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Comment by dclusin | Hacker News Reader

You're the second person that mentioned skeuomorphism. Could you please explain what it is and why it's a big todo? Most of my cursory google searches don't provide any particularly insightful definition of what it is. The blogs/rants usually just dive into why it's good or bad.

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Skeuomorphism has been interpreted two ways - as decorative elements (leather stitching), and in functionality that attempts to emulate a real world object (page flipping in an e-book).

The former is just a matter of aesthetic preference. Where skeuomorphism gets dangerous is in the latter case.

A perfect example is the horrible address book in OS X. It looks like a book, and therefore the user expects it to function like a book. Yet, it doesn't. It's this area of interaction design that has run afoul at Apple.

You give "page flipping in an e-book" as an example of dangerous skeuomorphism, but then cite Address Book as why it's bad. I'm a bit confused. I get why you don't like Address Book, but do you really think page flipping in an e-reader is bad too? If so, why do you think that?

The dichotomy is what's dangerous. Address Book looks like an book, so I'll try to interact with it like that. When that doesn't work, I get confused, angry, and it's generally a "failure" from a UX point of view.

Neither form of skeuomorphism is inherently bad, but it's easier to shoot yourself in the foot and ruin the UX when you move from decorative to functional.

Yes, I get the complaints about Address Book. But "page flipping in an e-book" is either really poorly written, or was not referring to Address Book to begin with, since Address Book is not an e-book. Hence my question.

Indeed, they were intended to be separate examples.

Problem with Adress Book is that it doesn't do page flipping, although it looks like a regular book.

Yes, I get why people don't like Address Book. But it's not an e-book or e-reader, so "page flipping in an e-book" is referring to something else (presumably, iBooks).

The point was that iBooks looks and behaves like a book, so it works even if you consider it distasteful; Address Book looks like one but behaves completely differently, leaving the user confused why this "object" doesn't work.

Because pages in an e-reader are not physical sheets bound together that require flipping over before you can see the page below.

If you can render the next page faster, then why fake a 'page turn' that takes time to animate.

It's the very definition of skeuomorphism.

The speed at which you can present text to the reader is not the end-all, be-all of the reading experience. In fact, the logical conclusion, of having zero transition whatsoever, is actually a pretty terrible experience. Why do you think people use smooth scrolling on their OS? Transitions are very valuable in producing a good user experience, whether it's a simple horizontal slide as the Kindle iOS app uses by default, or a page turn animation as iBooks uses by default. And if your argument is purely about the speed of the animation, there is nothing about a page turn that inherently requires it be slower than a horizontal slide.

Speaking personally, the iBooks page curl is one of my favorite features of any iOS app, period.

I don't know when it has been introduced, or even if it was always there and I didn't notice, but iBooks also supports continuous vertical scrolling and it IS much faster than looking at an animation that shows a page turn or a slide. The default mode, "page turn" doesn't make any sense. When I scroll through an ebook through the continuous scrolling, the text appears INSTANTLY, without a perceptible delay and since it's continuous scrolling, you don't go from a page to another, but you're always "in between". The concept of a "page" 1, "page 2", "page" 3 itself is no more. It's not a physical book, it doesn't need pages.

It's a matter of personal preference. A seemingly endless expanse of text seems daunting. I like the idea of pages, they break down the text into more manageable pieces.

Scroll mode was introduced in the just-released iBooks 3.0. And I personally think think a never-ending scroll of text is not a good way to read a book. Pagination is very helpful. I realize other people like scroll mode, but that's a personal preference.

This is a case where I recognize the absurdity of pages in e-books, and yet I still like to have them. Pages give you a sense of progress through the book, and act as a proxy for time spent. They're not necessary as part of the presentation of information, or even telling a story, but I do like having them there.

Maybe this is one example of skueomorphism done right, at least from my point of view. An anachronism that helps to make the user feel comfortable with the application, even though it isn't strictly necessary.

I think a better animation would be the page 'lifting' and swiping away quickly to reveal the page underneath. You still get the affordance of turning a page, but with a new and improved SwiftTurn digital method, and without the ponderous neccessity of fake flipping a page.

Ala swipe to unlock, or elastic scroll-ending. Use affordances, rather than limiting real world analogies.

By your latter definition, inertial scrolling with snap-back is skeuomorphic, and that is universally praised (and copied).

    Skeuomorphism is when a product imitates design elements
    functionally necessary in the original product design, but that
    becomes ornamental in the new product design

Examples: leather/paper/textile textures, hyper-realistic shading, analog controls/displays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

It's a design technique where the artist creates user interfaces that tries to mimick the real life object as much as possible.

Take for instance some of the apps on iOS. The have book bindings, rings, shadows, etc.

Skeuomorphism is a design approach where digital interfaces retain certain elements from their real-world counterparts. For example, the notes app on iOS looks like a real-world notepad, with its leather binding and yellow lined pages, including a torn paper effect along the top where previous pages have been pulled out of the pad. (Obviously these pages do not exist in the digital world, and therefore this design choice is an attempt to insert "realism" into the UI for the purposes of familiarity == skeuomorphism)

Essentially, trying to mimic real world (as in the physical world) applications and appearances. See Calendar and Contacts on iOS for a perfect example of skeuomorphism to the extreme.

Skeumorphism is when a user interface is stylized to look like real world materials (e.g. the Calendar.app on OSX is made to look like a leather desk calendar). The big argument toward it is that it either looks tacky or ruins usability.

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