I agree aesthetically, but watching my daughter trying to learn interfaces with skeuomorphic design has been illuminating. Trying to explain to her that the sav

I agree aesthetically, but watching my daughter trying to learn interfaces with skeuomorphic design has been illuminating. Trying to explain to her that the save button is a blue rectangle with some gray stuff on the bottom for some reason (she has no idea what a “floppy disk” is) or the symbol for an inbox being a physical inbox, or contacts as a Rolodex or address book is starting completely from scratch. All of these things make intrinsic sense to me, because I learned those concepts when those physical objects existed in a meaningful form, but to her they’re completely meaningless. A desk calendar for a calendar interface would be just as opaque. So perhaps we need to reconsider what is or is not used for inspiration. An app that shows a drawing pad and tools is immediacy intuitive even to her, but when the corollaries are gone, where then do we go for the same effect?