16 ms·

On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015)

61 points by henry_flower 7y ago

cryptica 7y ago
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.
aww_dang 7y ago
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.
dusted 7y ago
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?"
goto11 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
bschwindHN 7y ago
There were a lot of words in small text and no pictures so I didn't read it.
mvmvm 7y ago
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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rezeroed 7y ago
The google logo.
amelius 7y ago
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).
dangerface 7y ago
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.
rijoja 7y ago
This really strikes a chord with me, so many things just feels patronizing these days. Is brutalism a reaction to this trend of infantilization?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fiblye 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
  - 7y ago
AlEinstein 7y ago
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.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  I don't think skeuomorphic is what you think it is. From wikipedia: (1) > A skeuomorph (/ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ-/) is a derivative object that retains nonfunctional ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were inherent to the original. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar. A digital skeuomorph GUI emulates real-world objects and attributes to provide a recognizable and sensible frame of reference to an end-user. For instance, a digital calculator app visually resembles a real-life calculator, the use of the "play" and "rewind" buttons in a media player, the "folder" or "document" icons in a file manager, the use of an envelope to represent an e-mail,... Now, literally none of that has to do with the style used to represent those symbols. You could draw a "flat" envelope icon using only black and white colors in the famous Ligne Clair style and it would still be skeuomorphic design. (2) Apple didn't invent skeuomorphic design when it developed and released the iPhone. That's a misconception. Skeuomorphic design dates back to the 60's and 70's when companies such as Xerox built the first GUI's. Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" given in 1968 arguably laid the foundations which would be incorporated by Apple and Microsoft in their products (3) ... and then there's the Web. Which is literally a connected mesh of distinct pages implementing the ideas of hypertext. At one point, people started to treat static Web pages as indepedent functional user interfaces. Because there are particular business benefits to doing that over building native applications (i.e. the whole SaaS thing, cutting out distribution of code, etc.). And so, here we are in this hot mess where you have people re-inventing the wheel building web applications, SPA's, using all kinds of nuts 'n bolts frontend frameworks while browser vendors and organizations like the W3 are trying to catch up with API's. Meanwhile, static websites are still very much a thing and designers and (frontend) developers are doing that too. There are as many visual languages as there are people building things to put on the Web. And so, everything ends up bleeding into one another, influencing one another,... Some things coalesce and you see visual elements being picked up and repeated all over the place. Like, that time when Bootstrap was all the rage and it was like half the Web consisted of hero images and jumbotrons. Or that regrettable, yet luckily short-lived trend of using a background video in your header image. At this point, it seems like bright colors and "flat-drawn" "Kurzgesagt" style are in vogue. To be sure, this will pass too in due time. To me, it seems strange to lament that the colors or the loss of skeuomorphs are turning an interface "infantile". It's not. That's just barking up the wrong tree. What makes an interface infantile is designing and implementing a language without considering the end user. It's one thing to consider the individual affordances of an interface - colors, fonts, skeuomorph elements - it's another thing to consider the interface as a whole and concluding that it's just badly implemented. Much like a joke you have to explain before your audience gets it. Many designers lose themselves in the former, arguing the merits and downsides of "flat design" without giving the latter enough thought. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire (3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
bepvte 7y ago
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.
tobr 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
  - watwut 7y ago
    > Simple, shadowless shapes that emphasize colours is exactly what children draw. It is also what children like to look at. They dont appreciate elaborate realism or shadows. They prefer simple shape, uniform color and no shade.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Having worked over a decade in creating artistic works with children (and adults) I don't believe that to be true any more than to say "adults like Caravaggio, children like Mondrian". Children draw basic forms and use basic colours because they don't yet understand how to interpret the world in a complex way. They abstract, and draw their abstraction - tables are square, therefore the image on the page needs to be square to be a table. Untrained adults do the same.
      - 7y ago
cryptica 7y ago
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.

61 points by henry_flower 7y ago

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.

aww_dang 7y ago

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.

dusted 7y ago

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?"

goto11 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.

bschwindHN 7y ago

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

mvmvm 7y ago

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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rezeroed 7y ago

The google logo.

amelius 7y ago

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).

dangerface 7y ago

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.

rijoja 7y ago

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

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fiblye 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
- 7y ago

AlEinstein 7y ago

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.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
I don't think skeuomorphic is what you think it is. From wikipedia: (1) > A skeuomorph (/ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ-/) is a derivative object that retains nonfunctional ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were inherent to the original. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar. A digital skeuomorph GUI emulates real-world objects and attributes to provide a recognizable and sensible frame of reference to an end-user. For instance, a digital calculator app visually resembles a real-life calculator, the use of the "play" and "rewind" buttons in a media player, the "folder" or "document" icons in a file manager, the use of an envelope to represent an e-mail,... Now, literally none of that has to do with the style used to represent those symbols. You could draw a "flat" envelope icon using only black and white colors in the famous Ligne Clair style and it would still be skeuomorphic design. (2) Apple didn't invent skeuomorphic design when it developed and released the iPhone. That's a misconception. Skeuomorphic design dates back to the 60's and 70's when companies such as Xerox built the first GUI's. Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" given in 1968 arguably laid the foundations which would be incorporated by Apple and Microsoft in their products (3) ... and then there's the Web. Which is literally a connected mesh of distinct pages implementing the ideas of hypertext. At one point, people started to treat static Web pages as indepedent functional user interfaces. Because there are particular business benefits to doing that over building native applications (i.e. the whole SaaS thing, cutting out distribution of code, etc.). And so, here we are in this hot mess where you have people re-inventing the wheel building web applications, SPA's, using all kinds of nuts 'n bolts frontend frameworks while browser vendors and organizations like the W3 are trying to catch up with API's. Meanwhile, static websites are still very much a thing and designers and (frontend) developers are doing that too. There are as many visual languages as there are people building things to put on the Web. And so, everything ends up bleeding into one another, influencing one another,... Some things coalesce and you see visual elements being picked up and repeated all over the place. Like, that time when Bootstrap was all the rage and it was like half the Web consisted of hero images and jumbotrons. Or that regrettable, yet luckily short-lived trend of using a background video in your header image. At this point, it seems like bright colors and "flat-drawn" "Kurzgesagt" style are in vogue. To be sure, this will pass too in due time. To me, it seems strange to lament that the colors or the loss of skeuomorphs are turning an interface "infantile". It's not. That's just barking up the wrong tree. What makes an interface infantile is designing and implementing a language without considering the end user. It's one thing to consider the individual affordances of an interface - colors, fonts, skeuomorph elements - it's another thing to consider the interface as a whole and concluding that it's just badly implemented. Much like a joke you have to explain before your audience gets it. Many designers lose themselves in the former, arguing the merits and downsides of "flat design" without giving the latter enough thought. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire (3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

bepvte 7y ago

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.

tobr 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
- watwut 7y ago
  > Simple, shadowless shapes that emphasize colours is exactly what children draw. It is also what children like to look at. They dont appreciate elaborate realism or shadows. They prefer simple shape, uniform color and no shade.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Having worked over a decade in creating artistic works with children (and adults) I don't believe that to be true any more than to say "adults like Caravaggio, children like Mondrian". Children draw basic forms and use basic colours because they don't yet understand how to interpret the world in a complex way. They abstract, and draw their abstraction - tables are square, therefore the image on the page needs to be square to be a table. Untrained adults do the same.
    - 7y ago

cryptica 7y ago

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.