There seems to be an undercurrent of contempt towards Digital Skeuomorphism – the art of taking real world subject material and dragging it kicking & screaming into your current UI design(s) (if you’re an iPad designer mostly).
I’ve personally sat on the fence with regards to this subject as I do see merit in both sides of the argument in terms of those who believe it’s gotten out of hand vs those who swear it’s the right mix to helping people navigate UX complexity.
Here’s what I know.
I know personally that the human mind is much faster at decoding patterns that involve depth and mixed amounts of color (to a degree). I know that while sight is one of our sensory radars working 24/7 it is also one that often scans ahead for known pattern(s) to then decode at sub-millisecond speeds.
I know we often think in terms of analogies when we are trying to convey a message or point. I know designers scour the internet and use a variety of mediums (real life subject matter and other people(s) designs) to help them organize their thoughts / mojo onto a blank canvas.
Finally I know that with design propositions like the monochrome like existence of Metro it has created an area of conflict around like vs dislike in comparison to the rest of the web that opts to ignore these laid out principles by Microsoft design team(s).
Here’s what I think.
I think Apple design community has taken the idea of theming applications to take on a more unrealistic but realistic concepts and apply them to their UI designs are more helpful then hurtful. I say this as it seems to not only work but solves a need – despite the hordes mocking its existence.
I know I have personally gone my entire life without grabbing an envelope, photo, and a paperclip and attached them together – prior – to writing a letter to a friend.
Yet, there is a User Interface out there in the iPad AppStore that is probably using this exact concept to help coach the user that they are in fact writing a digital letter to someone with a visual attachment paper clipped to the fake envelope it will get sent in.
Why is this a bad idea?
For one it’s not realistic and it easily can turn a concept into a fisher price existence quite fast. Secondly it taps into the same ridiculous faux UI existence commonly found in a lot of movies today (you know the ones, where a hacker worms his way into the banks mainframe with lots of 3D visuals to illustrate how he/she is able to overcome complex security protocols).
It’s bad simply for those two reasons.
It’s also good for those two reasons. Let’s face it the more friction and confidence we can build in end-users around attaching real-life analogies or metaphors to a variety of software problems the less they are preoccupied with building large amounts of unnecessary muscle in their ability to decode patterns via spatial cognition.
Here’s who I think is right.
Apple and Microsoft are both on this different voyage of discovery and both are likely to create havoc on the end user base around which is better option of the two – digitally authentic or digitally unauthentic.
It doesn’t matter in the end who wins as given both have created this path it’s fair to say that an average user out there is now going to be tuned into both creative output(s). As such there is no such thing as a virgin user when it comes to these design models.
I would however say out loud that I think when it comes to down cognitive load on the end user around which Application(s) out there that opt for a Metro vs. Apple iPad like solution, the iPad should by rights win that argument.
The reason being is our ability to scan the associated pattern with the faux design model works to the end user favor much the same way it does when you 30sec of a hacker busting their way into the mainframe.
The faux design approach will work for depth engagement but here’s the funny and wonderful thought that I think will fester beyond this post for many.
Ever notice the UI designs in movies opt for a flat “metro” like monochrome existence that at first you go “oh my that’s amazing CG!”. Yet if you then play with it for long period of time their wow factor begins to taper off fast.
I don’t have the answers on either sides here and it’s all based of my own opinion and second-hand research. I can tell you though sex sells, we do judge a book by its cover, and I think what makes the iPad apps appeal too many is simply – attractive bias in full flight.
Before I leave with that last thought, I will say that over time I’ve seen quite a lot of iPad applications use Wood textures throughout their designs. I’d love to explore the phycology of why that reoccurs more as I wonder if it has to do with some primitive design DNA of some sort.
Here’s some research that hints at this space [Click here].
As inflammatory as this sounds, and it will piss quite a few Microsoft fans out there, but let me just get this piece out of the way before you make some snap fang filled responses.
Feature density is when you have a team of feature hungry customer(s) all wanting and willing to pay large bounties to cram as many features into the one product as possible and despite your many educational rants around “less is more” it plays out in way that basically ends up being a really bad execution of “metro”.
I think today, Metro itself as we see it in its incarnation is broken, it’s created this ongoing bad habit where if you nuke some gradients, whip up a lot of typography and pander to the masses you in turn get an instant “wow dude, so metro, high-five” – meanwhile you’re just feeling a little cheap inside, as you know that at the end of the day this is not your best work and you are just feeding the metro-zombies what they want.
first circle to indicate that this code block should be faded back to allow the developer to focus on other parts of the code base. When the circle turns red, the code block itself foreground colour will fade back to a passive state (i.e. all grey text) as whilst this code is still visible and compliable, it however visually isn’t displayed in a prominent state.
second circle to indicate that the code block itself should take on a breakpoint behaviour (when debugging please stop here). When the circle turns red, it will indicate that a debug breakpoint is in place. The circle itself right click context will also take on an as-is behavior found within Visual Studio we see today.
Eye icon to switch the code block into either a private or public state (public is considered viewable outside the class itself, ie internal vs public are one in the same but will respect the specifics within the code itself).
Attribute / Annotation. This tag will enable the developer to see at a glance as to what attributes or annotations are attached to this specific code block. This is mainly useful from a developer(s) perspective to ensure whether or not the class itself has the right amount of attributes (oops I forgot one?) whilst at the same time can provide an at-a-glance view as to what types of dependencies this class is likely to have (e.g use case Should EntityFramework Data Annotations be inside each POCO class? Or should it be handled in the DBContext itself?..before we answer that, lets see what code blocks have that dependency etc.).
Locked. This ones a bit of a tricky concept, but initially the idea is to enable development teams to lock specific code blocks from other developer(s) manipulation, that is to say the idea is that when a developer is working on a specific set of code chunks and they don’t want other developer(s) to touch, they can insert code-locks in place. This in turn will empower other developer’s to still make minor modification(s) to the code whilst at the same time, check in the code itself but at the same time removing resolution conflicts at the end of the overall work stream (although code resolution is pretty simplified these days, this just adds an additional layer of protecting ones sandpit).
Notes. When documenting issues within a task or bug, it’s at times helpful to leave traces behind that indicate or warn other developers to be careful of xyz issues within this code block (make sure you close out your while loop, make sure you clean-up your background threading etc.). The idea here is that developer(s) can leave both class and code-block specific notes of interest.
