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This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to

by 56k 10y ago

This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. The old icon for Pages? I don't even know what that is, I'm not into calligraphy. The only thing I'd agree with is hiding UI controls. Apple has been making its apps less usable to make them look pretty, hiding important elements in an attempt to declutter the interface. I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll every piece of the interface to check if there's something more to see, while before you could tell just by looking at scrollbars. Of course, there are settings to go back to the old behavior for both my examples, so power users are fine, but I fail to see how these moves improve things for regular users. I also disagree that Steve Job's death was detrimental to macOS's UI. He was the one who kept Apple looking outdated with his obsession for skeuomorphism, I'm glad they went for a flatter look right after his death. Of course, everyone's taste is different, but I still think this is a bad article.

phoboslab 10y ago
> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Case in point – telling a young kid how to answer a call on the iPhone: press the green banana button.
- larsiusprime 10y ago
  Speaking of, "In defense of the floppy disk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg Surprising and excellent talk.
  - ralfd 10y ago
    I was surprised about the two big carpets on stage. I wonder why they did that (or conversely no one else does that).
    - robotmlg 10y ago
      In the sphere of "talks," I know TED puts a big round carpet on stage that you're supposed to stay on while speaking. More generally for "carpets on stage," I've seen some smaller music venues and studios with carpets to make a nicer area for performers and to absorb unwanted sound (in the case of studios)
    - function_seven 10y ago
      My best guess is an acoustical reason. The floor might reflect the speaker's voice in ways that muddle it for the audience, so those carpets are placed in front of them to kill that reflection?
    - waiseristy 10y ago
      Perhaps glare? They are getting hit pretty hard by that overhead, might have washed out the projector if they were left to reflect off the floor.
    - jremsikjr 10y ago
      I'm the organizer of this conference. The stage is very flexible and has many opportunities for trap doors etc. It's honestly just a little creaky. We've seen other benefits like folks have mentioned. It draws speakers out from behind the podium. The theater we use is popular and we often didn't have the stage setup until 2AM the night before a 9AM start time. As organizers/hosts we couldn't be up that late. Sometimes you come in and the stagehands at the venue read the notes about putting down the carpet and they decided to put two carpets instead of one. And the carpets are secured with gaffers tape. And you don't really see an issue with it so you leave it be. shrug Stuff happens. Lis' talk is excellent though.
- SlashmanX 10y ago
  > Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. The old icon also had a photo on it though which made it clear it was the Photo's app, even if you don't know what the other thing is in the icon at all.
  - phoboslab 10y ago
    I know a few people who still print photos, but most of my friends never do. So a photo on a screen would maybe be a better metaphor if you need one. It's a really difficult problem. So many of the things we do today are done on a rectangle with a screen. That doesn't make a good icon. Maybe icons are obsolete altogether?
    - saurik 10y ago
      > Maybe icons are obsolete altogether? And yet, people do grow up knowing that the green banana button means "phone" and the notched rectangle means "save", and often never even question "is there a real world analog for this icon?". It isn't that icons are obsolete: it is that we are graduating from a language of pictograms to a language of ideograms, yet for some reason we have large numbers of people telling us that that is somehow a horrible thing to do.
      - kenbellows 10y ago
        I don't think people are arguing against ideograms; in fact, I think the argument is very much in favor of ideograms, but simultaneously that icons like the floppy disk save icon are not very good ones. From what I've seen, there seems to be somewhat of a trend away from object-base metaphors and toward action-based metaphors, at least when it comes to action icons like the save icon. Instead of a picture of a storage device, modern or extinct, many applications now use icons intended to represent the act of storing something digitally, either using a an arrow directed down toward a rectangular shape meant to represent local media or using an arrow directed up into a cloud to represent cloud storage. (For an example of these, see Glyphicon's `glyphicon-save` and `glyphicon-cloud-upload` icons[1].) One explicit advantage that these sorts of icons have is that they allow for a nice symmetry between Save and Open icons and upload/download icons (Glyphicon is again a good example; see glyphicon-open and glyphicon-cloud-download). This ties into another, perhaps more arguable advantage, a blurring between local and remote save actions. As applications become increasingly web-based, device-independent, and portable, it makes more sense to me to intentionally separate the "save" action from it's destination; I don't care so much where or how my data is saved, I only care that it's save and that I can get it back later. I'd love to hear responses to my thoughts here; they sort of developed as I wrote the comment, so they're rather fresh at the moment. 1: http://bootstrapdocs.com/v3.1.0/docs/components/ http://bootstrapdocs.com/v3.1.0/docs/components/
- glenndebacker 10y ago
  skeumorphism has notting to do with clear use of iconography. Even for a young kid a meaningless icon is still meaningless... I don't follow all the points in the article but I can't count the times that I overlooked photo's for example.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Personally I liked the old way when there was a crappy low resolution icon, with text underneath telling you what it was. In most interfaces since the text disappeared it takes me a while to work out what at least some of the icons are.
- glenndebacker 10y ago
  skeumorphism has notting to do with clear use of iconography. Even for a young kid a meaningless icon is still meaningless... I don't follow all the points in the article but I can't count the times that I overlooked photo's for example.
- jl6 10y ago
  Check out the icon used for Speed Camera on UK road signs. It still has bellows! Doesn't seem to cause a problem.
  - Someone 10y ago
    That may be intentional. Road signs typically see lots of usability research (do drivers recognize this when driving past it at 50 mph in fog?) before they are deployed, and a modern camera is just a box. I once read that one country decided to keep the steam train on their road signs based on such results because it makes it easier to distinguish it from other signs. Edit: https://www.quora.com/Who-designs-the-icons-on-the-UK-road-signs https://www.quora.com/Who-designs-the-icons-on-the-UK-road-s... claims this was indeed intentional.
- verisimilidude 10y ago
  > Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Does that really matter? A perfect case in point was the old Pages icon in OS X: a quill pen in front of a cup of ink. Do you know any person who has ever used a pen like that in real life? Have you ever even seen a pen like that? I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that icon, and correctly inferred that the app was for writing things. Furthermore, the use of ye olde imagery in that icon was playful, like the app was inviting you to an older time when writing was simpler and you could just focus on your words. The app was aiming for that kind of simplicity too. The use of way outdated imagery in the icon did not prevent Apple from conveying deep meaning to a modern audience. If anything, it enhanced the point they were trying to make with that icon.
  - kenbellows 10y ago
    I'd argue that the quill pen was a special case. As you point out, it was an intentional anachronism to communicate a certain point. This was not the case with, e.g., the floppy disk, the notepad, the contacts book, etc. Everyone knew what the quill pen was because it was still frequently seen in portrayals of the olden days when it was used; even today, portrayals of Victorian England in Doctor Who or Revolutionary America in Hamilton inevitably show a few quill pens in use. But the reason people recognized floppy disks, contact books, and notepads was because they were still in active use at the time. You point out that while the quill pen was long outdated when it was first used, "everyone still recognized the contents of that icon", but that's exactly the problem that the GP and GGP are pointing out: more and more of the old skeuomorphic icons reference real world icons that younger users (and indeed some older users) actually don't recognize. Notepads, sure, we've still got those; contact books, eh, you'll see them once in a while, but tbh when I see a bare "contact book" icon without a label it occasionally takes me a second to figure out what I'm looking at; floppy disks, as has been argued to death, are entirely a thing of the past, with the exception of old systems and archives still in use in dusty university basements. Young users today essentially just know the image of a floppy disc as "the save button" without any skeuomorphic rationale backing it up. The skeuomorphic link between computers and the physical objects we use is is constantly degrading, to the point that using skeuo icons can sometimes actually inhibit the user experience and slow the user down while they try to figure out what they're looking at. We have common patterns emerging with no or very little connection to the real world; a great example would the "hamburger" menu button. If there's any metaphor there in the user's mind, it's to the row items that will appear when you click on it, not to anything physical, yet it's perfectly comprehensible to anyone who's been using digital devices for any length of time.
- SkyMarshal 10y ago
  >Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. It makes sense for older people who remember them, who also are the folks who are more likely to have trouble understanding and interacting with computers. If your target audience was just young kids with neuroelasticity and hipsters who live this stuff, you could deploy a Brainfuck UI/UX and not only would they get it, they'd love it.
- tinus_hn 10y ago
  > Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. Actually a problem with this icon is that it is misleading. The iPhoto app is not a camera app. It is a photo library with some minor editing capabilities. You can't use it for creating photos which is what the icon suggests. A better icon would be a photo album or a stack of photos but that's hard to fit in an icon.
raverbashing 10y ago
I agree in parts with you The Photos icon "metaphor" doesn't work for me, for example
- 56k 10y ago
  You know, Google Chrome's icon doesn't depict a webpage, but I know I can click on it and use it to browse the Web.
  - Angostura 10y ago
    The difference with icons for Web browsers is that there really is no real-world equivalent of a Web browser, so producing icon metaphors is not an issue.
    - 56k 10y ago
      A globe.
      - verinus 10y ago
        for a maps app, but inet?
        thedaemon 10y ago
        Obviously it should be a cat video, or Facebook.
    - shaurz 10y ago
      A spider web, obviously ;-)
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Yes (neither does Opera or Mosaic have anything to do with Web browsing), however: - Chrome is a brand, and people have been educated to expect that from it (same with Ps and Ai - "everybody" knows what's that) - Photos is an utility, it does not exist outside of Mac OS X. Like the fuel icon in a car gauge, it is supposed to be discoverable
EliRivers 10y ago
"The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years." I disagree strongly. It is now more needed than ever. 40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing. Now, they're everywhere, and people interact with them every day. It's very common to have to interact with a computer we have never interacted with before, and the need to give visual clues to the user is far more important than ever before. It's also very common now for people to simply reach out and grab new software; a well-designed interface that uses visual clues and cues to help people achieve their goals is much more important now than the days when people would actually sit down with the manual to work out how to operate their new piece of software. I am routinely unable to immediately answer a phone that isn't mine because none of the pictures drawn on the screen are obviously about answering a phone.
- 56k 10y ago
  The point is that an icon that shows a stylized phone handle is better in 2016 than a skeuomorphic depiction of a whole rotary phone.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing. You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past? Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Compared to regular people (e.g. office workers) from 40 years ago that just used DOS and some word processor or POS or accounting program, there's just no comparison.
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past? Most of them don't know a thing about computers. It's a magic box with a small selection of shiny buttons on. They use it for passive media consumption. Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Well, they clearly forget by the time they're twenty. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/10/millennials-arent-as-tech-savvy-as-people-think.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/10/millennials-arent-as-tech-sav... http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/04/millennials-tech-dependent-but-not-necessarily-tech-savvy/ http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/04/millennials-tech-...
Angostura 10y ago
> The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. I disagree strongly. If you were new to a machine, is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation? No. The new icon for Pages is fine by the way,
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mmustapic 10y ago
  > is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation Yes, it says "Photos" below it
  - gimboland 10y ago
    Cool, so we don't need icons at all!
    - jrockway 10y ago
      Indeed, icons are unnecessary. They're there to fill space with colors, which people like. Full = good. Color = happy. good + happy = sales.
      - 56k 10y ago
        It's quicker to glance at icons and spot the app right away than not read each and every item in a list.
        ridgeguy 10y ago
        YMMV. I'm far faster at picking text labels from a list than picking the icons. I see the text label as an icon. The text "icon" is simple and unchanging. I can pick it out much faster than funny pictograms that change with each OS version.
24gttghh 10y ago
What's wrong with keeping a little history alive?
lloeki 10y ago
> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. You have no idea how much this change makes the URL field palatable for regular Joe. Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: <lock icon>facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand. > Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll every piece of the interface to check if there's something more to see, while before you could tell just by looking at scrollbars. No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars.
- zaphoyd 10y ago
  > No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars. Never knew this, really handy, thanks! Any idea if it is possible on a magic mouse? or only the trackpads?
  - tacon 10y ago
    And there you have demonstrated the entire thesis of the original article.
    - stouset 10y ago
      Except it's infinitely easier to slightly drag your hands on the trackpad your fingers are already on, than to glance over at the side of a window, identify a scroll bar, and glance back to the content you were viewing.
  - eyelidlessness 10y ago
    For an extra hint, when a view loads with scrollable content (or becomes scrollable as content is added), it tends to flash the scrollbar briefly.
- menelaus35 10y ago
  Also, Safari don't hide scrollbars when you don't have a touchpad.
analog31 10y ago
The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. My first computer had a text display and a manual, in 1983. I had no trouble teaching my college house mates how to use it for word-processing. Everything else that I did with the computer involved text symbols such as GOTO. ;-) Today, when I use most software, beyond a few familiar icons like the floppy disc symbol, I have to hover the cursor over each icon to figure out what it does. When I learn keyboard shortcuts for those icons, I use them, to reduce eyestrain and wrist fatigue. A great feature would be a single button that reveals all of the icon descriptors at once.
uptown 10y ago
> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. There's an option to show the full URL under Preferences -> Advanced -> Show full web address
- zer0defex 10y ago
  And I turn it on EVERY time I setup a new OSX install - I want to bloody well know for damn sure whether I'm on HTTP or HTTPS when I'm on websites and some stupid little lock icon ain't gonna cut it when I'm passing credit card and banking info over the net. A problem further exacerbated by the SSL variants (extended-validation SSL certs causing green text showing company name to appear beside the lock icon - bankofamerica.com compared to news.ycombinator.com for example). This article is dead on the money.
010a 10y ago
Every single example he gave looked, in my opinion, better the new way. This entire article is just a vast list of opinions about their interface design disguised behind some inappropriate grand declaration of truth.
- collyw 10y ago
  Looked better, but less obvious what it does.
- UIZealot 10y ago
  Not to me. Flat is ugly. Different for difference's sake. Designers' need to make their mark. Microsoft's desperate attempt to find any competitive edge against the iPhone. When Apple designer got suckered into going flat, they instantly made Apple a follower, instead of the leader they were in design, leaving no doubt that there's no one with a taste left at Apple after Steve died and Scott Forstal was forced out. iOS 7 was the saddest thing to happen to Apple in its entire history, imnsho.
Alphasite_ 10y ago
From what I remember the address bar change was for a very good reason to do with protecting the user from phishing etc.
leesalminen 10y ago
> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. This can be changed on MacOS from Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show full website address.
- glennsl 10y ago
  But even then the protocol is hidden, so still not the full website address. Much better though. Thanks for the tip!
anonbanker 10y ago
skeumorphism was Scott Forestall's thing. Jobs just agreed with it. Once Jobs was dead, Forestall didn't last long in Apple. Officially, he left due to the "maps" debacle, but in reality, Cook was gunning for him for quite a while.
usrusr 10y ago
Verbal languages are full of grotesquely outdated vocabulary and that is perfectly fine. The word starts life as some resolveable derivation until it eventually gets detached from that, becoming pure convention. How many people do you know who are called engineers because they routinely operate actual trebuchets? I really don't see why visual languages should not evolve along similar patterns. Visual communication would hardly get easier if we switched the existing symbols over to black, rectangular screens for all the tasks that have recently been consolidated in the smartphone as a single, multifunctional tool.
- tomtheelder 10y ago
  The process that you are describing in language is incredibly far from being ideal, it's just a reality because language is truly distributed. It would be far better if we did not overload words, leading to a period of ambiguous transition before the word finally changes definition entirely. Design language is still distributed, but not nearly to the same degree. If Apple decides that an old skeuomorphic logo is ambiguous, or not understood by younger user, or some other compliant like that they can change it and the new one will enter the design vocabulary very quickly. Often these are helpful. A little logo with just a person is _much_ clearer to me than a contact book. Over time it would be best to shed all the strange associations with real world objects in favor of a design language that actually describes what the software does, instead of making a poor analogy to a real world object.
beachstartup 10y ago
> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was little er, what? i'm 32. i and everyone i knew used contact books until i was probably age 20, especially in offices.
soheil 10y ago
Some part of me thinks, they changed everything to a shade of grey so that when they inject rainbow colors into icons they stand out more. I also think new icons are too abstract and make no sense whatsoever, I miss the Photos icon every single time I try to open the app. It's all about rainbows.
petilon 10y ago
You are missing the point of mimicking real world objects. It doesn't matter that some people may never have seen an actual contact book. Nobody has seen a real time machine either. But you can imagine one in your mind and how it might work. This is helpful. Donald Norman's POET book explains that people make mental models of your program in any case. If you aid creation of that mental model then your program will become more intuitive and be less intimidating. Even 'digital natives' live in the physical world. We start learning how it works before we ever touch a computer, and even the most dedicated nerd spends more time interacting with physical objects than with digital interfaces. It doesn't take additional learning to know that an object casting a shadow on another is in front of that other, for example. Failing to leverage that existing knowledge is tantamount to shutting down whole swathes of users' brains. Read more: http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-of-allegorical-design http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-...
return0 10y ago
You are not making a case against skeuomorphism, but against icons in general. We either must resort to using words, or standardized pictograms like road signs.
lisper 10y ago
IMHO the problem with the current OS X design is not the lack of skeuomorphism but the lack of discoverability. Many controls are hidden unless you hover over them, and there's no indication of where the active hover areas are. You just have to know, or get lucky. Buttons are often indistinguishable from plain text. Editable text is often (perhaps even usually) indistinguishable from non-editable text. Useful information is often obscured behind fancy graphics. Visual effects are included simply because the technology exists, not because it actually adds any value. What is the point of being able to see a blurry image of what is underneath a drop-down menu?
bonaldi 10y ago
> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was little. This just seems weird to me. Contacts books were replaced in a very limited way by PDAs for early adopters, but it wasn't until smartphones and their easy address books that they really started to die off. So post-2008, really. Were you not in professional settings until your late 20s? Still be surprised if you are both 35 and genuinely unaware of what an address book is.
- jshevek 10y ago
  Not the parent, but I agree with them: Many tech savvy people abandoned contact books decades ago. Contact books serve two needs - long term storage and quick reference to frequently used numbers. Computers have provided the long term storage, and various other facilities provided the quick reference, even before smart phones: human memory, print outs, sticky notes, pdas, basic cell phones. In the 90s I knew people who'd set their browser homepage to a 'quick reference info' page on their server which included frequently needed numbers. The only tech savvy people I've known to use contact books in the last twenty years seemed a bit eccentric to me.
  - tjl 10y ago
    My parents had a contact book when I was little (back in the 80s), but they eventually went to a system of cards standing up in a tray separated by last letter. It made it easy to pull it out when you wanted to make a call. They now have a mixed system where their most used phone numbers are in their iPhone contacts, but they have still have that tray for everybody else. I had a contacts section in my DayTimer back in the 90s, but I've used a contacts program ever since I switched to using a computer-based calendar.
hvmonk 10y ago
Re: safari hiding urls, click on Preference->Advanced-> And, check the box for "Smart Search Field" to see the complete url. It should be checked by default and I found it annoying too.
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
The problem with trying to get rid of skeuomorphism is that skeuomorphism is built on the idea that human beings use single tools for single tasks. A pen to write, and only write. An old school phone to call, and only to call. A clock to tell time, and only to tell time. A camera to take pictures, and only to take pictures. For this reason, skeuomorphism works coz we associate the icon with the task. Hence message icons are envelopes, coz envelopes hold messages and nothing else, more or less. We've seen erase icons on software that look like pencil erasers. The camera icon? Of course it's a camera. And so on. Enter the smartphone. The smartphone does everything. It makes calls, takes pictures, receives messages, tells time, shows TV shows (we'll have to stop calling them TV shows, won't we?), etc. Since icons resemble the tools used to carry out given tasks, what are we to do when one tool does all tasks? That's the problem for skeuomorphism. What are we to do for icons when one tool does everything? Create icons depicting people doing those different things, a bit like emoji? A selfie icon for the camera, a person talking on the phone for voice functions, a message bubbles icon that mimics message interfaces for messages? I don't know. I guess a language to replace the skeuomorphism language will emerge.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Or we could just stick with the old design language, which nobody is confused by.
city41 10y ago
hiding the full URL is considered a security feature, to help people know what site they are actually on. Chrome has considered adopting the same feature for the same reason.
dkonofalski 10y ago
To be fair, one of the big reasons that Safari decided to hide the full address bar was to minimize phishing attempts that took users to scamsite.com/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever where you'd only see "om/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever" in the address bar and people would be fooled into thinking they were at the right site. Now, scammers have to try harder and come up with things like bankofamerica.com.scamsite.com and most people seem to pick up on that just fine. It was a very purposeful decision that, I think, worked out for most people. You can click in the bar to get the full address and, most of the time, you're going to be copying it anyways.
masswerk 10y ago
On the other hand, we call this thing a computer, while only the fewest use it to actually compute something. Or, we call that other thing a camera, while it's some years since this was actually a room, you could enter. Such historical traces may be found in visual language too, e.g., we commonly use arrows to indicate directions and relations, while they aren't found in real life anymore (at least, the fewest use to shoot with them nowadays). These historically grown metaphors make lot of sense, where it comes to how we relate to objects. The word "camera" isn't only short and distinctive, it's also evoking a sense of the history of the medium, and it may provide some emotional bonding to the object which may hardly be achieved by a "multi-image" – while the latter may actually sound a bit fancier in a 1970s SF-movie. I think, there are some valid points made by the article, and, besides, on an empirical level, I'm losing time in the newer, uniformed MacOS GUIs, too. (Not to speak of Miller's magical number 7 or 3.7 bits working memory, which are still valid in the age of flat design. But this is an other story.)

by 56k 10y ago

phoboslab 10y ago

> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Case in point – telling a young kid how to answer a call on the iPhone: press the green banana button.

larsiusprime 10y ago
Speaking of, "In defense of the floppy disk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg Surprising and excellent talk.
- ralfd 10y ago
  I was surprised about the two big carpets on stage. I wonder why they did that (or conversely no one else does that).
  - robotmlg 10y ago
    In the sphere of "talks," I know TED puts a big round carpet on stage that you're supposed to stay on while speaking. More generally for "carpets on stage," I've seen some smaller music venues and studios with carpets to make a nicer area for performers and to absorb unwanted sound (in the case of studios)
  - function_seven 10y ago
    My best guess is an acoustical reason. The floor might reflect the speaker's voice in ways that muddle it for the audience, so those carpets are placed in front of them to kill that reflection?
  - waiseristy 10y ago
    Perhaps glare? They are getting hit pretty hard by that overhead, might have washed out the projector if they were left to reflect off the floor.
  - jremsikjr 10y ago
    I'm the organizer of this conference. The stage is very flexible and has many opportunities for trap doors etc. It's honestly just a little creaky. We've seen other benefits like folks have mentioned. It draws speakers out from behind the podium. The theater we use is popular and we often didn't have the stage setup until 2AM the night before a 9AM start time. As organizers/hosts we couldn't be up that late. Sometimes you come in and the stagehands at the venue read the notes about putting down the carpet and they decided to put two carpets instead of one. And the carpets are secured with gaffers tape. And you don't really see an issue with it so you leave it be. shrug Stuff happens. Lis' talk is excellent though.
SlashmanX 10y ago
> Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. The old icon also had a photo on it though which made it clear it was the Photo's app, even if you don't know what the other thing is in the icon at all.
- phoboslab 10y ago
  I know a few people who still print photos, but most of my friends never do. So a photo on a screen would maybe be a better metaphor if you need one. It's a really difficult problem. So many of the things we do today are done on a rectangle with a screen. That doesn't make a good icon. Maybe icons are obsolete altogether?
  - saurik 10y ago
    > Maybe icons are obsolete altogether? And yet, people do grow up knowing that the green banana button means "phone" and the notched rectangle means "save", and often never even question "is there a real world analog for this icon?". It isn't that icons are obsolete: it is that we are graduating from a language of pictograms to a language of ideograms, yet for some reason we have large numbers of people telling us that that is somehow a horrible thing to do.
    - kenbellows 10y ago
      I don't think people are arguing against ideograms; in fact, I think the argument is very much in favor of ideograms, but simultaneously that icons like the floppy disk save icon are not very good ones. From what I've seen, there seems to be somewhat of a trend away from object-base metaphors and toward action-based metaphors, at least when it comes to action icons like the save icon. Instead of a picture of a storage device, modern or extinct, many applications now use icons intended to represent the act of storing something digitally, either using a an arrow directed down toward a rectangular shape meant to represent local media or using an arrow directed up into a cloud to represent cloud storage. (For an example of these, see Glyphicon's `glyphicon-save` and `glyphicon-cloud-upload` icons[1].) One explicit advantage that these sorts of icons have is that they allow for a nice symmetry between Save and Open icons and upload/download icons (Glyphicon is again a good example; see glyphicon-open and glyphicon-cloud-download). This ties into another, perhaps more arguable advantage, a blurring between local and remote save actions. As applications become increasingly web-based, device-independent, and portable, it makes more sense to me to intentionally separate the "save" action from it's destination; I don't care so much where or how my data is saved, I only care that it's save and that I can get it back later. I'd love to hear responses to my thoughts here; they sort of developed as I wrote the comment, so they're rather fresh at the moment. 1: http://bootstrapdocs.com/v3.1.0/docs/components/ http://bootstrapdocs.com/v3.1.0/docs/components/
glenndebacker 10y ago
skeumorphism has notting to do with clear use of iconography. Even for a young kid a meaningless icon is still meaningless... I don't follow all the points in the article but I can't count the times that I overlooked photo's for example.
- collyw 10y ago
  Personally I liked the old way when there was a crappy low resolution icon, with text underneath telling you what it was. In most interfaces since the text disappeared it takes me a while to work out what at least some of the icons are.
glenndebacker 10y ago
skeumorphism has notting to do with clear use of iconography. Even for a young kid a meaningless icon is still meaningless... I don't follow all the points in the article but I can't count the times that I overlooked photo's for example.
jl6 10y ago
Check out the icon used for Speed Camera on UK road signs. It still has bellows! Doesn't seem to cause a problem.
- Someone 10y ago
  That may be intentional. Road signs typically see lots of usability research (do drivers recognize this when driving past it at 50 mph in fog?) before they are deployed, and a modern camera is just a box. I once read that one country decided to keep the steam train on their road signs based on such results because it makes it easier to distinguish it from other signs. Edit: https://www.quora.com/Who-designs-the-icons-on-the-UK-road-signs https://www.quora.com/Who-designs-the-icons-on-the-UK-road-s... claims this was indeed intentional.
verisimilidude 10y ago
> Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Does that really matter? A perfect case in point was the old Pages icon in OS X: a quill pen in front of a cup of ink. Do you know any person who has ever used a pen like that in real life? Have you ever even seen a pen like that? I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that icon, and correctly inferred that the app was for writing things. Furthermore, the use of ye olde imagery in that icon was playful, like the app was inviting you to an older time when writing was simpler and you could just focus on your words. The app was aiming for that kind of simplicity too. The use of way outdated imagery in the icon did not prevent Apple from conveying deep meaning to a modern audience. If anything, it enhanced the point they were trying to make with that icon.
- kenbellows 10y ago
  I'd argue that the quill pen was a special case. As you point out, it was an intentional anachronism to communicate a certain point. This was not the case with, e.g., the floppy disk, the notepad, the contacts book, etc. Everyone knew what the quill pen was because it was still frequently seen in portrayals of the olden days when it was used; even today, portrayals of Victorian England in Doctor Who or Revolutionary America in Hamilton inevitably show a few quill pens in use. But the reason people recognized floppy disks, contact books, and notepads was because they were still in active use at the time. You point out that while the quill pen was long outdated when it was first used, "everyone still recognized the contents of that icon", but that's exactly the problem that the GP and GGP are pointing out: more and more of the old skeuomorphic icons reference real world icons that younger users (and indeed some older users) actually don't recognize. Notepads, sure, we've still got those; contact books, eh, you'll see them once in a while, but tbh when I see a bare "contact book" icon without a label it occasionally takes me a second to figure out what I'm looking at; floppy disks, as has been argued to death, are entirely a thing of the past, with the exception of old systems and archives still in use in dusty university basements. Young users today essentially just know the image of a floppy disc as "the save button" without any skeuomorphic rationale backing it up. The skeuomorphic link between computers and the physical objects we use is is constantly degrading, to the point that using skeuo icons can sometimes actually inhibit the user experience and slow the user down while they try to figure out what they're looking at. We have common patterns emerging with no or very little connection to the real world; a great example would the "hamburger" menu button. If there's any metaphor there in the user's mind, it's to the row items that will appear when you click on it, not to anything physical, yet it's perfectly comprehensible to anyone who's been using digital devices for any length of time.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
>Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. It makes sense for older people who remember them, who also are the folks who are more likely to have trouble understanding and interacting with computers. If your target audience was just young kids with neuroelasticity and hipsters who live this stuff, you could deploy a Brainfuck UI/UX and not only would they get it, they'd love it.
tinus_hn 10y ago
> Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. Actually a problem with this icon is that it is misleading. The iPhoto app is not a camera app. It is a photo library with some minor editing capabilities. You can't use it for creating photos which is what the icon suggests. A better icon would be a photo album or a stack of photos but that's hard to fit in an icon.

raverbashing 10y ago

I agree in parts with you The Photos icon "metaphor" doesn't work for me, for example

56k 10y ago
You know, Google Chrome's icon doesn't depict a webpage, but I know I can click on it and use it to browse the Web.
- Angostura 10y ago
  The difference with icons for Web browsers is that there really is no real-world equivalent of a Web browser, so producing icon metaphors is not an issue.
  - 56k 10y ago
    A globe.
    - verinus 10y ago
      for a maps app, but inet?
      - thedaemon 10y ago
        Obviously it should be a cat video, or Facebook.
  - shaurz 10y ago
    A spider web, obviously ;-)
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Yes (neither does Opera or Mosaic have anything to do with Web browsing), however: - Chrome is a brand, and people have been educated to expect that from it (same with Ps and Ai - "everybody" knows what's that) - Photos is an utility, it does not exist outside of Mac OS X. Like the fuel icon in a car gauge, it is supposed to be discoverable

EliRivers 10y ago

"The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years." I disagree strongly. It is now more needed than ever. 40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing. Now, they're everywhere, and people interact with them every day. It's very common to have to interact with a computer we have never interacted with before, and the need to give visual clues to the user is far more important than ever before. It's also very common now for people to simply reach out and grab new software; a well-designed interface that uses visual clues and cues to help people achieve their goals is much more important now than the days when people would actually sit down with the manual to work out how to operate their new piece of software. I am routinely unable to immediately answer a phone that isn't mine because none of the pictures drawn on the screen are obviously about answering a phone.

56k 10y ago
The point is that an icon that shows a stylized phone handle is better in 2016 than a skeuomorphic depiction of a whole rotary phone.
coldtea 10y ago
>40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing. You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past? Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Compared to regular people (e.g. office workers) from 40 years ago that just used DOS and some word processor or POS or accounting program, there's just no comparison.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past? Most of them don't know a thing about computers. It's a magic box with a small selection of shiny buttons on. They use it for passive media consumption. Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Well, they clearly forget by the time they're twenty. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/10/millennials-arent-as-tech-savvy-as-people-think.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/10/millennials-arent-as-tech-sav... http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/04/millennials-tech-dependent-but-not-necessarily-tech-savvy/ http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/04/millennials-tech-...

Angostura 10y ago

> The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. I disagree strongly. If you were new to a machine, is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation? No. The new icon for Pages is fine by the way,

deleted 10y ago
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mmustapic 10y ago
> is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation Yes, it says "Photos" below it
- gimboland 10y ago
  Cool, so we don't need icons at all!
  - jrockway 10y ago
    Indeed, icons are unnecessary. They're there to fill space with colors, which people like. Full = good. Color = happy. good + happy = sales.
    - 56k 10y ago
      It's quicker to glance at icons and spot the app right away than not read each and every item in a list.
      - ridgeguy 10y ago
        YMMV. I'm far faster at picking text labels from a list than picking the icons. I see the text label as an icon. The text "icon" is simple and unchanging. I can pick it out much faster than funny pictograms that change with each OS version.

24gttghh 10y ago

What's wrong with keeping a little history alive?

lloeki 10y ago

> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. You have no idea how much this change makes the URL field palatable for regular Joe. Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: <lock icon>facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand. > Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll every piece of the interface to check if there's something more to see, while before you could tell just by looking at scrollbars. No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars.

zaphoyd 10y ago
> No need to scroll, you can check just by resting fingers on the touchpad (except in Chrome) and look at the scrollbars. Never knew this, really handy, thanks! Any idea if it is possible on a magic mouse? or only the trackpads?
- tacon 10y ago
  And there you have demonstrated the entire thesis of the original article.
  - stouset 10y ago
    Except it's infinitely easier to slightly drag your hands on the trackpad your fingers are already on, than to glance over at the side of a window, identify a scroll bar, and glance back to the content you were viewing.
- eyelidlessness 10y ago
  For an extra hint, when a view loads with scrollable content (or becomes scrollable as content is added), it tends to flash the scrollbar briefly.
menelaus35 10y ago
Also, Safari don't hide scrollbars when you don't have a touchpad.

analog31 10y ago

The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. My first computer had a text display and a manual, in 1983. I had no trouble teaching my college house mates how to use it for word-processing. Everything else that I did with the computer involved text symbols such as GOTO. ;-) Today, when I use most software, beyond a few familiar icons like the floppy disc symbol, I have to hover the cursor over each icon to figure out what it does. When I learn keyboard shortcuts for those icons, I use them, to reduce eyestrain and wrist fatigue. A great feature would be a single button that reveals all of the icon descriptors at once.

uptown 10y ago

> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. There's an option to show the full URL under Preferences -> Advanced -> Show full web address

zer0defex 10y ago
And I turn it on EVERY time I setup a new OSX install - I want to bloody well know for damn sure whether I'm on HTTP or HTTPS when I'm on websites and some stupid little lock icon ain't gonna cut it when I'm passing credit card and banking info over the net. A problem further exacerbated by the SSL variants (extended-validation SSL certs causing green text showing company name to appear beside the lock icon - bankofamerica.com compared to news.ycombinator.com for example). This article is dead on the money.

010a 10y ago

Every single example he gave looked, in my opinion, better the new way. This entire article is just a vast list of opinions about their interface design disguised behind some inappropriate grand declaration of truth.

collyw 10y ago
Looked better, but less obvious what it does.
UIZealot 10y ago
Not to me. Flat is ugly. Different for difference's sake. Designers' need to make their mark. Microsoft's desperate attempt to find any competitive edge against the iPhone. When Apple designer got suckered into going flat, they instantly made Apple a follower, instead of the leader they were in design, leaving no doubt that there's no one with a taste left at Apple after Steve died and Scott Forstal was forced out. iOS 7 was the saddest thing to happen to Apple in its entire history, imnsho.

Alphasite_ 10y ago

From what I remember the address bar change was for a very good reason to do with protecting the user from phishing etc.

leesalminen 10y ago

> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. This can be changed on MacOS from Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show full website address.

glennsl 10y ago
But even then the protocol is hidden, so still not the full website address. Much better though. Thanks for the tip!

anonbanker 10y ago

skeumorphism was Scott Forestall's thing. Jobs just agreed with it. Once Jobs was dead, Forestall didn't last long in Apple. Officially, he left due to the "maps" debacle, but in reality, Cook was gunning for him for quite a while.

usrusr 10y ago

Verbal languages are full of grotesquely outdated vocabulary and that is perfectly fine. The word starts life as some resolveable derivation until it eventually gets detached from that, becoming pure convention. How many people do you know who are called engineers because they routinely operate actual trebuchets? I really don't see why visual languages should not evolve along similar patterns. Visual communication would hardly get easier if we switched the existing symbols over to black, rectangular screens for all the tasks that have recently been consolidated in the smartphone as a single, multifunctional tool.

tomtheelder 10y ago
The process that you are describing in language is incredibly far from being ideal, it's just a reality because language is truly distributed. It would be far better if we did not overload words, leading to a period of ambiguous transition before the word finally changes definition entirely. Design language is still distributed, but not nearly to the same degree. If Apple decides that an old skeuomorphic logo is ambiguous, or not understood by younger user, or some other compliant like that they can change it and the new one will enter the design vocabulary very quickly. Often these are helpful. A little logo with just a person is _much_ clearer to me than a contact book. Over time it would be best to shed all the strange associations with real world objects in favor of a design language that actually describes what the software does, instead of making a poor analogy to a real world object.

beachstartup 10y ago

> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was little er, what? i'm 32. i and everyone i knew used contact books until i was probably age 20, especially in offices.

soheil 10y ago

Some part of me thinks, they changed everything to a shade of grey so that when they inject rainbow colors into icons they stand out more. I also think new icons are too abstract and make no sense whatsoever, I miss the Photos icon every single time I try to open the app. It's all about rainbows.

petilon 10y ago

You are missing the point of mimicking real world objects. It doesn't matter that some people may never have seen an actual contact book. Nobody has seen a real time machine either. But you can imagine one in your mind and how it might work. This is helpful. Donald Norman's POET book explains that people make mental models of your program in any case. If you aid creation of that mental model then your program will become more intuitive and be less intimidating. Even 'digital natives' live in the physical world. We start learning how it works before we ever touch a computer, and even the most dedicated nerd spends more time interacting with physical objects than with digital interfaces. It doesn't take additional learning to know that an object casting a shadow on another is in front of that other, for example. Failing to leverage that existing knowledge is tantamount to shutting down whole swathes of users' brains. Read more: http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-of-allegorical-design http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-...

return0 10y ago

You are not making a case against skeuomorphism, but against icons in general. We either must resort to using words, or standardized pictograms like road signs.

lisper 10y ago

IMHO the problem with the current OS X design is not the lack of skeuomorphism but the lack of discoverability. Many controls are hidden unless you hover over them, and there's no indication of where the active hover areas are. You just have to know, or get lucky. Buttons are often indistinguishable from plain text. Editable text is often (perhaps even usually) indistinguishable from non-editable text. Useful information is often obscured behind fancy graphics. Visual effects are included simply because the technology exists, not because it actually adds any value. What is the point of being able to see a blurry image of what is underneath a drop-down menu?

bonaldi 10y ago

> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was little. This just seems weird to me. Contacts books were replaced in a very limited way by PDAs for early adopters, but it wasn't until smartphones and their easy address books that they really started to die off. So post-2008, really. Were you not in professional settings until your late 20s? Still be surprised if you are both 35 and genuinely unaware of what an address book is.

jshevek 10y ago
Not the parent, but I agree with them: Many tech savvy people abandoned contact books decades ago. Contact books serve two needs - long term storage and quick reference to frequently used numbers. Computers have provided the long term storage, and various other facilities provided the quick reference, even before smart phones: human memory, print outs, sticky notes, pdas, basic cell phones. In the 90s I knew people who'd set their browser homepage to a 'quick reference info' page on their server which included frequently needed numbers. The only tech savvy people I've known to use contact books in the last twenty years seemed a bit eccentric to me.
- tjl 10y ago
  My parents had a contact book when I was little (back in the 80s), but they eventually went to a system of cards standing up in a tray separated by last letter. It made it easy to pull it out when you wanted to make a call. They now have a mixed system where their most used phone numbers are in their iPhone contacts, but they have still have that tray for everybody else. I had a contacts section in my DayTimer back in the 90s, but I've used a contacts program ever since I switched to using a computer-based calendar.

hvmonk 10y ago

Re: safari hiding urls, click on Preference->Advanced-> And, check the box for "Smart Search Field" to see the complete url. It should be checked by default and I found it annoying too.

DavidWanjiru 10y ago

The problem with trying to get rid of skeuomorphism is that skeuomorphism is built on the idea that human beings use single tools for single tasks. A pen to write, and only write. An old school phone to call, and only to call. A clock to tell time, and only to tell time. A camera to take pictures, and only to take pictures. For this reason, skeuomorphism works coz we associate the icon with the task. Hence message icons are envelopes, coz envelopes hold messages and nothing else, more or less. We've seen erase icons on software that look like pencil erasers. The camera icon? Of course it's a camera. And so on. Enter the smartphone. The smartphone does everything. It makes calls, takes pictures, receives messages, tells time, shows TV shows (we'll have to stop calling them TV shows, won't we?), etc. Since icons resemble the tools used to carry out given tasks, what are we to do when one tool does all tasks? That's the problem for skeuomorphism. What are we to do for icons when one tool does everything? Create icons depicting people doing those different things, a bit like emoji? A selfie icon for the camera, a person talking on the phone for voice functions, a message bubbles icon that mimics message interfaces for messages? I don't know. I guess a language to replace the skeuomorphism language will emerge.

emodendroket 10y ago
Or we could just stick with the old design language, which nobody is confused by.

city41 10y ago

hiding the full URL is considered a security feature, to help people know what site they are actually on. Chrome has considered adopting the same feature for the same reason.

dkonofalski 10y ago

To be fair, one of the big reasons that Safari decided to hide the full address bar was to minimize phishing attempts that took users to scamsite.com/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever where you'd only see "om/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever" in the address bar and people would be fooled into thinking they were at the right site. Now, scammers have to try harder and come up with things like bankofamerica.com.scamsite.com and most people seem to pick up on that just fine. It was a very purposeful decision that, I think, worked out for most people. You can click in the bar to get the full address and, most of the time, you're going to be copying it anyways.

masswerk 10y ago

On the other hand, we call this thing a computer, while only the fewest use it to actually compute something. Or, we call that other thing a camera, while it's some years since this was actually a room, you could enter. Such historical traces may be found in visual language too, e.g., we commonly use arrows to indicate directions and relations, while they aren't found in real life anymore (at least, the fewest use to shoot with them nowadays). These historically grown metaphors make lot of sense, where it comes to how we relate to objects. The word "camera" isn't only short and distinctive, it's also evoking a sense of the history of the medium, and it may provide some emotional bonding to the object which may hardly be achieved by a "multi-image" – while the latter may actually sound a bit fancier in a 1970s SF-movie. I think, there are some valid points made by the article, and, besides, on an empirical level, I'm losing time in the newer, uniformed MacOS GUIs, too. (Not to speak of Miller's magical number 7 or 3.7 bits working memory, which are still valid in the age of flat design. But this is an other story.)