Affordances and Metaphors Revisited: Testing Flat vs. Skeuomorph Design with Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

Abstract

The arguments about skeuomorph versus flat design have so far been based on comparatively lit-tle evidence and were largely dominated by strong opinions voiced in informal online media. This paper presents an a/b-study to assess the strengths and weaknesses of these design approaches with the distinct user groups applying them. First results gave no clear indications of which ap-proach could be considered the best. Surprisingly, however, older and inexperienced users experi-enced more problems using “naturalistic” skeuomorph interfaces than abstract flat interfaces. As a result, the concept of skeuomorph design enabling the use of real-world knowledge to enhance novice user’s learnability is cast into doubt.

Contributors

David Oswald

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 1-11

Affiliations

[1 ] Hochschule für Gestaltung

Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.57

Copyright statement: © Oswald. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Proceedings of British HCI 2018. Belfast, UK.

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 32

Conference location: Belfast, UK

Conference date: 4 - 6 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction Conference

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.57

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing