
On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015) - henry_flower
http://sigwait.tk/~alex/doc/bunz%2Cmercedes__school-will-never-end/
======
fiblye
I'm halfway through reading this and, and so far, the main argument I'm seeing
amounts to this: the use of visual art and attention to design is increasing.
Making use of artistry in your products or caring about attractive design is
infantilization, since kids also happen to potentially find the art and design
nice looking because it's known that kids like pictures and color (and adults
should like something else?). He mentions that making things less offputting
to use is infantilization.

Does this apply to cars as well? Does adding design elements and any sort of
color for reasons other than making it more aerodynamic or road safe equate to
infantilization? Does using an automatic over a manual? Does using an auto-
starting engine over a wind up engine? Does using a car over your own two
legs?

I also find the argument that flat design is childish bizarre. I hate flat
design, but it's not any more or less childish than what preceded it. Things
can actually be more abstract with heavy reliance on text-only elements and
icons without immediately apparent meaning, but the author seems to think
that's infantilization, and what preceded was also meant for children, and
absolutely anything other than what the status quo was in some undefined point
in time is too infantilized.

It seems more that the author has a resistance to change, and framed it as
everything new being too immature.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
No, that's not the argument at all. "Art" and "design" do not imply
infantilisation. No one accuses Dieter Rams of being infantile.

Infantilisation in design is specifically signified by cute animal mascots,
large flat areas of primary and/or pastel colours, plain undemanding letter
forms, use or implication of smiles and other emotional signifiers of
friendliness or cuteness, use of relatable cartoons as primary graphics, and
generally by aggressive simplification and removal of anything that requires
some thought or effort to parse.

The Twitter and Amazon logos are infantile. The General Electric and IBM logos
aren't. The Facebook "f" is more or less neutral, but the font chosen for the
full "facebook" logotype wouldn't be out of place on the cover of an early
reading book.

The point of infantilisation is that it signifies an experience of creativity
without actually being creative. Instead of priming the imagination it just
slides off it. It's all about locking you into a comfort zone instead of
inspiring you to explore outside of it.

~~~
fiblye
>The Twitter and Amazon logos are infantile. The General Electric and IBM
logos aren't. The Facebook "f" is more or less neutral, but the font chosen
for the full "facebook" logotype wouldn't be out of place on the cover of an
early reading book.

This seems very culture-specific. Hard, blocky typefaces like in the IBM logo
don't scream mature to me--they just are what the main design preference of a
bygone era was. The GE logo has squiggles that make it almost cartoonish, but
it also clearly looks like something designed a hundred years ago. GE's ads 70
years ago were packed with color and cartoon characters[1], yet today they're
held as an example of "mature" while flat design with solid text is immature.

I'm still unconvinced that this is anything more than "Old is good and mature.
New design decisions are immature and bad for society." The same arguments
were used against people reading books, people watching movies, rock and roll
music, and so on. Within those realms, some things are steps back, but it's
hard to say that they were regressive for humanity as a whole. Saying choosing
a popular font is infantilizing is kind of stretching it. In 40 years,
Amazon's current logo will make people think of grandpa's house and the good
ol' days. 250 years ago, I'm sure someone was complaining about cursive
replacing gothic blackletters being a sign of societal decline.

[1]
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/05/91/9805918dd46921330298...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/05/91/9805918dd46921330298055ba61c6398.jpg)

------
goto11
There is some interesting stuff there, but the article doesn't really examine
its own premises for declaring some styles and designs infantile and others
not.

For example "bright colors" are infantile. Is a subway map infantile because
it uses simplification and bright colors to communicate complex information
clearly? Is a red/yellow/green traffic light infantile, while a grown up
traffic light would use say beige/gray/eggshell?

The attitude is a throwback to when GUI's where considered for kids while real
men used a green-on-black command line. But now skeuomorphic and "drop
shadows" are grown up, while "lighter, brighter and simpler" is infantile?
Isn't is just that "new" is infantile?

The article builds a whole societal analysis on these unexamined premises.

~~~
watwut
I dont think author claims bright colors are infantile on themselves. She is
claiming that bright colors are used to distract from complexity. That word is
always used in conjunction with other words like "patronizing you while hiding
it in bright, friendly colours and the technique of infantilization". The bad
stuff there is "patronizing" and "infantilization" bright colors just help to
hide that.

~~~
goto11
The bright colors and simple shapes in a subway map is not used to "distract
from complexity". It is used to present complex information as clearly as
usefully as possible. Would it be less patronizing to present subway users
with a detailed topographic map?

In any case, using earth-tones or beige or whatever would not convey any more
complexity. The author is just _associating_ bright colors with childishness,
but does not examine this deeper. Yeah kids like bright colors, so does people
making air traffic control systems.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I think the idea that this comparison (to color for display of information) is
valid in your mind already proves the author’s point.

Why should the communication of a corporate brand identity or the consumer
interface to its products be using the same tactics as visual display of
complex information?

The principles of visual display of complex information also derive from goals
about clarity, preventing influence of outliers, neutral colors, etc.

What are those goals for a corporate communication strategy? If you think they
are anything other than scary misinformation tactics to maximize profit and
brand perception while minimizing the company’s bad externalities, you’re just
fooling yourself.

When the principles of visual display of information are repurposed to
optimize profit, minimize negative externalities and control a brand image,
infantilization is one of the results.

~~~
goto11
How did you get from "the principles of visual display of information" to
"infantilization"? Seriously I don't follow this connection at all.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Your question does not make sense. No one is going “from” principles of
display of information “to” infantilization. That seems like a deliberate
attempt to make it sound complicated by not engaging with what was said and
oversimplifying it.

Your earlier comment states that the bright color usage is to present complex
information clearly. Ok. So you have introduced the idea that in this
situation people are using principles of visual display of information.

Now that we have said that, we must ask why would a company think its branding
or consumer interfaces need to use principles that are intended for other
goals like sharing scientific results or data.

We know company goals are about maximizing profits and hiding negative
externalities, so it’s reasonable to believe a corporation would only adopt
principles of quantitative display of information for branding and consumer
awareness if it serves these purposes.

These purposes are served by oversimplifying the purpose or ethos of the
company, so that the brand identity is not associated with negative
externalities the company creates. This is textbook infantilization. Present
childlike logos, whimsical interfaces with flat colorful designs, simple clean
interfaces.

This hides complexity. In the visual display of quantitative information,
that’s good. In the pushing of a brand identity that’s disingenuous and
manipulative exactly in the way of inviting the audience to believe a
childlike sense of wonder and trustworthiness should be applied.

I think it’s really disingenuous that you would require it to be spelled out
like this.

~~~
goto11
Obviously brand identity is used to present a positive image of a company,
regardless of the particular style. Are intricate "old fashioned" logos (like
often seen on luxury brands or financial institutions) less manipulative? Of
course not.

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tobr
I find the subject very interesting, but I feel like the author is undermining
the argument with every example.

She (?) appears to consider shadows, 3d and other features of skeuomorphic
design to be grown up, while more graphic, iconic flat design is childish.

That is a fairly unique interpretation...

~~~
alxlaz
How is it "fairly unique"? The author cites several examples of designers and
authors contemporary with this change this shift in aesthetics that
characterized these designs as child-like. E.g.:

"Already before the change, the graphic designer Peter Saville had described
Google’s logo as infantile: ‘Everything about it is childlike: the colors
[sic], the typeface, even the name’ (Rawsthorn 2010). The redesign had
intensified this. Chris Moran, at that time The Guardian’s search engine
editorial optimizer, described the new look and feel as a turn towards ‘My
First Search Engine’ (Moran 2010). "

This is hardly a surprising characterization, too. Simple, shadowless shapes
that emphasize colours is _exactly_ what children draw.

~~~
tobr
> The author cites several examples of designers and authors contemporary with
> this change this shift in aesthetics that characterized these designs as
> child-like.

She cites a single person, Chris Moran, from personal communcation. Chris
Moran is not a designer, but an editor.

Peter Saville is quoted in an article from _before_ they removed the drop
shadow and deemphasized the shading in the logo. It is the author who suggests
that reducing the 3-dimensional style of the logo "intensified" its childlike
qualities, and not Peter Saville, who had not seen the redesign when he made
his comment.

~~~
alxlaz
The author's interpretation seems to be that the spirit of "child-like
playfulness" was already the dominating design paradigm at Google, as
characterized by Saville in 2010, and the re-design of the logo was done in
this spirit. It's pretty plausible, given that this was the first time Google
was changing its logo in ten years.

Edit: FWIW, it's not designs that are just flat that the author considers
child-like. It's a design vocabulary that uses flat designs, cartoonish
characters (e.g. Octocat), addressing users in a child-like manner that's seen
as childish. Flatness is just one element of this vocabulary.

~~~
tobr
To be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that cartoons and
vivid color schemes are used more prominently in the digital world, but I
think the discussion of skeuomorphism vs flat design is mostly besides the
point, and is undermining her argument with unconvincing examples.

------
dusted
Interesting to see this put into words and so well formulated. I agree with
the author on many points. We are being talked down to in troves and we seem
to accept it as a group.

I've noticed though, that some people like this, when they use some serious
software, they will complain that the software didn't do X for them, or didn't
remind them of Y, and I've often thought "gee? I'd get fairly offended if it
did! I'm a grown up, I want to do that myself. Why do you want to be treated
like a child?"

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bepvte
This is a good article, but I want to warn the author that the owner of the
.tk gtld takes away its "free" domains and redirects them to advertisers when
it feels doing so would be profitable.

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aww_dang
Allegedly the new democratized Internet allows anyone to publish. Yet, if this
is true and the goal is to empower users, why are there so many walls around
these walled gardens?

The design elements the author observes are only a symptom of the theme of
centralization. The unwashed masses will be given information technology, but
only as much as they need.

Where there are walls, there are gates and gatekeepers. It isn't enough to
have an infantile design. Condescending 'fact checks' from trusted sources and
manually ranked search results are there to keep the children from going
astray. After all, you can't be trusted to examine and digest information
without some parental guidance.

For severe offenders who peddle wrong-think, deplatforming is an option. Of
course those who have been banished from the grace of the walled garden can
always set up their own website. Users need only enter the URL.

Again, we've seen the minimization of the address bar as unfriendly and overly
complex by Chrome. Better to turn everything into a Google search. Google will
help you arrive at the safest destination.

------
AlEinstein
Hmmm... design fashions change over time and are also affected by
technological limitations.

I’m the beginning we had text only terminals. Font designs were about it.

Business machines stayed that way for quite a while.

8 bit machines came along and allowed a rudimentary windowing environment. The
“desktop” metaphor with its “files” was extremely popular and arguably very
successful.

Roll on 16 and 32 bit machines and the windows and Mac “desktop” windowing
systems added some colour but no whimsy.

Macs got some smiles. Good god - it’s the end of grown ups.

iPhones (not iPads as the article asserts) introduced a heavily skeumorphic
interface for two reasons: it was technologically possible on that platform
and it was a design that someone with enough influence had chosen.

No surprises there: a wildly successful product that introduced a new design
idea sparked a new fashion in UI design.

But skeumorphism in web design turned out to be less than great for reasons
presented in the article.

So we retreat from skeumorphism and end up with: flat and colourful. UX (not
just UI) experts discover that fast-loading and simple to comprehend websites
convert to more sales and more profit.

Simple and easy is king on the web for obvious reasons.

If simple and easy looks like infantile there’s an excellent reason: it’s
because they share many things. But not all.

Online gambling and share trading platforms my look infantile because they
want to be appealing but they are fundamentally not infantile.

It’s easy enough to make a point if one only presents facts that support it.
So much is skipped in this article that I feel like it might well be possible
to cherry-pick enough opposing examples to argue exactly the opposite.

~~~
henry_flower
here's an example:

    
    
        https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/curate-a-collection/api-reference/get-collections-entries
    

scroll to the very end of the page, where twitter cheerfully asks "Was this
document helpful?"

why did they choose a happy/sad face, instead of, I don't know, regular
buttons?

who's the indented audience of that page? kids? I think not. It's probably a
30-something year old grumpy, bearded guy, yet...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Same reason that people don't put in a new traffic light and decide to replace
the lights with a door that opens to show a reddish apple, a peach, a bonsai
tree.

------
dangerface
The author seems to have a very narrow view on how adults can / should
communicate, almost a child's view of an adult "Grown ups should be boring and
convoluted"

The British Legion example they give is odd, they have an interactive story
that explains what the British Legion is about on their website. Seems fair
enough to me, but the author has a problem with it? I don't get it.

People like consuming information in story form, should stories be reserved
for kids?

The web is an interactive medium should we not make things interactive unless
they are for kids?

I don't get it.

I see a lot of people with this narrow view point, people who get upset at
south park because it's a cartoon or GTA because it's a video game.

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cryptica
That reminds me of when a new scrum master joined the company and he was
setting up meetings as "games". One time he was throwing around a ball and
only the person who held the ball was allowed to speak. Everyone was looking
at each other like WTF is this... It's clear to me that the scrum master was
training us to become docile office cattle; making us receptive to the
increasingly rigorous daily prodding and milking at the hands of our corporate
masters.

I quit the company not long after.

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mvmvm
An interesting article.

It seems to neglect the implications that UI infantilization has for trust
between the user and what is being used. If the UI is presented as toy-like,
and the user goes into play mode, how does this shape their willingness to
trust the thing being used (and so, the company providing it).

I suspect that engendering trust in the user is a big motivator here these
days.

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amelius
I think the childish design serves another purpose: to make the user feel safe
about how their data is stored and used (whether this is justified or not).

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rijoja
This really strikes a chord with me, so many things just feels patronizing
these days. Is brutalism a reaction to this trend of infantilization?

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bschwindHN
There were a lot of words in small text and no pictures so I didn't read it.

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rezeroed
The google logo.

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cryptica
Something else that freaks me out is when I went to a sports club once and the
trainer was telling people what movement to make every 10 seconds or so... It
just doesn't feel right that I'm paying someone to boss me around. I'm pretty
sure that this kind of activity in the long term makes people more docile and
compliant and is bad for them.

