What skeuomorphism is (and isn't)

http://sachagreif.com/what-skeuomorphism-is-and-isnt/

by sgdesign • 14 years ago

103 42 14 years ago

I think this distinction is important, just so people are using the same vocabulary.

But genuine question: is there another word we can use which means semi-photorealistic leather, stitching, physically textured, etc. interface? Usually with all that being largely gratuitous?

In other words, if we're not bashing skeuomorphism, what is the name of the thing we're meaning to bash instead? :)

_frog• 14 years ago

Tacky works pretty well.

Tyrannosaurs2• 14 years ago

For the leather in Calendar yes but not for the linen effects which are subtle and relatively nice yet fall into the same category.

I think most people are agreed that the issue with Calendar is more about it being bad rather than a specific design rationale or style.

pirateking• 14 years ago

Nostalgia.

jlgreco• 14 years ago

Nostalgia seems like it better describes skeuomorphism than fake-skeuomorphism.

A notebook application that looks like a notebook is "nostalgic". Weather applications that look like my pants are not.

melloclello3• 14 years ago

Baroque?

golden_apples• 14 years ago

That's a good word for it.

There was a short-lived trend in design a few years back that used the term ”maximalism” to mean something similar - covering every surface, layering metaphors on top of metaphors, mixing traditions from all over.

kingsley_202• 14 years ago

Baroque is characterised by the ornamentation of every detail. Which is why I suggest the term "ornamentation".

gbog• 14 years ago

Kitsch

kingsley_202• 14 years ago

Ornamentation?

mbq• 14 years ago

Pseudoskeuomorphism, easy.

tylerhowarth2• 14 years ago

I think this issue is beyond defining. Skeuomorphism has been generalized to cover most designs that include faux textures or design elements.

When it comes to Apple's design decisions, they absolutely have no idea what they are doing with all of these disgusting flourishes. see this article: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670760/will-apples-tacky-softwa...

sgdesign2• 14 years ago

That was a good article, thanks.

But I guess I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt: although I personally agree that some of their designs are tacky and over the top, I trust them enough to assume they have their reasons.

Ygg2• 14 years ago

Interesting reading. If this quote from link above is true:

"Skeuomorphism is a catch-all term for when objects retain ornamental elements of past, derivative iterations--elements that are no longer necessary to the current objects’ functions."

Then Sacha Grief, might be wrong. The example he given, used blue leather and white buttons and he derided the example as not skeuomorphism. But in that example only a part of it was the ornament (i.e. blue leather). I could be wrong but what does ornamental take into account? Whole thing or just a part?

I mean rest of his story does make sense, but it's still an invalid example.

EDIT: It might be a nitpick, but I like to know what is and isn't skeuomorphic.

tylerhowarth2• 14 years ago

I too give them the benefit of the doubt. I think its just a phase, which they will hopefully move past quickly.

mistercow• 14 years ago

>Apple knows what they’re doing

They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, really don't anymore.

sgdesign2• 14 years ago

Honestly, I understand not agreeing with the direction they're going in, but that doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. Maybe we're just not the target market for all these apps?

Steko• 14 years ago

Bingo, all the piling on here is really just the chauvanism of hackerdom. Hey I don't need this texture, ergo this texture is stupid and useless.

Meanwhile as the post points out, these textures and animations are important comforts, cues and guides for many users, especially newer users.

codeka• 14 years ago

Who is the target market, though? I'd say the vast majority of new users of OS X are people coming from Windows, not people who have never used a computer their whole life. Does the leather texture really help those people?

jopt• 14 years ago

The latest iCal stepped back the ugly. I think they have an okay idea what they're doing.

batista• 14 years ago

Really? Because you don't like the aesthetics? Well, I for one like the new iCal.

It's mostly faux-design sense (everybody is a snobish designer these days and everybody is for "minimalism") than anything really problematic with an app that has some faux-leather as its background.

jsdalton• 14 years ago

Thankfully they've fixed this in Mountain Lion, but the "page turning" effect in the Lion version of iCal was for me an example of infuriatingly poor design. Want to scoot ahead eight months? Please wait one second between each month while we execute this fancy page turning animation!

It's design decisions like this, which really ramped up in Lion, that I think are fueling the present-day reaction against skeumorphism.

KirinDave2• 14 years ago

Everyone isn't moving towards "minimal" designs because they're a bunch of me-too-tools. They're moving towards minimalistic designs because that is the most pragmatic approach. In a world where apps have to routinely launch on 3 very different platforms; in a world where we are artificially constrained in even our minimal layout capabilities by old browsers; in a world where page size is becoming a premium again, skeuomorphism has an increasing cost.

And while graphic designers love it, UX designers often find the expectations raised by the metaphor conflict with the actual implementation. A great example of this is book apps, in which the notion of "pages" and "bookmarking" is presented in a familiar visual style, but the actual experience is radically different.

majormajor• 14 years ago

"It helps tell these apps apart (“Find My Friends? Oh, right, the one with leather!”).

It makes the apps more approachable (“Hmm, this looks just like my real-world address book, it can’t be much harder to use”)."

Honest question: are these two things really issues? I've just never encountered the level of non-technical user that would be lost but for those particular touches. And I know there's a huge amount of selection bias in there, but I think usability/distinctiveness can be achieved without kitschy textures or creating your own set of UI elements.

If anyone has more links on it actually helping new users, I'd love to see them. The reasons just sound like post-hoc rationalizations to me. Especially because realistic/skeuomorphic/what-have-you skins have gone in and out of fashion over the years and I don't recall complaints that, say, iTunes looked less "just like" a CD player than the old System 7.5 CD player app.

(And honestly, in the few minutes I played with the Lion Address Book out of curiosity, I felt like I was missing something big about how it worked. That one in particular seems like a case of things getting more confusing because it presents a physical metaphor that doesn't really fit the digital version.)

RickHull• 14 years ago

> I've just never encountered the level of non-technical user that would be lost but for those particular touches.

They say that economics happens at the margins. In other words, changing the price of a sandwich from $3.40 to $3.25 isn't going to make you buy 10% more of them. But in the population of consumers, there is a chunk that are on the margin that will be totally converted, and that results in a 10% volume increase in aggregate.

Something similar may be going on here. Make a design tradeoff (using leather) in order to get a 10% user benefit, even if 50% of your users get no benefit.

jarek• 14 years ago

> are these two things really issues?

Of course. Real people don't say "Calendar app? Oh, right, the one with the calendar sheet," or "Address book? Oh, right, the one with the people's contact info in it!". This is why we need on-screen leather.

bergie• 14 years ago

It makes the apps more approachable (“Hmm, this looks just like my real-world address book, it can’t be much harder to use”)."

That was the argument behind Microsoft's acclaimed skeuomorphic Post-PC platform, Bob:

http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=3 http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=4

iOS hasn't quite gone as far as introduce Clippy, but of course Siri could be taken to that direction...

lmm• 14 years ago

I was amazed when I showed my dad and one of his friends the kindle app on my transformer.

"Can I turn the page?"

"Sure, tap the margin"

taps the margin, and the kindle app does its slide animation to go to the next page

"That's not what I want! I want to see the page turning like on my ipad!"

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

> are these two things really issues?

Yes - every app is light grey on grey on dark grey in OS X (Mountain) Lion. The theming of some apps makes it easier to spot them in Mission Control.

Though I'd rather have 10.6 back where windows weren't all gray to begin with.

melloclello3• 14 years ago

> It helps tell these apps apart

I would agree, variation is very important in this respect - however, this skeuo-leather-morphic design is but one small niche in the set of all possible variations. Have Apple exhausted their own potential? Is the only way for them to further refine their software really for them to turn away from minimalism and add more and more revolting kitsch?

If this is true, why does it have to be this particular style of kitsch?

manmal• 14 years ago

I don't remember Jobs praising minimalism, but rather beauty. It's all throughout his biography, he was a big fan of beautiful, functional design. I think skeuomorph interfaces are beautiful if done right - yes, they might be more beautiful than functional, but what if Apple values beauty over functionality? I remember reading about an Apple engineer working hard to get rounded rectangles to draw in their early OS without affecting overall performance, and Jobs pushing him further and further until it was done. Rounded rectangles are so not functional.

rangibaby• 14 years ago

Sure. I think Garageband, with it's skeuomorphic knobs and the like is a good example of what you are talking about.

On the other hand, Lion's iCal is absolutely hideous. No beauty there.

melloclello3• 14 years ago

Rounded rectangles are totally functional if you consider that you're going for the most minimalist interface compatible with the human visual cortex. Sharp corners can cause all kinds of ringing artifacts in certain situations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_grid_illusion

camo• 14 years ago

maybe skeuomorphism should be added to the list of "Shit apple fanatics say"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFhjDX-DUew

cormullion• 14 years ago

In the 1990s, there was criticism of older Mac OS software because there was no indication of the current application's name in the single menu bar. (This is pre-MacOS X, which placed the application's name next to the Apple icon.) In iOS today, there's similarly no indication of the current app. I think the idea of the individual design for iOS apps is that it's easier to tell at a glance which app you're in.

podperson• 14 years ago

There are plenty of skeumorphic apps that users love. E.g. the Korg drum machine app that looks and works like a Korg drum machine.

What people are actually objecting to is apps that have gratuitous visual borrowings that do nothing but consume screen real estate and occupy storage space. In most cases, Apple's "skeumorphic" apps don't even waste screen real estate (if you rip all the textures out, they look like normal Cocoa/Touch apps) so it's just a question of "do you the texture looks nice" (in my case: no) and "is it worth the megabytes of junk you now have on your hard disk" (definitely no if you answered "no" to the previous question).

Frankly, if Apple stripped the visuals to the bone in Mac OS X in the interest of making the best use of the limited space on SSDs, I'd be very happy.

ChelseaT• 14 years ago

Here is a unique take on skeuomorphism - It mentions that if Apple doesn't eventually steer away, younger users may feel a disconnection with iOS...

http://blog.apptopia.com/discussing-mobile-design-pt-1-apple...

Thoughts?

What skeuomorphism is (and isn't)

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