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> Good UX I believe doesn't mean that the implementation details are hidden, but conveyed in a way that is human-readable. You do not hide the machine from the

> Good UX I believe doesn't mean that the implementation details are hidden, but conveyed in a way that is human-readable. You do not hide the machine from the man, but translate between them in a way that makes neither of them invisible. This is where skeuomorphism used to be king before computers ate the world. In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked, so document readers presented as books. Everyone knew how a tape deck worked, so audio apps presented as tape decks. Floppy disk as save icon, etc Unfortunately, the passage of time is inexorable, and by the late 2000s we had a lot of users who had never actually seen a tape deck/floppy disk. And the whole skeuomorphic project came crashing down.

andyroid 1mo ago
Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. Still, they get it. Some icons outlive their era, some don’t. > In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked I hope that’s still the case!
- thaumasiotes 1mo ago
  > Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. It's hard to call this an example of "skeuomorphism". Those icons were introduced on physical buttons with a certain meaning that everybody had to learn. They have exactly the same meaning on software buttons; the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them. This isn't a case of the software appealing to a visual metaphor that made non-metaphorical sense before the software. It was just as much of a metaphor originally as it is now. You might as well call the word "edit" a skeuomorphism in modern software because past software also had "edit" menus.
  - andyroid 1mo ago
    > the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them Right, that was my point. What does it matter what a diskette used to be? Unless something more obvious to convey storage/saving comes along, it’s hardly “crashing down” anytime soon.
    - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
      The disk icon is skeuomorphic because it's a picture of storage media. That has now gone obsolete and, instead of being skeuomorphic, it's vestigial. Play and pause icons aren't skeuomorphic. They're symbolic. There is no point at which they were a reference to some phenomenon earlier than or other than themselves.
      - inigyou 1mo ago
        Play, rewind and FF icons were referring to the physical movement of tape past the play head, back when you could see the tape. Don't know what pause came from. Maybe there was a pair of felt pads that would press the tape on either side of the head to keep it tensioned while preventing movement?
        swiftcoder 1mo ago
        > Don't know what pause came from The double-pipe pause symbol originates on the video side, where pausing keeps displaying a freeze-frame image, and stopping does not. Audio players had pause long before (which just causes the drive wheel to un-grip the tape), but used a variety of different symbols.
- asddubs 1mo ago
  I guess even with the physical buttons you had to just learn that triangle means play and twin towers means pause
  - jodrellblank 1mo ago
    I guess even without the physical buttons you had to just learn that "play" means "engage the appropriate technical machinery". > "[play] The meaning "to cause (a recording) to reproduce what is on it" is by 1903, probably from the "make music" sense." - https://www.etymonline.com/word/play https://www.etymonline.com/word/play
munch117 1mo ago
Skeuomorphism didn't fail. It feel out of fashion with designers. We should distinguish between skeuomorphic interaction design and skeuomorphic iconography. Attempts at skeuomorphic interaction design did fail badly, I'll give you that. Document readers that expect you to turn the page by pulling at the edge of the page, mimicking a page turn in a physical book, they're terrible. But skeuomorphic iconography works: The more detail you add to an icon, the easier it is to form mental associations with what it does - and that goes even if you don't know the original object that it's based on. Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable.
- thaumasiotes 1mo ago
  > Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable. Obviously you replace it with the three stacked cylinders that symbolize a hard drive. ;D
  - drewstiff 1mo ago
    A solid state hard drive...?
  - yorwba 1mo ago
    Are you sure they don't represent drum memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory
    - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
      I don't see much reason to think so, given that that's still what hard drives look like. I don't have any evidence for or against.
- asddubs 1mo ago
inigyou 1mo ago
How did people learn the UX of a book, or a tape deck? When I was a child, sometimes I was fascinated by the fact the tape deck buttons couldn't be pressed in certain combinations, like the record button that forcibly presses play, and the fact rewind and fastforward would latch until you pressed another button. But I didn't know what half of them did.

andyroid 1mo ago

Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. Still, they get it. Some icons outlive their era, some don’t. > In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked I hope that’s still the case!

thaumasiotes 1mo ago
> Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. It's hard to call this an example of "skeuomorphism". Those icons were introduced on physical buttons with a certain meaning that everybody had to learn. They have exactly the same meaning on software buttons; the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them. This isn't a case of the software appealing to a visual metaphor that made non-metaphorical sense before the software. It was just as much of a metaphor originally as it is now. You might as well call the word "edit" a skeuomorphism in modern software because past software also had "edit" menus.
- andyroid 1mo ago
  > the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them Right, that was my point. What does it matter what a diskette used to be? Unless something more obvious to convey storage/saving comes along, it’s hardly “crashing down” anytime soon.
  - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
    The disk icon is skeuomorphic because it's a picture of storage media. That has now gone obsolete and, instead of being skeuomorphic, it's vestigial. Play and pause icons aren't skeuomorphic. They're symbolic. There is no point at which they were a reference to some phenomenon earlier than or other than themselves.
    - inigyou 1mo ago
      Play, rewind and FF icons were referring to the physical movement of tape past the play head, back when you could see the tape. Don't know what pause came from. Maybe there was a pair of felt pads that would press the tape on either side of the head to keep it tensioned while preventing movement?
      - swiftcoder 1mo ago
        > Don't know what pause came from The double-pipe pause symbol originates on the video side, where pausing keeps displaying a freeze-frame image, and stopping does not. Audio players had pause long before (which just causes the drive wheel to un-grip the tape), but used a variety of different symbols.
asddubs 1mo ago
I guess even with the physical buttons you had to just learn that triangle means play and twin towers means pause
- jodrellblank 1mo ago
  I guess even without the physical buttons you had to just learn that "play" means "engage the appropriate technical machinery". > "[play] The meaning "to cause (a recording) to reproduce what is on it" is by 1903, probably from the "make music" sense." - https://www.etymonline.com/word/play https://www.etymonline.com/word/play

munch117 1mo ago

Skeuomorphism didn't fail. It feel out of fashion with designers. We should distinguish between skeuomorphic interaction design and skeuomorphic iconography. Attempts at skeuomorphic interaction design did fail badly, I'll give you that. Document readers that expect you to turn the page by pulling at the edge of the page, mimicking a page turn in a physical book, they're terrible. But skeuomorphic iconography works: The more detail you add to an icon, the easier it is to form mental associations with what it does - and that goes even if you don't know the original object that it's based on. Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable.

thaumasiotes 1mo ago
> Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable. Obviously you replace it with the three stacked cylinders that symbolize a hard drive. ;D
- drewstiff 1mo ago
  A solid state hard drive...?
- yorwba 1mo ago
  Are you sure they don't represent drum memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory
  - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
    I don't see much reason to think so, given that that's still what hard drives look like. I don't have any evidence for or against.
asddubs 1mo ago

inigyou 1mo ago

How did people learn the UX of a book, or a tape deck? When I was a child, sometimes I was fascinated by the fact the tape deck buttons couldn't be pressed in certain combinations, like the record button that forcibly presses play, and the fact rewind and fastforward would latch until you pressed another button. But I didn't know what half of them did.