human interface design, GNU Emacs. It is so flat as to allow
[nearly] complete freedom of expression by the user. The price? The ability to
deploy an _ad hoc_ set of abstractions creates the possibility of multiple
learning curves and requires a sophisticated mental model to be maintained by
the user.

At the other end, maybe something like the sliding rheostat on my toaster. It
controls one thing directly and proportionally. It persists across machine
states [i.e. whenever I am using the toaster I have direct access] and is
functional - a given setting produces the same output (in terms of energy, if
not of toastiness.)

What isn't _good_ flat design is Apple's new calculator - or rather it isn't
good redesign despite being executed in a flat idiom. It removes functionality
by eliminating _mc m+ m- mr_. The end result is that for aesthetic effect,
Apple has made the calculator less useful. It has reduced the user's ability
to express ideas.

They have used flat design as a cop out. I am sure that they have data which
indicates that most iOS'ers don't even know what _mr_ does, let alone uses it.
But the real design question is, what would people use, and the answer is
probably something like parenthesis and square root and maybe a doubling
function and a halving function and something which multiplies by ten...and
notice I've got five buttons that they need to stick in their four column
design?

See, this is the problem with skeuomorphism. Apple still wants to make
something that looks like a pocket calculator, instead of crating an interface
to a general computing device.

What would a really useful phone calculator look like?

Javascript or scheme [but probably not Python because of its semantic reliance
on whitespace]. It wouldn't be Babbage's calculating engine as implemented by
IBM in the form of 1930's adding machine. It would look more like Emacs than
my toaster.

I've been thinking that the real future is between, User Interface design and
Human Interface design. Is the future of our interfaces going to allow
expression or only interaction within a loop dictated by the machine? Keyboard
Cat can be trained to flip switches, but cannot express a musical composition.
I look at the Apple calculator and wonder, where is the Integral key?

~~~
cschmidt
Your comments remind me a bit of the interface for the Canon Cat designed by
Jeff Raskin. You may be familiar with his classic book...

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-
Intera...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-
Interactive/dp/0201379376)

------
pbowyer
Interesting essay. I would come back on two points:

The modernist style of which the author is so fond has been softened since; it
was too harsh an aesthetic to appeal to many people (outside the design world,
where it is still very popular)

Flat UI design doesn't strip back to functionality; it's another aesthetic
trend like skeumorphism.

~~~
lmm
I consider myself a modernist, but I was surprised to find I preferred the
Harrods frontage to the modernist building in the picture below it.

~~~
pbowyer
Me too. In interior decor, I always thought I liked it clean and modern, but
the more I look around I realise I like it comfortable and homely. Not Laura
Ashley or shabby chic, but not stark and unfriendly either. Not white walls
and chrome. Even in an office, I like colour and warmth.

Clean lines, light and airy, colour and not too much over-ornate art... there
has to be a name for this design movement.

~~~
icebraining
Have you seen postmodernism? It seems to fit more or less with that, at least
to my layman eye.

------
digitalengineer
Is it just another skin or more? Judge for yourself: A list of screenshots of
iOS7 redesign vs the 'old' design:
[http://ios7redesigns.tumblr.com/](http://ios7redesigns.tumblr.com/)

~~~
sp332
I'd like to think not, but I'm not sure how a series of static screenshots
could show anything other than "skin" differences.

~~~
digitalengineer
For a large part it is just that; same composition, same 'buttons', same
place, but in a new design. You do raise a good point though: I feel the App
Store could do with short video's instead of screenshots. Like they do on
their own iOS7 page:
[http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/#videos](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/#videos)

------
zeckalpha
Isn't the calculator example still skeumorphic?

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> A skeuomorph /ˈskjuːəmɔrf/ is a derivative object that retains ornamental
> design cues to a structure that were necessary in the original.

You can say that it isn't, because they departed with the aesthetic elements
intended to make it look true-to-life like reflections and bevels; or that it
is, because it still retains the placements and interacts like the physical
calculator.

~~~
zeckalpha
For a while there, it seemed like people had reached the consensus that flat
vs. skeumorphic is a false dichotomy. After iOS 7 was unveiled, all of a
sudden they are opposed again.

------
jjindev
I grew up with simple interfaces. I came up through the monochrome Macs. I
loved the early Apple Human Interface Guidelines. I think the first time I
said "whoa" was when I saw Enlightenment. Suddenly excess ornamentation was
fun. I even advised Steve Jobs (if he read USENET) that "eye candy rules."

So now maybe we've all been through that cycle, and eye candy, excess
ornamentation, over the top skeumorphism, is falling away.

That's probably ok.

------
Kerrick
If you enjoyed this article, you'd probably also enjoy Material Honesty on the
Web [1], by Kevin Goldman on A List Apart.

[1]: [http://alistapart.com/article/material-honesty-on-the-
web](http://alistapart.com/article/material-honesty-on-the-web)

~~~
PavlovsCat
same author as the OP, and one of the best things I ever saw posted on HN:
[http://fadeyev.net/2012/06/19/moral-
design/](http://fadeyev.net/2012/06/19/moral-design/)

------
SolarUpNote
And of course, there are always cases where flat design wouldn't make sense:

[http://www.apple.com/logic-pro/whats-new/](http://www.apple.com/logic-
pro/whats-new/)

------
SmeelBe
Perfect explanation, good was mentioned Flat UI by designmodo in this article
[http://designmodo.com/flat-free/](http://designmodo.com/flat-free/).

------
stevenkovar
Design solves problems. That's it.

Projecting these terms and trends only serves to handicap those who choose to
emulate over develop a grasp on the fundamentals of problem solving.

~~~
huffman
"solves problems" encompasses a vast space of decision making, some of which
is arbitrary and stylistic. "That's it" is oversimplifying things.

"In Holland, we have two words for design. One is vormgeving; in German
formgeben. And the other word is ontwerpen; in German entwurf. In the Anglo-
Saxon language there's only one word for design, which is design. That is
something you should work out. Vormgeving is more to make things look nice. So
for instance, packaging for a perfume or for chocolate in order to make things
fashionable, obsolete and therefore bad for society because we don't really
need it. While ontwerpe means, and the Anglo-saxon word, but its stronger,
means engineering. That means you as a person try to invent a new thing—which
is intelligent, which is clever, and which will have a long-life. And that's
called stylistic durability. It means you can use it for a long time." \- Gert
Dumbar

