'Why Ive shouldn't kill Apple's skeuomorphic interfaces'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 3rd Nov 2012 01:11 UTC, submitted by Panajev
Apple "Earlier this week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive and Forstall had an infamously chilly working relationship, and one of their biggest disagreements was over the role of so-called 'skeuomorphic' design in Apple's products. Forstall, like his mentor Steve Jobs, favored it; Ive disliked it. To many observers, Forstall's forced exit looks like a vindication of Ive's stance. But if he wants to continue Apple's enviable trend of innovation, he'd be a fool to throw the baby of skeuomorphism out with Forstall's bathwater." Hoped for a thorough article on the benefits of skeuomorphism - got the age-old and intrinsically invalid excuse 'because it sells'. Windows isn't he best desktop operating system because it sells so well. Lady Gaga isn't the best artist because she sells a lot of records. This argument is never valid, has zero value, and adds nothing to what should be an interesting discussion.
E-mail Print r 0   80 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/kgo
Thread beginning with comment 540952
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Alfman
Member since:
2011-01-28

phoudoin,

But...you are doing it too...Argh!

Just as IOS isn't proof that people like skeumorphic UI, Android isn't proof that people don't like skeumorphic UI. Sales numbers by themselves CAN NOT prove such things.

Here's what I'm going to do. I've never attempted this before, but I've created a poll on surveymonkey. I urge everyone to fill it out.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R7JRTW9

I know we're not representative of users at large, but this is really what you'd have to do across the general population to find statistical correlation between device choices and specific device characteristics.

Edit: I failed to dogfood the survey, but I've fixed it now. Please follow the new link to the survey!

Edited 2012-11-03 20:01 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

phoudoin Member since:
2006-06-09

Android isn't proof that people don't like skeumorphic UI. Sales numbers by themselves CAN NOT prove such things.


That was not my point. Sorry for not making it clearer.

My point was that *if* "because it sells" is the only valid reason here, then the fact that a platform far less skeumorphic-addict than iOS have now taken its leading place is an evidence.
Either that "because it sells" is *not* that the only valid reason (as it's less selling than it used to be) or that there is no connection between skeumorphic and sells (as what most sale today is less skeumorphic than what used to sale the most).

My point is that is an evidence that there is no evidence between skeumorphic and sales.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

phoudoin,

Thanks for clarifying. I reluctantly agree, if you believed that sales correspond to skeumorphic preferences, then you should concede that competing sales are votes against skeumorphism. But the whole premise is so flimsy I don't want to go there.

Reply Parent Score: 2

zima Member since:
2005-07-06

My point was that *if* "because it sells" is the only valid reason here, then the fact that a platform far less skeumorphic-addict than iOS have now taken its leading place is an evidence.
[...]
My point is that is an evidence that there is no evidence between skeumorphic and sales.

hm, but OTOH Apple appstore has premumably by far the most app sales / profit ...and I suspect many of those apps have some noticeably skeumorphic UI.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

The results are in!
I didn't have a good place to put all the information together, so I created a blog and uploaded the data/charts there.

http://skeuomorphicsurvey.wordpress.com/

The data isn't surprising to me, but it might be surprising to others who thought that skeuomorphic tendencies are highly correlated to platform.

Hopefully in the future, we don't have posters claiming that owning a device implies demand for arbitrary features among users. Surveys are great tools for finding such correlations, so maybe we should try to use them more often? I'm always in favor of increasing objectivity through data!

BTW, anyone doing this in the future: avoid surveymonkey! Their "basic" account is useless because a 10 question limit is too low, and then they hold your data hostage ;)

Edited 2012-11-06 23:39 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2