Ask Slashdot: Is the Rise of Skeuomorphic User Interfaces a Problem? 311
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?"
Is this applicable anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Move forward? (Score:2, Interesting)
"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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:trend towards simplification/less capability (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:skeuwhatzit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi, I'm a film sound designer and re-recording mixer in my day job. Knobs and analog gauges are much easier for user population to visualize and interpret. You're dealing with people who have decades of training with analogue equipment -- also, IMHO knobs are a superior widget in many cases, because (if they're implemented properly) you can drag the mouse pointer further away from the knob to increase precision.
Re:Shit Editors (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Probably neither (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bad Design (Score:2, Interesting)
A stack of punchcards being the icon for 'compile' in Visual Studio...
Skeuomorphic = Lazy GUI Design (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Shit Editors (Score:3, Interesting)
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