The Skeuomorphism Nobody Talks About [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q-G9x315-g

by zdw • 2 months ago

39 11 2 months ago

Skeuomorph• 2 months ago

Skeuomorphs are cultural algorithms, borrowing functional forms of the past to make the new objects of similar function more comfortably familiar. The ribs on the handle of a knife are skeuomorphic of the vines wrapped on the hand end of a sharpened stone.

Apple's felt or leather served no functional purpose. They are faux realism, not skeuomorphism. Similarly, a digitally simulated voltmeter is not skeuomorphic, it is not a new object made familiar by borrowing a past form. It's just a digital replica.

Meanwhile, buttons with drop shadows, buttons that appear to depress complete with haptic feedback, are skeuomorphic. Apple Notes being yellow lined note paper could be called skeumorphic. And certainly, the rolodex tabs for letter groups in Contacts were clearly skeuomorphic.

This is an interesting video, and it initially defines the term correctly, but then incorrectly buckets many things as skeuomorphic to make a point, when in fact the objected to them tended to be they were not skeuomorphic at all.

Borrowing functional forms of the past to make new affordances comfortable and familiar, given them the right feel in your use, remains a good idea, at least for a transitional time.

jchanimal• 2 months ago

The other half of the venn diagram you describe might be better understood as the manufactured normalcy field. Useful concept for product creators: https://www.urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2012/06/24/desig...

andrewflnr• 2 months ago

The ribs on the handle of a knife are skeuomorphic of the vines wrapped on the hand end of a sharpened stone.

What? No. None of that. Even if vines wrapped around a sharp stone were ever common, no one alive today (outside an uncontacted tribe maybe) is "familiar" enough with them to make a difference.

Texturing handles is just an obvious mechanical thing to increase grip that probably gets invented every time someone makes a handle from a smooth material.

King-Aaron• 2 months ago

I'd like to agree that it was a bit of a strange and incorrect comparison to make. Also, I may be incorrect here, but I thought skeuomorphism just refers to ornamental design cues, not functional design features.

elmomle• 2 months ago

I want to poke at this a little. I don't think the ribs on the handle of a knife qualify as skeuomorphism, since they serve a distinct functional purpose independent of their origin (namely, better grip).

I do agree that "leather for every app" starts to deviate away from the definition of a true skeuomorph. One could argue that the iPhone was trying to evoke the personal organizer of yesteryear, and therein lies the skeuomorphism, but since the functionality of an iPhone was so much broader than a personal organizer, it may be conceptual smear to call that skeuomorphism too (but I still think a good argument could be made that it is skeuomorphism, since the functional form of a prior design is still being evoked intentionally for aesthetic / emotional cueing purposes).

gyomu• 2 months ago

The voiceover in this video is in a weird uncanny valley where I don't think it's purely AI generated, but it doesn't sound 100% human either. Some sort of AI processing filter maybe? I'm not familiar with what tools are common those days.

Eg at 00:30, for a few seconds there's a marked difference in how the speech sounds - like the filter is turned off or something.

I think the video also mixes things up a bit. For example it compares the skeuomorphism of "Find my Friends" with that of a car maintenance training program - but the latter isn't an example of a skeuomorph ("a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original"), it merely adopts a realistic graphic design style to mirror the operation it's depicting.

Wowfunhappy• 2 months ago

The voiceover in this video is in a weird uncanny valley where I don't think it's purely AI generated, but it doesn't sound 100% human either. Some sort of AI processing filter maybe? I'm not familiar with what tools are common those days.

What?! Your AI detector is way too sensitive, that's a human narrator with a natural accent.

I can hear what might be a slight editing artifact at 0:30, likely the result of using a different microphone or some such.

(I mean, I guess I can't state things like this with certainty anymore. Feel free to prove me wrong. But I'll be extremely surprised if I'm wrong.)

TechSquidTV• 2 months ago

I just released a UI framework based on VST designs. https://analogui.com/

thrance• 2 months ago

This page is very broken for me (Firefox on Android). It looks there's some kind of Z-fighting happening on the buttons? Also, they scroll slightly faster than the rest of the page, such that when at the bottom they're completely out of their sockets.

oersted• 2 months ago

Gorgeous!

But the intense latency and low framerate feel makes it nearly unusable for me I'm afraid. And I'm trying on a powerful workstation. There are some fundamental performance issues in this implementation.

I could see it being intentional too, to add a sensation of weight? If that's the case, that's a good idea, but the current implementation feels more laggy than weighty.

jcarrano• 2 months ago

Optically, it looks very nice, but it kills my CPU.

The Skeuomorphism Nobody Talks About [video]

Related Stories