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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'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
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
define "Link" you arrogant bastard, not everyone knows the latest jargon.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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.