How Users and User Experiences Evolve–Do you use Skeuomorphism?

Apparently Kirby Ferguson has a pretty big following. I now get it. His latest piece, Everything Is A Remix Case Study: The iPhone is fantastic. His short video dives into some of the core influences that contributed to the smart phone as we know it today.

When the iPhone was introduced in 2007 it was a revolutionary device. Because the iPhone was such a big leap from what users were used to Apple approached the design by mapping new technologies to things that we already understand – real world objects like switches, latches, various buttons, album covers; audio was mapped to things like a typewriter or even an old rotary phone. This type of mapping is called “Skeuomorphism”.

With the iPhone at it core, multi-touch devices have become the norm. We, as users have become acclimated to the user-experience. The smartphone has evolved into it’s own “real world object”. As a result, today’s user-experience envelopes a cascade of deign influences. Much of the real-world references have been removed.

Multi-touch landscape of today is completely different from 2007. From Android to Microsoft’s Windows phone it’s apparent all of the latest designs have impacted and influenced one another… Ferguson’s short video gives us a nice snapshot of that.
#uxdesign #userinterface #uidesign #mobiledesign #iPhone