What is it with UI design slowly creeping to the extremes? Before "The Great Flattening" there was a series of prominent, increasingly skeuomorphic UI designs,

What is it with UI design slowly creeping to the extremes? Before "The Great Flattening" there was a series of prominent, increasingly skeuomorphic UI designs, culminating (in my mind) with the ridiculous Calendar app in OSX Lion[1]. Around this time, there seemed to be a growing sense that maybe things had gone too far. But instead of just backing off the skeumorphism a little we got a complete reversal and a trend towards increasingly flat and abstract UIs. Now most buttons have no affordances at all and we get decisions like this to remove useful visual cues for no apparent reason. What's seems to be missing here is any sense of moderation or restraint. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-lion-review/15 https://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107...