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Are You a Skeuomorphist? (skeuomorpher in today's vernacular) |
 Scientific
American's David Pogue wrote an article titled "Out
with the Real*," which laments the continued widespread use of skeuomorphs
in software. According to Dictionary.com a
skeuomorph is "an ornament or design on an object copied from
a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques."
Familiar examples include animated book pages on e-readers that appear
to be turning like a physical book, the desktop wastebasket icon, and
clickable buttons for options. He argues that such an attachment to
the past holds back progression toward the future. In a sense he's correct
insofar as a new generation of people who do not really need to transition
from a non-computer world to a computer-centric world - the technology
is now introduced almost at birth these days. Entirely new software
interface strategies can be designed that more effectively assist the
user with operations if the old crutches are abandoned. Human evolution
is spinning its wheels, so to speak
(dang, I just skeuomorped). Of course if that new software paradigm
is taken too far, we will need to start applying skeuomorphisms to physical
objects to make them simpler to use for the person who has lived his
life on a computer since the time mom and dad gave him an iPhone-shaped
pacifier to teethe on. *SciAm stupidly
uses different titles for print vs. online articles.
Posted February 2013 |
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