>Skeuomorphic design was a nod to my non-computer using father in the 90s. It no more represents useful metaphors for interfaces than steam engines represent a good way to build cars.
This is wrong. It's just a cycle that we're going through with design fads.
Less than ten years ago everybody was all for "lickable interfaces" with 3D buttons, drop shadows and the like. There was even a whole movement of indie developers for the Mac doing skeuomorphic UIs in the wave of Delicious Library, budded by the Mac press "the Delicious generation".
Now designers are tired of that look and want something more subtle and flat, inspired by the whole Metro thing (and modern Web style plus the whole movement towards minimal design).
The same transitions have happened dozens of times in the history of art and design, from ornamental to utilitarian and back again.
One is not inherently better than the other: there can be good and bad skeuomorphic UIs. And, no, the Calendar app, with it's faux leather, is not an example of a bad skeuomorphic UI. If it's bad, it's just because of bad UI, period. The leather part is just decoration, i.e the inconsequential part of skeuomorphism, and doesn't affect behavior.
For bad skeuomorphism consider any media app that resembles a physical dvd player, or the turning of the pages in iBooks. I.e behavior that impedes use, not just decorative choices.
For the same reason, it also has nothing to do with appealing to "older users". If anything, skeuomorphism and references to old physical objects is extremely popular with younger people, from "steam punk", to hipsters loving vinyl, letter-pressed cards, pocket watches and everything that has "patina", to software like Instagram and Hipstamatic, that digitally applies the image distortions and color artifacts of 30 and 50 year old analog cameras and films.
Sorry for the long rant, but I take offense in how everybody is throwing words like "skeuomorphic" around, like they always knew what the term meant, instead of just having in drilled into their head that "skeuomorphic == bad" from tens of me-too online articles this past year.
This is wrong. It's just a cycle that we're going through with design fads.
Less than ten years ago everybody was all for "lickable interfaces" with 3D buttons, drop shadows and the like. There was even a whole movement of indie developers for the Mac doing skeuomorphic UIs in the wave of Delicious Library, budded by the Mac press "the Delicious generation".
Now designers are tired of that look and want something more subtle and flat, inspired by the whole Metro thing (and modern Web style plus the whole movement towards minimal design).
The same transitions have happened dozens of times in the history of art and design, from ornamental to utilitarian and back again.
One is not inherently better than the other: there can be good and bad skeuomorphic UIs. And, no, the Calendar app, with it's faux leather, is not an example of a bad skeuomorphic UI. If it's bad, it's just because of bad UI, period. The leather part is just decoration, i.e the inconsequential part of skeuomorphism, and doesn't affect behavior.
For bad skeuomorphism consider any media app that resembles a physical dvd player, or the turning of the pages in iBooks. I.e behavior that impedes use, not just decorative choices.
For the same reason, it also has nothing to do with appealing to "older users". If anything, skeuomorphism and references to old physical objects is extremely popular with younger people, from "steam punk", to hipsters loving vinyl, letter-pressed cards, pocket watches and everything that has "patina", to software like Instagram and Hipstamatic, that digitally applies the image distortions and color artifacts of 30 and 50 year old analog cameras and films.
Sorry for the long rant, but I take offense in how everybody is throwing words like "skeuomorphic" around, like they always knew what the term meant, instead of just having in drilled into their head that "skeuomorphic == bad" from tens of me-too online articles this past year.
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