
Bringing Back Skeuomorphic Design - devins
https://blog.prototypr.io/bringing-back-skeuomorphic-design-d211cc1c22d2
======
et-al
Yes please.

Apple had a good balance between skeuomorphism and minimalism a few years ago,
but as Jony Ive & Co. strip out decoration for flatness, iOS 11 almost looks
unfinished. Case in point: the PIN screen and the calculator app.

Lock screen:
[https://file.mockplus.com/image/2017/10/5627bfee-8dbf-44b4-9...](https://file.mockplus.com/image/2017/10/5627bfee-8dbf-44b4-94e3-3a0782e9a276.png)

Calculator: [http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/iOS-10...](http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/iOS-10-vs-iOS-11-Calculator.jpeg)

I live in an old Victorian house, and there's something very "human" and
comforting about the tiny details that designers embark on a crusade to erase
every other decade. Sometimes I wonder if flat UI and "brutalist design" [0]
came about simply because folks got lazy and need to show something quickly
Monday morning.

[0] [http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/)

~~~
knolan
The current iOS calculator app is atrocious looking. However I usually use use
spotlight for my calculations but that’s been hidden several swipes away if
you’re in an app.

Where’s the minimalism in the amount of touch input needed? Replying to emails
in Mail is a chore of taps.

~~~
lowtolerance
It’s literally two swipes or less to get to Spotlight from anywhere in iOS.

Also, it’s only two taps to reply to an email in the Mail app. What a chore!

~~~
knolan
It used to be just one minor swipe down. You could pull down the notifications
blind just a small bit and you’d have access to it instantly. It was really
useful, now I have to swipe across two screens. [0]

Mail is similar, there are more taps than there used to be in favour of
minimalism. So yes it is a chore when it used to be effortless and now it’s
two swipes across useless empty screen filling space in different directions
that iOS sometimes misinterpretes.

[0] [http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/06/17/ios-10-tidbit-
spotli...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/06/17/ios-10-tidbit-spotlight-in-
any-app/)

------
jbob2000
No, the reason we got rid of it was that it was impractical for like 90% of
software. Skeuomorphism works for calendars and notepads, that's it. That's
why those are always the examples you see for them.

There's no such thing as skeuomorphism for a chat app or a social media site -
there's no analog comparison to take design cues from, they're inherently a
digital thing. So what you end up doing is wrapping digital things in leather
and wood texture as if it was some kind of physical device. It's tacky and
cheap, and frankly, I think only a small subset of users get a kick out of it.

I don't like these designs at all. Sure, they are well put together. But the
screen feels crowded and the buttons look hard to hit. It just looks
incredibly delicate, if i flipped on large text mode, the whole design would
break.

On the other hand... Skeuomorphism is _fantastic_ for video games, where
utility is not the primary motivator of design. If I'm playing a WW2 game of
some kind, yeah, I'm cool with menus looking like war-torn clipboards and
whatnot.

~~~
AstralStorm
For games, both approaches work well. Very weird is fun. Immersion (of which
skeuomorphism is a part) can be fun too.

I'd rather not want my phone apps try to be immersive rather than get the job
done.

------
currywurst
It's time for the pendulum to swing back I guess ;)

The article give iOS 7 the credit for ushering in the 'flat' design trends ...
But I remember the Windows Phone 7-8 'Metro' (later renamed to Modern) design
language as the key influence. It blew away people with the attention to
typography and proportional grid-based layouts.

~~~
torgoguys
I think you're right. But, in a reversal of roles, Microsoft did the design
well and Apple's copy was a poor, souless wannabe IMO. They sucked any
semblance of "joy" (for lack of a better word) out of the Metro ideas and iOS.

~~~
lowtolerance
I disagree. Microsoft just took typographic design principles that have been
extant for decades and which were already commonplace in print and web design
and applied them wholesale to UI design.

There are situations where this makes perfect sense, but it was hardly a
sensible approach to UI design on the whole. Metro was widely criticized for
making it more difficult for users to be productive, which I would argue is
the primary concern of any desktop operating system. And indeed, Microsoft
quickly moved beyond Metro in favor of Fluent, a design language that is much
more in keeping with Apple’s current design language than it is with Metro.

Metro, despite being relatively popular with UI designers and developers,
totally flopped with users, who did not find joy in using it at all. With
Metro, Microsoft attempted to cut out UI chrome in favor of content. The idea
being that removing chrome would make room for content. Instead, they ended up
treating content as chrome, leaving substantially less room for _actual
content_. Microsoft failed to meet their own design goals for Metro. And
what’s worst, they seemingly failed to recognize that they had failed for
quite some time.

Apple’s human interface design guidelines for iOS, while far from perfect, are
a much truer realization of the design principles that Microsoft set out to
implement with Metro. Rather than treating content as chrome, chrome is
reduced to its most basic elements, retaining its ability to inform the user
as to its function, while minimally detracting from content.

------
c8d3f7b49897918
Balance in all things: a design should be minimalist where that is called for
(the background, unimportant or repetitive elements, etc.) and should increase
in visual complexity/depth/color/brightness in areas that are important and
need to draw the users eye. (NB: minimalism does not mean "nothing". Sometimes
a slight texture completely changes the feel of a UI, but it requires a deft
hand.)

I'm glad to see the flat-ui/material-design over-application of minimalism is
coming to an end and designers are getting back to more complex visual
treatments. My hope is that, rather than casting back and forth between the
various schools of thought, designers start thinking in context-sensitive
terms: not "Should I use flat design or skeumorphic design for this app?" but
rather "Where in this UI are flat design AND skeumorphic designs best
utilized?"

------
userbinator
IMHO the most important skeuomorphic thing in UI is to make buttons actually
look like buttons, i.e. they are obviously meant to be pressed. Far too much
time has been wasted on trying to learn UIs where buttons are virtually
indistinguishable from static text. Borderless buttons are particularly
frustrating, especially when there's multiple of them next to each other.

~~~
nnq
THIS. Material Design guidelines tried to drill these into deisgners' head.
But man, their damn artsy skulls are thiiiiick...

There should be a "Shadow + Fill if it's tappable/clickable. F please!" rule
though in every design school. Every time I see it not followed I get a fit of
rage, that unfortunately I need to swallow and not fire the designer because I
know he's otherwise good at UX too.

It's should something like a "don't f drive when you're drunk rule" rule...
_common sense to every-f-body!_

~~~
Piko
fuck.

There, I said it.

------
rbosinger
The very first thing I thought of when I started seeing everything moving to
"flat design" was "I wonder how long this will last?"

I figured everything would go flat and then designers would bring back
skeuomorphic designs and they would pop extra hard in contrast.

Now I bet we'll go really loud and retro ("Stranger Things") for a while until
we get worn out and need to take a break and go flat again for a while.

~~~
ahartmetz
One can at least hope that the amplitude of pendulum swings decreases, which
seems likely to happen to me.

------
RachelF
Please do bring it back. In my opinion, it looks better than the flat modern
interfaces that everybody now uses. Starting with Windows 8 phone minimalism
has made computer interfaces uglier, and harder to use.

It seems like UI designers are just as fashion concious as clothes fashion
designers, and also have less concern for the comfort/usability of their
product.

[1]

~~~
tomc1985
Fashion really has no place in computing. These are tools and we should treat
them as such

"The reaction, as all reactionary trends, was to throw out everything that
came before and fully embrace this new direction of minimalist ui, white space
layouts and magazine typesetting. Some argue that it was a timely change to
meet the demands of the increasing complexities of the interface. That we had
grown out of the need to include real world cues in our digital analogies.
Evolved the interface."

No, a bunch of kingmakers got on stage and we foolishly listened to them.

~~~
nnq
> Fashion really has no place in computing. These are tools and we should
> treat them as such

This cracked me up... You do realize that even things like _programming
language selection_ are 90% fashion-driven, right?

~~~
ahartmetz
Grandparent needs to machine learn a container full of IoT blockchain.js as a
service.

------
bitL
Original drive towards flat design was in part driven by retina-style displays
and scalable vector graphics where authoring tools used to be pathetic. These
days we have much better tools, so maybe we can finally get attention to
details back instead of enforcing one-size-fits-all ugliness on everyone, just
because it's simpler for non-designers.

What I am worried though is that "flat" already caused too much damage and we
will never see a beautiful complex yet holistic UI again. Something like what
happened to IndyCars; they had arguably the most beautiful cars on the planet
in 00s, then switched to unbelievably ugly decade and half, and this year will
have something that while prettier than what they had before, still can't
match their golden age in looks when many people were watching them because
they just looked so cool.

------
Uhhrrr
A lot of the reason skeuomorphic design went away was that Apple had a release
which used more skeuomorphism and was also _ugly_. The OP link is more
tasteful. Let's just bring back taste, rather than carrying banners for one
abstract philosophy or another.

------
gfosco
I like it, it's very tasteful... I hope it does come back, because I find the
flat / whitespace / no decoration UI craze to be boring.

~~~
AstralStorm
This point is mostly about looks, not skeuomorphism.

You do not have to model real items to have them look good and be recognisable
and the functionality being relatively obvious.

------
mdip
Amen.

I'll be the first to admit that "you don't want me doing your UX design"[0],
but I found the whole violent shift from skeuomorphic to flat to be too much.
Almost over night we went from nearly cartoonish to IRS forms "with color". As
a non-designer, I was happy -- finally, I could hit up a web site for a
reasonable color palette, grab a popular font from Google and have a design
that _almost passed_ as typical. As a user, I found the look ... boring and
uninspired.

Here's the thing, though, skeuomorphic design _did_ serve a purpose. It was to
equate, for non-tech-savvy folks, concepts from the "real world" to concepts
in an app. A few simple design elements can differentiate my calendar from my
task list from my playlist and can be _highly effective_ in circumstances
where providing a UI more than a very brief glance can be dangerous[1]. And
outside of those scenarios, it's nice reducing the cognitive load required to
recognize the context of what I'm doing. Unfortunately, it _was_ taken way too
far. But it went too far the other way, too. There's a happy medium here, and
I rather like the UI presented here as that happy place.

[0] I'm not completely miserable at it, but I'm a developer. I want a
knob/switch/setting for _everything_ and the ability to customize _everything_
(I joke that I never quit Firefox because I love "about:config"). My mom
doesn't. For most of my projects, which are either personal or targeted at
engineers, a lot of time isn't spent thinking about design.

[1] For instance, waking my phone while driving to change the song -- It's
nice to see something that indicates "that's a playlist" which is obvious and
instant.

~~~
AstralStorm
My playlist does not look like a collection of CDs nor like a plain text list.
It does look like a spiffy and specific list - and different from image
gallery too.

(Using PowerAmp, not affiliated.)

------
stephencoyner
I agree that most UI is the same these days and some change from the norm
should be encouraged, but I don't think that UI with actual real world things
like binder clips is needed. Mobile apps don't need clips to keep pages
together, so lets not bring new constraints into a field that already has it's
own to work with.

I love how Google is updating material design to have more aggressive shadows
and bring in elements that make the UI feel more like the real world, while
also pushing the boundaries of app design with newer interaction models that
most haven't seen, but immediately feel used to.

Mobile app design is such a new field, let's not jump back into our time
machine because we feel nostalgic for Steve Job's Apple. Let's keep pushing
the field forward.

~~~
wildrhythms
When every app looks and acts the same, why have different apps at all? What I
want is one single mega app that does everything. At least then I can rest
peacefully knowing that the interfaces between all of my digital playspaces
are consistent. Think of how wonderful it will be when I can open my phone and
not be surprised by what a designer has carefully crafted. This excites you
too, doesn't it?

~~~
stephencoyner
I'm not saying everything should be the same, my first sentence said quite the
opposite. I'm just saying let's not bring the constraints of the physical
world into mobile app design, let's get a little more creative.

~~~
wildrhythms
I'm of the opinion that "Material design" is exactly what my comment
portrays... a world where all interfaces look and act alike, where everything
must adhere to "best practices" at the expense of a unique experience and
fresh ideas.

My thought is that, if the goal is more creativity, then we have to move away
from trying to homogenize user experiences by funneling them into the same
identical visual theme (read: "Material design")

I didn't mean my previous comment to rip on what you were saying; this just
comes from someone who is working on a project that has been shorehorned into
Material design and I sincerely think the user interface has worsened as a
result.

------
AstralStorm
Please don't. Skeuomorphism always lies to the user.

That button? Does not really depress and definitely does not act immediately.

Knob you're turning? It is not analogue nor you can really use a true turning
gesture.

And why do you have to use one when you have a touch screen to draw the result
on?

Computer desktop is not a desk top, items do not obstruct each other.

A file folder has no pages.

Ebook only has them because someone thought it needs to. I'd welcome infinite
scrolling in these.

Non-flat is not the same as skeuomorphic. Hopefully.

------
nnq
Kind of dooh: as we get _better and higher DPI display, skeumorphic designs
are too good at showing off how good the displays actually are to worth
passing off :P_

Thing with skeumorphic design is that people really don't know where to stop
when they start doing it... so it will be a cycles thing: at some point all
cargo-cult designers overdo it, everyone gets sick of it, and we're back to
Metro. To be hones though, I like the "improved flat" phase of Material Design
and I hope we stay on it as much as possible, so we can focus on things like
UX more instead. Back in the days of full-skeumorphic fever, "good UX" was
seen as worthless ammateurish crap unless dressed in tons of graphic desinger
makeup...

------
woodandsteel
The problem with flat design is the human optical perception is the product of
literally hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and it is designed for a
three dimensional world.

Flat design the latest example of a utopianistic drive that started in the
20th century by some intellectuals to make a world that fits robots, not human
beings. Other examples are modern classical music and modern architecture.
Modern classical music never caught on because it simply doesn't fit the human
auditory system. Ditto modern architecture,though it has persisted partly for
business reasons, and has been greatly modified to make it more humane.

------
majewsky
I agree that some of the most extreme instances of flat UI design need to be
dialed back, but:

> make UI fun again

Hell no. I'm not using an app to have fun with the UI, I'm using an app to
complete some sort of task [1]. Sure, the UI designer wants to have some fun
(same for the developer), but in the end, the user's experience matters the
most.

When designers embrace this back-to-skeuomorphism trend, I'd like to remind
them of Dieter Rams' Good Design Principles:

> 5\. Good design is unobstrusive.

> 6\. Good design is honest.

> 7\. Good design is long-lasting.

> 10\. Good design is as little design as possible.

[1] Implying that it's some sort of productivity app, rather than some game or
entertainment content.

------
martin_drapeau
The skeuomorphic design in the article is beautiful. It represents a real life
object augmented with digital. It makes me want to use it.

Notice there are no textures. Maybe textures was the corny side of skeuo and
what people didn’t like.

~~~
dpark
> _Notice there are no textures._

It has a leather case and metal binder rings. It absolutely has textures.

~~~
martin_drapeau
I meant as background fill. Textures here are used to augment (borders) and
not fill.

------
guelo
What's missing is user testing. Many designers are still in denial that
they're engineers not artists, they still mock user testing with "users don't
know what they want" etc.. But how do you know if the interface does what it's
supposed to do? Does it have bugs?

One of the benefits of a platform design language is that users learn the
language, they know what the buttons are, how to navigate around without
putting too much thought into it. If you deviate from that you really need to
be sure the user will benefit from it and it's not just pretty for pretty's
sake.

------
nategri
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis)

~~~
hnzix
Does this mean I'm allowed to use <tables> again without being crucified?

~~~
designcode
Can't be any worse than bootstrap's col / grid system.

~~~
wuliwong
I've actually never even tried to understand people's issue with tables. I
think there are important places to take stands in my life and I guess that
<table> isn't one of them. I'm more of a "generalist" than a front-end dev but
that being said, I would guess that you would have more control for responsive
layouts with bootstrap's grid system than using HTML tables. If I'm using
table cells I can have them stretch or squeeze to fit the screen but it's
trivial with Bootstrap's grid to change the number of div's in a row depending
on screen size. I don't believe that is achievable with basic HTML tables.

~~~
mr_toad
The argument was/is that ‘table’ should have semantic meaning; you use it for
tabulation of facts. Most people were using it to create arbitrary containers.

Some people have taken it too far, and refuse to use tables even for
representing actual tables of data.

~~~
ahartmetz
I believe it's a weird kind of misunderstanding. Tables were declared bad when
the rule was still "mark up meaning, not physical look".

Today, websites are mostly designed in a fixed layout (well, two - desktop and
mobile), so the argument against tables makes no sense anymore.

------
tomc1985
I miss skeumorphism. It was great for making computing more accessible

------
zer00eyz
I have mixed feelings about this.

Lets take something that most on here probably remember, the floppy disk. It
is still a common sight as a save icon, but my youngest children have never
USED a floppy.

I don't mind the concept, as long as the concept isn't sacrificing
functionality, and astethics for the sake of nostalgia.

~~~
nradov
Right we should use a Zip disk icon instead. Much more modern.

~~~
AstralStorm
Some software use the standard icon for storage instead - looks like a stack
of hard disks.

And then you also get the folder icons with arrows on Windows, not floppies.

------
jgalt212
skeuomorphism works, and should be used, because of:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment)

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2...](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878339)

