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Ask Slashdot: Is the Rise of Skeuomorphic User Interfaces a Problem?
An anonymous reader writes "The evolution of user interface design in software is a long one, and has historically tracked the capabilities of computers of the time. Early computers used batch processing which, is mostly unheard of today, and consequently had minimal human interaction. The late 60s saw the introduction of command line interfaces, which remain popular to this day, mostly with technical users. Arguably, what propelled computer use to what it is today is the introduction of the ubiquitous graphical user interface. Although graphical interfaces have evolved, in principle they have remained largely unchanged. The resurgence of Apple saw the rise of skeuomorphic graphical user interfaces, which are now starting to appear on Linux. Are skeuomorphic designs making technology accessible to the masses, or is it simply a case of an unwillingness to innovate and move forward?"
Specifically in the case of Linux, does the presence of skeuomorphic UIs in some applications really matter if the user decides "hey this sucks" and rips it out at the roots and installs something more to their liking?
I don't think any evidence has been provided that shows such UI designs are better than a well laid out traditional UI, but people will try whatever they can. So long as it isn't rammed down my throat, that's fine.
From the linked Wikipedia article:
"Portion of iCal, calendaring software from Apple Inc.. Skeumorphs in iCal include leather appearance, stitching and remnants of torn pages."
Digital skeuomorphs:
Many music and audio computer programs employ a plugin architecture, and some of the plugins have a skeuomorphic interface to emulate expensive, fragile or obsolete instruments and audio processors. Functional input controls like knobs, buttons, switches and sliders are all careful duplicates of the ones on the original physical device being emulated. Even elements of the original that serve no function, like handles, screws and ventilation holes are graphically reproduced.
The arguments in favor of skeuomorphic design are that it makes it easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital emulation, and that it is graphically appealing.
The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards; that skeuomorphic interface elements rarely incorporate numeric input or feedback for accurately setting a value; and that many users may have no experience with the original device being emulated.
Skeuomorphism is differentiated from path dependence in technology, where functional behavior is maintained when the reasons for its design no longer exist.
One of the earliest examples of a skeuomorphic interface was IBM Real Things.
and I cannot find the little floppy disk icon to save the item. Where'd it go?
Vision with execution is hallucination.
Obviously someone just swallowed a thesaurus and burped out "skeuomorphic".
The linked Wikipedia page describes it thus: "Many music and audio computer programs employ a plugin architecture, and some of the plugins have a skeuomorphic interface to emulate expensive, fragile or obsolete instruments and audio processors. Functional input controls like knobs, buttons, switches and sliders are all careful duplicates of the ones on the original physical device being emulated. Even elements of the original that serve no function, like handles, screws and ventilation holes are graphically reproduced."
First, I'd argue that most software doesn't emulate physical artifacts - we don't "pull" open file drawers for instance. Second, this doesn't sound like anything that's really about GUI, it's just prettying stuff up - much like the concept of "skins."
The Apple reference... oh sigh.
Three Squirrels
I have to say I fall on the side of saying that skeuomorphic design is bad. The classic one is the latest iPhone podcast app which looks like an old reel to reel tape recorder. I mean I'm in my mid 40s, and I only saw one of these once when I was a tiny child, and even then it was obsolete.
As for the leather bound notes and address apps, I've never owned a leather notes folder and I've never owned an address book with the letters down my side. My mum had one when I was a small child, but I haven't thought about such things for ages. As these devices expand into so many countries and new cultures, I'm sure these references are going to seem even more obscure and ridiculous.
After looking up skeuomorphic and realizing that it meant current designs that reflect the original designs where the current design is cosmetic, and the original was practical I realized that this is a very stupid article.
Apple is progressively moving towards fewer and fewer button.
Windows are doing their windows 8 thing.
Ubuntu was a 1 hour try before giving up on their unity interface.
Kde is still my favourite. (It's like the Rolls Royce of UI IMHO)
Gnome is the kid who never get's used but always gets installed.
What does this have to do with maintaining cosmetic designs I have no idea. I think the guy picked a word out of a hat in order to get a link to postman deliver aps spot on the front page.
Good job...
I would hardly say there's a "rise". The mail "envelope", the attachment "paperclip", the color "palette", the directory "folder" icon, the clock represented as an "analog dial", the video "movie reel"...
I've been waiting years for a chance to use 'skeuomorphic' in a conversation.
This might have been a question to ask perhaps 5-10 years ago, when such things were all the rage (brushed metal, faux glass, reflections, etc.), but it seems that of late, between interfaces like Android (especially Honeycomb and later) or Microsoft's Metro, things have been taking a sharp turn away from skeuomorphism and decidedly towards an unabashedly digital styling.
If only they included a link to something kind of online encyclopedia to define that unfamiliar term...
Damn, this computer shit is fucking complicated. Links: How do they work?
Required reading for internet skeptics
"Batch processing" is not mostly unheard of. It still exists as an important component of all modern operating systems. Ever heard of cron jobs or process scheduling? Both of these require you to write code (or rather script, in the case of cron), but it's still a form of input to the OS.
After batch jobs came CLIs, which are also essential, but for other forms of user interaction where you don't want to go through the firewall that some graphical designer put in the way of you.
Mouse-and-keyboard-GUIs, such as for desktop computers, are good if you only need to perform the most common actions. The mouse combined with graphics is also an efficient way to deal with 2D representations of the system.
Touchscreen based computers appear to be good for people that barely ever bother to change the settings of the program they use. While I could never imagine myself in this category, I understand the need and I think that it's an interesting step.
The best solution is to use the right tool for the job. This could mean that you have a computer with all of these forms of input, or a selection of them that best suit your needs. An example scenario: use a tablet to see the status of your server park, a GUI to perform basic tasks such as restarting servers, a CLI when hardware needs to be fixed and use cronjobs to rotate the logs into a dedicated log server.
On topic: I have no idea what you mean with skeumorphic GUIs, but either they are a useless fad or they can work side by side to other forms of UIs. Nothing will replace anything.
Yes it is a problem, and seems to be taking us backward in terms of usability. Apple is the worst for this, imo, their iPhone interface for setting an alarm is abysmal, hard to use with any accuracy, because you're sliding dials around, which have physics attached to them. So instead of being able to type in: 7, 3, 0 on a keypad, you're forced to deal with 3 different dials, pushing up & down until it gets it right. (It also stinks of 'hey, lets use multitouch for EVERYTHING).
Also, accessibility takes a hit, as you're now dealing with pictures of physical things, and all people are left with are the equivalent of ALT tags on images with image maps.
Avoid unfamiliar terms, even if you link to a page explaining them. As you can see, 90% of the discussion here is about how an unusual word was used where GUI would have served the same purpose, which not only takes away a lot of space from a discussion about the actual question, but also made me skip pretty much all of it because I didn't come here to discuss the pros and cons of showing off ones word stock but whether GUIs are troubling. But now, instead, I wrote this note, which adds about as much to the actual discussion, but might serve you as a reminder to avoid things that take away attention from the actual question you're asking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Didn't Samsung just do that to Apple ? Made it look familiar, like an iPhone, but underneath its a sh1t load better :-)
if
Thanks for doing the legwork on that for us
Really? All you had to do was click the word; it's linked to the definition.
It's less work that scanning the comments hoping someone would copy/paste the definition from the page to which that word is linked.
Required reading for internet skeptics
define "Link" you arrogant bastard, not everyone knows the latest jargon.
It's just design. There are going to be some instances that work really well and others that are not so great. There will always be people that complain about things that look pretty, preferring to spend their time in front of a command line.
Skeuomorphic design is just in fashion at the moment. Hardware goes through design fads too. Brushed aluminium, wood grain, gloss white, matte black, bright colours, etc.
The more they Think Different, the more they think the same.
Links don't appear in the RSS.
no, journalists are taught from day 1 to use simple language.
not for dumbing down, but for brevity - time is money, and if you don't have to reach for a dictionary, you shouldn't.
including the definition, or simplified part of it relevant to the article would have been appropriate and saved the ire of the /. hordes.
I don't think it was (and notice the tags). Either way, it was helpful.
The command line is powerful, I'll give you that. But it's also cryptic as all-get-out to the average person. "ps -eo pid,user,args --sort user". Really? Try explaining that one to Aunt Mildred who just wants to check her pictures on facebook. Maybe she can just go check the "man" pages...that should make it as clear as mud to her. To a non technical person that stuff is absolute gibberish. Seriously - it might as well be written in Mandarin.
Look - I like using the CLI and I use it a lot. It's fast and powerful. But for the average user you've got to dumb it down for them. Give them a big button in the middle of the screen and they are happy. That's why tablets are so popular.
CLI expertise gives you geek cred but it will never see mass adoption. The GUI is here to stay. I'm not so sure I like the IOS trend of dumbing things down even further, at the expense of power and usability, but it has clearly been successful.
I am unfamiliar with this word "Fuck" that you constantly mention. Could you please define it?
The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards
Personally I'd argue that skeuomorphic designs are almost certainly worse for usability, but that might be outweighed in marketing by their attractiveness / emotional connections with the product.
In UI design, it seems to me that one of the things you're trying to do is communicate relationships between the various controls, the things they manipulate, etc. And you have a two-dimensional non-tangible interface with which to communicate those relationships. (Even with touch, you're not actually "pressing a button" you're tapping on a coloured region of glass.) The trade-offs that optimise communication are almost certainly different than if you have a tangible three dimensional interface (eg, a physical tape recorder, instead of an audio memo app). In a skeuomorphic app, you do not have the physical haptic pliability of the button to your thumb, just a slightly wobbling brown graphic. In a skeuomorphic app, you do not naturally see the item in three dimensions as you pick it up and its orientation to your eye changes on the journey to a comfortable manipulation distance. You just have a flat graphic of a pretend item from a preset angle. The affordances are different, so the optimum design to help the user achieve their goals is probably different.
The example I'd use is Windows -- over a decade or two it has steadily moved away from previously being skeuomorphic (eg, panels looking like they're in little bevels, buttons looking like square raised things) to something much cleaner. Those bevels etc introduced lines that distracted ("why is my eye drawn to a bevel that does nothing again?") and made an element feel divided from the surrounding controls that they probably wanted to communicated were relevant to it not separated from it.
The exception however is marketing and the attempt to get a purchaser to emotionally engage with an item (rather than find it easy to use). A picture of a beautiful old tape player is probably more appealing at first glance in the Apple Store than a white background with clearly distinct controls. Likewise a slightly harder to use item might feel as if it can do more even if it can't.
If only hyperlinks were identified by a picture of a computer mouse next to a monitor with a stylized mouse cursor hovered over a picture of a linked chain. You could visit the target of the hyperlink by clicking your real mouse on the left button of the picture of the mouse.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
The only type of software I've seen where this is the norm is music software, especially VST plugins.
I guess the thought behind this is: "If you emulate the sound of a classic synthesizer, why not emulate the look-and-feel of it as well?"
Of course it is easier for someone who has actually played the physical instrument to find the correct controls, but I think it's more a question of aesthetics than usability.
The idea has carried over to instruments and effects that have no physical counterpart: If you have an analogue-sounding synth you'll get knobs and patch cables ( moog style); if it's a FM synth you'll probably see a lot of labled push-buttons (Yamaha DX7) and so on.
Electronic musicians love their gadgets and now that we don't fiddle with actual knobs and sliders anymore, we still like to be reminded of them in the UI.
Still, I don't think this represent "an unwillingness to move forward". Maybe part nostalgia and part the fact that these devices looked great and inspired you to play them.
Episode #12:
Using Proper English
Everything you needed to know about the word, "Fuck".
Enjoy!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
define "Link" you arrogant bastard, not everyone knows the latest jargon.
By "link" I think he means a hypertext reference. I dunno why people can't just keep it simple.
it's called 'facade' versus 'functionality.'
The classic counterargument is that Courbusier advocated frill-less (and thus cheaper) "functional" towers, but himself chose to live in a replication of a medieval Italian villa.
+5 karma to those of you who get the 'Blade Runner' reference.
The Mac desktop Calendar app? Sure it looks like leather but in no way does thinking of it like any kind of traditional leather-bound thing you may have known help you figure out how to work with it.
Yeah and the most annoying thing is that I can't seem work out how to pick away at the old bits of torn paper with my mouse. Is there some kind of Command-Shift-Option-F23 key combination that I should be pressing? Or do I have to buy a 3rd party razor-blade App?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Someone desperately wanted to use the word "skeuomorphic" in a /. submission.
Aside from that, was there any actual content? I didn't notice any.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So brevity demands that we write "interfaces-with-all-too cutesy-allusions-to-real-world-objects" in place of "skeuomorphic?" Several times in each article?
No, brevity prefers you write "live-like, or 'skeuomorphic'," once, perhaps with a small definition. Then use "live-like" for the rest of the article.
Are you writing to make yourself look smart or to help your readers understand?
If you are not (at least figuratively) reaching for a dictionary several times a day chances are your vocabulary is no longer growing exponentially. :(
You might want to grab yourself a dictionary and look up the word "exponentially".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
We used to do this crap in Windows in the early 90s - notebooks with rules lines and faux punched holes, folders with flaps that opened, old fashioned analogue clocks - and we stopped because it was stupid.
Korma: Good
Ya know, I tend to opt-out of such knobs and manually provide a specific value if given the option. This isn't because of any basic objection to the whole concept, but rather because these knobs and sliders can be so poorly tuned and overly sensitive at times that coaxing the damned thing to land where you want it to can be difficult at times.
That is, I KNOW I want the value to be 40 but I spend more than several seconds trying to not get it to land on 39 or 41.
I don't think it's too much of an issue from what I've seen. Apple definitely do it the most, but it's in programs like Calendar, Contacts, and Reminders, which perform limited functions and don't require complex user interfaces. Prettying them up a bit doesn't detract from usability. If you were to say, add a traditional paint pallete to Photoshop, that would be a different matter.
Links in the RSS feed are not shown as links. So that if you are reading via google reader. et. al. you don't see it. It wasn't till I came to the site to see comments that it was available.
dimes
Sure, that can be good too.
But someone who has a lot of experience working with a specific model of doodad (let's say an audio compressor) can look at a skeumorphic version on-screen and INSTANTLY see what is going on because the knobs and buttons do more than just setting the values, the knobs also DISPLAY the settings, values, and general state of the system.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
Othertimes, such as in Apple's Calendar, not so much...
Showing a fake desk calendar with selection buttons embedded in the leather, then some sideways scroll buttons, and those sideways scroll buttons trigger a pageturn animation (in/out, not sideways)...
The problem isn't necessarily the skeumorphism, but rather the mishmash of concepts which results in a confused mess.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
If the knob interface is designed properly, though, you don't have to try to turn the knob with your mouse... you can simply mouse over and use the scroll wheel. I've seen it a few times like that.
But yes, I remember a program years ago that I think was called AudioDeck, where you had to actually click on the little indicator dot on the knob, and turn the mouse in a circle to try to adjust the level, and that was annoying as all out.
How do you fuck that much in one day without your dick falling off?
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He did. It's called a link. Welcome to the Internet.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Might be a woman
which is totally what she said
Its no nice they've now come up with a jargon term for brain-dead GUI design.
I'm not exactly a trained professional GUI designer, but even I know that the computer offers unique user-interface possibilities and challenges that are completely different that what you have with physical objects. If you don't take this into account, but just slavishly copy the physical object, you aren't even bothering to design. I don't think failure to design really merits a special name like this.
I once worked on a project that involved creating a kiosk-like system for USN destroyers to handle water valve switching within the ship. We had pictures of the old system, which was a kiosk with a subway-like map of the piping drawn on it, with pushbuttons placed in various locations in the drawing to allow opening and closing of the various valves. The obvious issue here is that the operator has to work out in their head what combination of valve states will case the water to flow in the pipes the way they want. It seemed to me to be a great idea that we were compterizing this, because we could give them something better.
The task of making the GUI was given to one of those guys on our team who is really productive, but doesn't do a lot of actual thinking (I'm actually kinda jealous of folks like that). He of course just drew the same map on the screen, using the same colors, with pushbuttons in the same places made to look as much like the original pushbuttons as possible.
The waste of the computer's potential in doing it this way actually annoyed me so much, I worked through several lunches to make an alternative. The system I came up with actually drew the network to look like cross-sections of pipe, and would fill in for you which pipes had water flowing through them (based on the condition of all the valves) by showing blue water in the pipe or not. The valves were drawn to look like simple valves, but with indications on them that the were active objects.
It turns out that (unbeknonst to me) we were in a backchannel political competition with another vendor for our project. When the project engineer saw this design, he got all excited and said "This is the kind of thing that will sell this system." I can't say for sure he was right, but I know we didn't end up losing the project. That isn't why I did it though. I just couldn't stand the idea of sticking our poor users (sailors) with that dumbass interface.
The problem might be that if it was defined it would be fairly obvious that the entire argument is hollow.
For those who missed the other posts, skeuomorphic designs are those which incorporate anachronistic aspects of other (usually previous) designs. The premise is that user interfaces which incorporate these concepts are 'on the rise' when it is fairly clear that they are an ever-present aspect of user design. The use of typewriter-style keyboards, the filing cabinet metaphor, the 10-key dial pad, the 'window'. Selling people something new has always been difficult, so incorporating aspects of what they already know into their interfaces is one way to reduce the shock for potential customers. Any perception of a 'rise' in this is simply a function of the lowering of restrictions to adding these features and the increased conservative non-technical consumer focus.
It's an all-too-common tactic to use fancy words to alter the initial perception of an idea allowing it to be accepted more easily. This applies to truely innovative ideas as well as complete bunk. I'd classify this in the latter pile.
There is a term Affordance which is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. Simply put a button on a screen looks like button so the user is clued in that it is something that can be pressed. It doesn't always work very well even in the real world (e.g. a door which has a handle which suggests you would pull the door towards you when actually it should be pushed).
for digital examples on this "page" there is a slider which indicates i can move up and down the page and is currently showing the middle of the page. Even the blank box which cues that I can write in here to make this comment.
skeuomorphic is quite closely related it is intended to provide affordance to make it easier for the user to use.
The one theme I noticed running through the Wikipedia article was that it tended to be that objects that were skeuomorphic were cheaper imitations of the real thing and the word that springs to mind is tacky cheap imitations. The trouble with some of the digital versions are that they are intended to give the pretence of a more luxurious real world object. It's no real surprise that Apple products are tending to engage in more of this, to differentiate it's products from the more utilitarian windows products.
If you have three books one leather bound the one a standard paperback and one a paperback printed to have the appearance of a leather cover even though the information is the same, the users perceptions are different. Which is better the leather bound is better made the standard paperback does the job and the third is quite tacky or cheesy. There are a lot of chinese made products which use the third format which is probably why we have the phrase cheap chinese knockoff.
Utility can be elegant and clean, it can also be particularly ugly or beautiful too. The use of a metaphor can be very good at providing affordance, A bookshelf metaphor is obviously a bookshelf The problem comes when the metaphor too closely follows the original design including it's drawbacks If the visual representation of the book was the spine then titles would be printed side ways and be hard to read, of course you could put the bookshelf on it's side. .. The alternative of book covers facing out isn't that much better if you have more than a dozen books since you then need to scroll the bookcase and your metaphor is broken.
A much nicer interface is the coverflow which lets you visualise and manipulate faster ideally you could use filtering like a text box to allow you to whizz through to the section you want. There should be other filters though in the case of books you might be looking for C++ or romance novels. Cover flow doesn't seem to have filtering. It also doesn't really have a real world equivalent.
This is slightly unexpected I initially thought a bookshelf was a good example of a good skeuomorphic design and it isn't. it's a really bad design and cover flow can actually be better if implemented well. The utilitarian design of a listbox of some sort also sucks as it gives equal rank to all the items without a visual cue.
It seems both extremes are , extreme.
Slavishly following a real-world metaphor is a problem if you are implementing functionality badly. Rotating knobs are a really bad idea on a computer screen. Especially on a laptop which doesn't have a scroll wheel.
Rather sadly I've just found that if i run my finger up and down the right side of my Track-pad it acts as a scroll wheel. (ok hands up everybody who just tried it and found yours does the same).
The Utilitarian approach isn't always the best either, it can lead to an ugly and sometimes inefficient design so that is something to consider. I think Developers have a tendency to ignore the V in MVC. I think Apple is right to consider the appearance of a design especially when the design is used by people for pleasure. Windows tends to have a utilitarian approach, and more recently some bad design keys, that authoritarian corporate ap
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
MIDI is as "skeuomorphic" as you want to be and always has been. Pointing to MIDI isn't really a great example here. It's fundementally a wire protocol that may or may not be attached to an interface that looks remotely recognizable.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You missed the point. If I don't know what it is, I don't know whether I care enough to click to read the definition. Then if you look at the page, the first half of it is completely unrelated to the contextual usage.
More than half way down they get to the digital part, which is what the summary connotation would be. And then, the digital section starts with
WTF does plugin have to do with anything? Worst encyclopedia page I've seen recently, though there are doubtless many worse I have had no reason to click.
I had to read the wiki page twice to figure out what the point was, and then go back to the summary to understand the point.
So no, "all you had to do" involved a lot more than just clicking. And the comment with actual information is close enough to the top that it pops out immediately. A lot of readers look to the comments to see if it's something they should care about before clicking. It would have saved me time in this case, certainly.