The common element in design trends is to minimize analogies that were previously made really obvious because users already know them by now. This has resulted

The common element in design trends is to minimize analogies that were previously made really obvious because users already know them by now. This has resulted in a constant iterative design that's led to the flattening and hiding of every major UI element. It's not because of malice or anything, it's just that for designers who already know and are familiar with the system, it's redundant to keep displaying things users already know. In general, it's fine for users that are already familiar with the system. If you've been using macOS since it was Mac OS X (or even earlier), and you used every version from then to now, then the system is probably totally obvious. The catch is that we stopped "teaching" users things from scratch. So there's a ton of users who feel like the current user interfaces are totally obvious, while users who are just now entering an ecosystem find themselves completely lost. I've advocated for this a lot privately, but I think it needs to be said more prominently: interfaces need to grow with the users on an individual level. Maybe you want to reach some kind of eden where no control is highlighted and the entire interface is flat -- so be it. Just make sure that you start users off with a very 3D interface with obvious affordances before you start changing things up. Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but it's basically the only way to teach a brand new user how to use a computer system from scratch. I help my mom and grandparents out all the time when it comes to technology. They aren't dumb. They just don't follow every design change, take every OS update, or buy new devices every year. They know how to close windows, resize windows, and deal with windows. But when the iPad ships things like three and four finger gesture systems that have no obvious way to discover them, of course they look clueless. Similarly, when a button doesn't look like a button (but it did in three design languages ago and has just slowly removed all of the button-like features), they don't know that it's a button. Again, it's not their fault: they just haven't followed every iteration of the design language to know why or how things have changed. The key UI element that Superhuman gets right that everyone talks about is its ridiculous obsession with teaching keyboard shortcuts. Every time you click a button instead of using a shortcut, the confirmation tells you "yes, that worked, but also here's the keyboard shortcut to do it faster next time." Maybe something like this would help? Whatever the case may be, users who don't know things make the industry look inscrutable and unfriendly. Heck, it makes people leave platforms because they think they're unfriendly, when they've actually just been optimizing away all of the affordances.