One of the big factors in modern design is reducing cognitive load by reducing visual distractions. In other words, one goal of simple, clean, non-skeuomorphic

One of the big factors in modern design is reducing cognitive load by reducing visual distractions. In other words, one goal of simple, clean, non-skeuomorphic designs is to make it easier to understand the interface. I’d be interested to see studies comparing good variants of skeuomorphic and minimal designs. I wonder if the actual problem is that minimal designs are easier to get wrong. Skeuomorphic designs might be easier to get right just because you’re almost “cheating”: you don’t have to decide on the best way to represent X digitally. You just copy/paste X from the real world as best you can, and people will get it because they already know the IRL interface. As many users are very comfortable with touch interfaces now than 15 years ago, that’s less important.