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> 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 Contac

> 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.
- prance 10y ago
  Sums it up. Most interesting is that more teenagers tend to know what an icon is used for on the computer than what it originally represented. Which makes total sense because they grew up with these icons. So it might make more sense to ask "to what degree are people used to this icon?" rather than "how many know where this icon came from?". In this sense, changing established icons (like I would argue the photo app's one) doesn't seem such a good idea.
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.

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.
prance 10y ago
Sums it up. Most interesting is that more teenagers tend to know what an icon is used for on the computer than what it originally represented. Which makes total sense because they grew up with these icons. So it might make more sense to ask "to what degree are people used to this icon?" rather than "how many know where this icon came from?". In this sense, changing established icons (like I would argue the photo app's one) doesn't seem such a good idea.

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

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.