How and why the slim design won skeuomorph

In June last year Apple introduced iOS 7, in which Jonathan Ive and the company has radically re-designed user interface. Instead tsarstvovashego long skeuomorph 6 years, a new "apple" of the mobile operating system has received a flat design with all its attributes. It has been almost a year since the announcement of the sign, and now we can say with confidence - flat design wins. In this article we will try to understand how and why the plane won the "volume" and realism.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross - one of the famous American psychologist of Swiss origin, who received recognition for their psychological care approach dying patients. It's a pretty difficult task, you will agree, because help the man, who seemed to have nothing to help, it is practically impossible. In his concept of Kubler-Ross identified five stages of acceptance of death that accompany any terminally ill: denial, anger, trade, depression, and acceptance. And it seems, multi-million army of iOS users for this experienced the same thing.

Remember. The first comments after the presentation. "It just can not be!", "It's Apple's ruin," "Jobs turning in his grave", "All is lost!". What is not an accomplished denial of reality?

I can not help but to quote here from his own articleWhich was written a day after the presentation of iOS 7:

"Best Design - a design as small as possible", - said the famous industrial designer Dieter Rams. And he was right. Because in iOS 7 that same design too much. he intrusive. Why was all this necessary animation a la "nozzle" at the opening of the application? Why were needed this wallpaper? Why this whitish and transparent? Why is Helvetica font changed to Helvetica Neue?

Us - users could understand. For 6 years, we have become so accustomed to skeuomorph that such a design is considered a benchmark. Cited dozens of arguments from both the casual user as well as on the part of designers, which skeuomorph positioned as a "perfect" design. Do not forget about the magic of Steve Jobs, his words about the "icons that want to lick" and much more. All this is so eaten into our heads that we just could not bear to look at what is happening.

Negation was replaced by anger. And this anger was no less argumentative - many even decided to change the mobile platform and in the comments left their stinging "stay with their miserable" Seven ", and here I switched to Android radiant and happy every day. "

Those who stayed on iOS, began to conclude with a kind of a deal. Yes, this is just terrible icon settings, but the effect of parallax is so useless and translucency - worthless. But instead I get a set of the best apps of the App Store, «apple" ecosystem. Then it seemed to deal with the "death", they say, is the inevitable horrible reality, but the reality of my best no one offered. He added fuel to the fire and frankly crude the final version of iOS 7 with a huge number of bugs and errors.

Naturally, such a "deal" and the argument could not but lead to the most depressed. Astute readers, I am sure, have seen a direct analogy between iOS 7 and the release of the concept of the "five stages of acceptance of death." And then comes the depression... acceptance. And it happened.

And there was not just a decision. A realization that such a radical change of image has gone only benefit. Now the vast majority of iOS 7 users are glad that happened. After all, slim design is not only refreshed appearance, but also brought in iOS order.

Instead of the motley halophytes, which was earlier in the iOS 2-6, when a part of the application was the old "skeovormfichnym" design, second - it is flat, and the third - with some his own, we have a single visual style for all applications, both system and party.

Yes, it took months to ensure that the most popular iOS-app received an update. But I am sure that on any other platform, this problem simply did not dare to be in such a short time.

Over the past year "flat" design is not just made the order - it has become the standard. Look at digital design today - it is flat to the bone (or just do not have time to become). And this standard is adopted by everyone.

It is interesting to see how Google ponemnogo modifies your Android 4.x, summarized in 4.4 KitKat interface is de facto no longer what it was in 4.0. And, of course, it has become more flat

Yes, the first was Microsoft with its Metro UI, But Microsoft are incredulous. Moreover, both users and developers. Look at the lion's share of Windows-based applications - nothing fundamental has changed in them. Web sites do not become "tiled" or flat because of Microsoft. Redmondovtsy not specify a standard, though, and were the first. Although it's been a long time, much longer than since iOS 7 release to date.

Obviously, the next battleground for Apple - it's OS X. Now kupertinovtsy must bring order to the desktop, and judging by the way they solved this problem on mobile devices, they have something really cool.