This is how Apple fooled you with the iPhone

Skeuomorphism is a design technique that Apple has applied to help users get used to the first iPhone. In this article you can read all about Apple’s tricks to make using the iPhone feel natural.

What is Skeuomorphism in the Apple iPhone?

Skeuomorphism is a term designers use when designing interfaces. The goal of this technique is to make the appearance of apps or other services resemble things that have long existed in real life.

A well-known example is the trash can icon that you use to delete your files. Even when you save a file, you have to deal with skeuomorphism, because the icon is a floppy disk (the predecessor of the USB stick).

Skeuomorphism makes the digital objects familiar by using concepts that you can recognize as a user. Of course, it won’t surprise you that Apple has been using skeuomorphism for a long time. In this article, we’ll show you a few examples and tell you why Apple doesn’t do this anymore.

What examples did we see with the iPhone?

The first versions of Apple’s operating system for the iPhone made extensive use of skeuomorphism. This is also why iOS was so intuitive to use by someone who had never used a touchscreen smartphone before.

First, Apple made sure the icons felt like physical buttons. They seemed 3D, you could kind of press them to open an app and you even got a little vibration when the press was successful. Once you opened an app on your iPhone, it was also packed with design choices to make it as easy as possible for you.

The ‘library’ app consisted of a bookcase where you could literally pick up books and browse. The calculator had exactly the same layout and shine as a real calculator. The icon and the use of the Notes app also reminded us of a real notepad.

It wasn’t all positive, of course. We from iPhoned for example, strongly disagree with the design of Game Center in iOS 6. Apple tried to make the game center look like a poker table, but in our opinion completely missed the point.

Apple: skeuomorphism becomes flat design

The users started to understand the usage and technology of iPhone. We got used to the touchscreen and to the iPhone. Gradually, these cluttered interfaces (with their inelegant glossy buttons) started to clutter the user experience. A sleeker design came into fashion.

In 2013, a few years after the death of Steve Jobs and the departure of iOS Vice President Scott Forstall, Apple introduced iOS 7 with a flat design. Apple’s iPhone lost skeuomorphism.

This design choice allowed for better scalability of the apps. The interface of the iPhone could be copied almost 1-to-1 to the iPad. This is how the designers of Apple realized a cleaner design. There was also now more room to experiment.

Finally, this flat design for less loading times. Everything had to be faster, so the user-friendly design had to make way for that too. In its place came the practical minimalist design.

Disadvantage of flat design in Apple products

We will explain the only drawback by means of an example. An iPad that you gave to your grandfather for his 85th birthday is hardly used. Your grandfather did not experience the transition we made to a trusting relationship with a mobile phone with a touchscreen. The transition to a flat design so it’s not just good.

Fortunately, there are still remnants stuck so that we do not completely forget this piece of history. You’ve probably never thought about this before, but a remnant from the skeuomorphism era has crept in so much that it will probably never go away. The sound the camera app makes when you shoot a photo mimics the actual shutter of a real camera.

The future of phone design: neumorphism

We also see that Apple designers are slowly starting to reintroduce the techniques of skeumorphism in the iPhone and the Mac. They don’t do this because they have to get users used to it, but because it’s trendy again.

There even appears to be a new movement that we can best describe as a love baby between flat design and skeuomorphism: het neumorphism† If you ask us, we think this is the best of both worlds.

It’s a given that apps and websites still need to be fast, especially since they need to rank high in search engines like Google. But the overuse of minimalist designs has also made some interfaces a bit boring for our taste. Fortunately, designers of the neumorphism play more with depth and color in their designs.

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