As you know, I haven't posted for a while. I have decided to officially adopt a publishing schedule of "sporadic." As such, I will let you know about all my posts on Facebook, as well as my email list here:
The main source I'm citing for not posting in a while is being hung up on a big post that may or may not be published sometime in 2016. To break that writers block, I'm giving myself an hour to write and publish something I have essentially already written in my head. Without further ado, a stream of consciousness post about:
Skeuomorphs
What the heck is a skeuomorph? The dictionary definition is "an element of a graphical user interface that mimics a physical object."
I find dictionaries to be less than helpful sometimes.
Here's an example:
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| "An element of a graphical user interface that mimics a physical object" |
A quick definition before we can start with the iPhone home screen - a graphical user interface, or GUI, is what I would call the "human part" of any computer. Humans don't like 1's and 0's, so we ask computers to give us buttons and text instead - the GUI is essentially what is on the screen.
The iPhone home screen is a wonderful example of icons being designed to resemble the very items they are rendering obsolete to make this new digital world seem more familiar. Some examples here include the phone, YouTube, and Notes apps--each is designed to look like the 'old' version of itself.
It's pretty easy to understand the choice - when smartphones first became mainstream, it was natural to show the icons as familiar devices - people looking to make a call would naturally click the handset. In fact, with the exception of Messages, Stocks, and Weather, every icon on the iPhone home screen is some representation of a physical object.
Back in the 1980's Apple basically invented this design element in developing their first GUI for the Apple Lisa, released in 1983.
Once you learn to recognize skeuomorphs, you start seeing them everywhere.
Once you learn to recognize skeuomorphs, you start seeing them everywhere.
Take a moment to look at the webpage or browser you are reading this on right now, if it's a browser, the tabs at the top of your screen work exactly like physical file folder tabs, each having a little overlap with the one next to it.
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| Here's mine |
On phone browsers, switching tabs often has an effect where one is brought to the front with some kind of animation showing it overlapping the tabs you are switching away from.
There are also some odd audio skeuomorphs too - think of the sound your phone makes when you take a picture... That noise is played through the speakers to let you know the picture has been taken, but it doesn't need to be there, and on modern phones you can turn it off, but it comes from the days when cameras had to physically close a mechanical shutter.
Side note - here's a great slow motion video of that happening:
In writing this, I began to think of some skeuomorphic phrases such as "rolling down the windows," "cranking the volume," "dialing a phone," and even the term "clockwise." Increasingly, these phrases are inaccurate, as most of these functions nowadays performed by buttons, slides, or taps, and most clocks are digital nowadays.
All this has led to me envisioning a specific interaction - because a floppy disk now means "save icon" more than it means "floppy disk," I can imagine a kid, upon seeing a floppy disk for the first time, saying "Wow, did you 3D print a save icon?"
Cheers,
Scott
Bonus Skeuomorph links:
Skeuomorphs -- they're everywhere...
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