Skeuomorphs are material metaphors, informational appendixes with no real function. Fragments of nostalgia, floating around, dishing out little whispers of comfortability.
From leather wrapping and stitches in cutting-edge apps for the iphone to a handle to small to be grabbed, skeuomorphs are the thalidomide babies of industrial and interface design. They provide reassurance that not all has changed, or, if all has indeed changed, one can still cling to memories and try to negate change.
In the end, some objects go full circle. Floppy disks were first a storage method represented on interfaces and now, even with the functional object gone, they linger on nearly every software interface.
This post was made possible by Jonathan Puckey. Guest post by Gui Machiavelli.
This entry was written by , posted on February 9, 2012 at 5:08 pm, filed under Digitalization, Various. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Oliver Richenstein has raised presented a similar perspective
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/designing-for-ipad-reality-check/