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UI design has always been about abstracting away underlying complexity and presenting a virtual wizard to manipulate the underlying code. Would it not be more

by panacea 13y ago

UI design has always been about abstracting away underlying complexity and presenting a virtual wizard to manipulate the underlying code. Would it not be more 'digitally authentic' to present 1's and 0's? 'Flat design' is as much an arbitrary aesthetic as 'decorative design', and whilst I agree it's very pleasing and a sight for overloaded eyes, it's most certainly a trend and not an objective improvement on interfaces usability design.

brudgers 13y ago
To the degree a flat design idiom such as Metro [or whatever it's called] begins to admit text and favor it over icons, a reasoned argument can be made that they are objectively better. It is not just that the pictographic language of icons -, folders, floppy disks, file cabinets, trashcans, glue bottles, scissors, clipboards etc. - is drawn from a context largely irrelevant to large segments computer use today such mobile devices, educational contexts and home uses. Nor is it that elements such as the floppy disk are twenty years obsolescent. The problem with the pictographic language rooted in skeuomorphism is that it lacks a grammar. It has no rules of combination. There is no icon for copy and paste - let alone one for copy from context a and paste in context b. It is not entirely an accident that alphabets have been replacing pictograms for three millennia. They are more flexible. Likewise, the iconography of industrial buttons is rapidly disappearing both as a relevant context from the workplace, and as a human interface. Industrial interfaces are increasingly a screen and a keyboard [a keyboard is our industrial interface to an alphabet]. What is the most useful feature of the iOS interface? It would be hard to argue for anything other than the touch keyboard. It has two important features. Each icon represents a symbol rather than an action. Those symbols have rules of combination which allow the expression of complex abstractions. Your roommate can text "Scrunchie on door." They don't need to download "The Let Someone Know You're Getting Laid App" from the app store. Neither do you. The icon and skeuomorphism will continue to lose ground simply because they are too brittle for general purpose computing. There will be specialized contexts where they persist - just as pictograms are a useful way to describe the way the Grants Mill Road winds over the hill. The sign before two successive turns shows two successive turns. Today, we are in a future where Grants Mill Road has been straitened as it heads down toward the bridge, but some interface designer has not only retained the sign but had it painted to simulate a brushed aluminum finish and shading to simulate an embossed surface illuminated from the upper right. Most skeuomorphism is cutting two inches off the potroast. http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsandpotroast/ http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsan...
- mark_integerdsv 13y ago
  You just explained flat design to me in the most utterly convincing fashion. Seriously, The Penny Has Dropped. What I can also see now is how utterly piss poor most if not all the current flat designs are at even beginning to approximate the effects that you are alluding to. I totally buy your version of FD but I have yet to see it implemented. Do you have any examples perhaps?
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    You might want to check out the essay "Magic Ink" by Bret Victor [1] which explains what the parent comment is alluding to. I do think that he's describing something orthogonal to Flat design though, since you can do the same with skeuomorphic design. [1] http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/ http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/
    - brudgers 13y ago
      Thanks for the link. I'm sure I've never seen it, but perhaps I am expressing the same zeitgeist. The quote I was thinking of is: "Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures." -- Alan J. Perlis, Epigram 39*
  - brudgers 13y ago
    I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this answer, but I think it indicates where I am headed. At one end of human interface design, GNU Emacs. It is so flat as to allow [nearly] complete freedom of expression by the user. The price? The ability to deploy an ad hoc set of abstractions creates the possibility of multiple learning curves and requires a sophisticated mental model to be maintained by the user. At the other end, maybe something like the sliding rheostat on my toaster. It controls one thing directly and proportionally. It persists across machine states [i.e. whenever I am using the toaster I have direct access] and is functional - a given setting produces the same output (in terms of energy, if not of toastiness.) What isn't good flat design is Apple's new calculator - or rather it isn't good redesign despite being executed in a flat idiom. It removes functionality by eliminating mc m+ m- mr. The end result is that for aesthetic effect, Apple has made the calculator less useful. It has reduced the user's ability to express ideas. They have used flat design as a cop out. I am sure that they have data which indicates that most iOS'ers don't even know what mr does, let alone uses it. But the real design question is, what would people use, and the answer is probably something like parenthesis and square root and maybe a doubling function and a halving function and something which multiplies by ten...and notice I've got five buttons that they need to stick in their four column design? See, this is the problem with skeuomorphism. Apple still wants to make something that looks like a pocket calculator, instead of crating an interface to a general computing device. What would a really useful phone calculator look like? Javascript or scheme [but probably not Python because of its semantic reliance on whitespace]. It wouldn't be Babbage's calculating engine as implemented by IBM in the form of 1930's adding machine. It would look more like Emacs than my toaster. I've been thinking that the real future is between, User Interface design and Human Interface design. Is the future of our interfaces going to allow expression or only interaction within a loop dictated by the machine? Keyboard Cat can be trained to flip switches, but cannot express a musical composition. I look at the Apple calculator and wonder, where is the Integral key?
diminish 13y ago
ui design progresses similar to fashion, with escapes and refutations from the immediate popularized trends of itself, in order to bring back one of the forgotten previous trends. but each new trend indeed contains both the immediate and far pasts. flat ui design appears to replace skeuomorphism, but it is indeed a skeuomorphism of the early computer interfaces instead of a blunt skeuomorphism of earlier non-computing objects.
ZitchDog 13y ago
All design is arbitrary, sure, but I think the current trend is to embrace the underlying primitives graphics cards give us, rather than hiding and deforming them into real world objects. These primitives are absolutely arbitrary, but I think think is where the idea of 'digital authenticity' comes from - being true to the hardware.
jmilloy 13y ago
The user's goal is rarely to manipulate 1's and 0's. Any design that mistakes the tool for the goal will be inauthentic (skeumorphic calculators being an example). Inasmuch as a design helps accomplish the ultimate goal, it is not arbitrary.
mbesto 13y ago
Exactly. I'm beginning to get sick of the debate about design. Design has one purpose - make things easier to use. For example, rounded corners in digital design aren't just for a skeuomorphism trend, but rather a trick to reduce cognitive cost.[0] Let's stop pretending it's anything more than that. Note - One of the principles of design is the aesthetic-usability effect[1]. I would argue this is the main reason why we continue to debate trends and their effectiveness around usability. [0] - http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/26/realizations-of-rounded-rectangles.html http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/26/realizations-of-rounde... [1] - http://courses.washington.edu/art479/media/universal_principles1.pdf http://courses.washington.edu/art479/media/universal_princip...
- porker 13y ago
  Thanks for link 0, I'd never seen that before.

by panacea 13y ago

brudgers 13y ago

To the degree a flat design idiom such as Metro [or whatever it's called] begins to admit text and favor it over icons, a reasoned argument can be made that they are objectively better. It is not just that the pictographic language of icons -, folders, floppy disks, file cabinets, trashcans, glue bottles, scissors, clipboards etc. - is drawn from a context largely irrelevant to large segments computer use today such mobile devices, educational contexts and home uses. Nor is it that elements such as the floppy disk are twenty years obsolescent. The problem with the pictographic language rooted in skeuomorphism is that it lacks a grammar. It has no rules of combination. There is no icon for copy and paste - let alone one for copy from context a and paste in context b. It is not entirely an accident that alphabets have been replacing pictograms for three millennia. They are more flexible. Likewise, the iconography of industrial buttons is rapidly disappearing both as a relevant context from the workplace, and as a human interface. Industrial interfaces are increasingly a screen and a keyboard [a keyboard is our industrial interface to an alphabet]. What is the most useful feature of the iOS interface? It would be hard to argue for anything other than the touch keyboard. It has two important features. Each icon represents a symbol rather than an action. Those symbols have rules of combination which allow the expression of complex abstractions. Your roommate can text "Scrunchie on door." They don't need to download "The Let Someone Know You're Getting Laid App" from the app store. Neither do you. The icon and skeuomorphism will continue to lose ground simply because they are too brittle for general purpose computing. There will be specialized contexts where they persist - just as pictograms are a useful way to describe the way the Grants Mill Road winds over the hill. The sign before two successive turns shows two successive turns. Today, we are in a future where Grants Mill Road has been straitened as it heads down toward the bridge, but some interface designer has not only retained the sign but had it painted to simulate a brushed aluminum finish and shading to simulate an embossed surface illuminated from the upper right. Most skeuomorphism is cutting two inches off the potroast. http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsandpotroast/ http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/conventionalwisdomassumptionsan...

mark_integerdsv 13y ago
You just explained flat design to me in the most utterly convincing fashion. Seriously, The Penny Has Dropped. What I can also see now is how utterly piss poor most if not all the current flat designs are at even beginning to approximate the effects that you are alluding to. I totally buy your version of FD but I have yet to see it implemented. Do you have any examples perhaps?
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  You might want to check out the essay "Magic Ink" by Bret Victor [1] which explains what the parent comment is alluding to. I do think that he's describing something orthogonal to Flat design though, since you can do the same with skeuomorphic design. [1] http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/ http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/
  - brudgers 13y ago
    Thanks for the link. I'm sure I've never seen it, but perhaps I am expressing the same zeitgeist. The quote I was thinking of is: "Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures." -- Alan J. Perlis, Epigram 39*
- brudgers 13y ago
  I'm not sure I'm satisfied with this answer, but I think it indicates where I am headed. At one end of human interface design, GNU Emacs. It is so flat as to allow [nearly] complete freedom of expression by the user. The price? The ability to deploy an ad hoc set of abstractions creates the possibility of multiple learning curves and requires a sophisticated mental model to be maintained by the user. At the other end, maybe something like the sliding rheostat on my toaster. It controls one thing directly and proportionally. It persists across machine states [i.e. whenever I am using the toaster I have direct access] and is functional - a given setting produces the same output (in terms of energy, if not of toastiness.) What isn't good flat design is Apple's new calculator - or rather it isn't good redesign despite being executed in a flat idiom. It removes functionality by eliminating mc m+ m- mr. The end result is that for aesthetic effect, Apple has made the calculator less useful. It has reduced the user's ability to express ideas. They have used flat design as a cop out. I am sure that they have data which indicates that most iOS'ers don't even know what mr does, let alone uses it. But the real design question is, what would people use, and the answer is probably something like parenthesis and square root and maybe a doubling function and a halving function and something which multiplies by ten...and notice I've got five buttons that they need to stick in their four column design? See, this is the problem with skeuomorphism. Apple still wants to make something that looks like a pocket calculator, instead of crating an interface to a general computing device. What would a really useful phone calculator look like? Javascript or scheme [but probably not Python because of its semantic reliance on whitespace]. It wouldn't be Babbage's calculating engine as implemented by IBM in the form of 1930's adding machine. It would look more like Emacs than my toaster. I've been thinking that the real future is between, User Interface design and Human Interface design. Is the future of our interfaces going to allow expression or only interaction within a loop dictated by the machine? Keyboard Cat can be trained to flip switches, but cannot express a musical composition. I look at the Apple calculator and wonder, where is the Integral key?

diminish 13y ago

ui design progresses similar to fashion, with escapes and refutations from the immediate popularized trends of itself, in order to bring back one of the forgotten previous trends. but each new trend indeed contains both the immediate and far pasts. flat ui design appears to replace skeuomorphism, but it is indeed a skeuomorphism of the early computer interfaces instead of a blunt skeuomorphism of earlier non-computing objects.

ZitchDog 13y ago

All design is arbitrary, sure, but I think the current trend is to embrace the underlying primitives graphics cards give us, rather than hiding and deforming them into real world objects. These primitives are absolutely arbitrary, but I think think is where the idea of 'digital authenticity' comes from - being true to the hardware.

jmilloy 13y ago

The user's goal is rarely to manipulate 1's and 0's. Any design that mistakes the tool for the goal will be inauthentic (skeumorphic calculators being an example). Inasmuch as a design helps accomplish the ultimate goal, it is not arbitrary.

mbesto 13y ago

Exactly. I'm beginning to get sick of the debate about design. Design has one purpose - make things easier to use. For example, rounded corners in digital design aren't just for a skeuomorphism trend, but rather a trick to reduce cognitive cost.[0] Let's stop pretending it's anything more than that. Note - One of the principles of design is the aesthetic-usability effect[1]. I would argue this is the main reason why we continue to debate trends and their effectiveness around usability. [0] - http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/26/realizations-of-rounded-rectangles.html http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2009/7/26/realizations-of-rounde... [1] - http://courses.washington.edu/art479/media/universal_principles1.pdf http://courses.washington.edu/art479/media/universal_princip...

porker 13y ago
Thanks for link 0, I'd never seen that before.