I came across an interesting word this morning that I hadn't heard before. Skeuomorphism. It piqued my interest and so I looked it up and looked at the context in which this word was used. It came out of an article that I was reading about iOS 7. The question that was asked: "Skeuomorphism is (finally) dead: So what is Apple's next design move?" The article was written in November 2012, much before iOS 7 came out, which made it interesting because I was looking at some of the articles connected with iOS 7 (the new operating system used with iPhones). For those of you not using iPhones, I promise that this is not a hard sell on iPhone products or Apple products. A lot of people were talking about the move that Jonathan Ive, who is head of design at Apple, has made to move away from skeuomorphism, a move away from what was so close to Steve Jobs' heart – that the look and feel must resemble something that is well known. If you have looked at some of the things on an iPhone, you will see that the games app had a pool table with green felt that looked so real, or the iCal, which has a torn page, or the faux leather stitching. All of this comes under this design trend that is called skeuomorphism, which really means skeuos = tool and morph = to shape. In other words, to use tools to shape a design.
But as I looked at this word and tried to understand it in the context of the iPhone, I realized that it had to do with connecting people to something that they could understand. Therefore you had the games app nestled in a pool table, which gave you the visual that it had to do with games. For many years, Windows used a floppy disc for the 'Save' option. Today, for many, the floppy disc is completely redundant. Some have never heard of it, much less seen one. But that became the icon or the tool to connect one into the past as they tried to move into the future. In this new operating system, that feel has been taken out and it is a huge shift for Apple that they have gone from a 3-D feel to just a 2-D feel.
I thought about how skeuomorphism is used in various areas: pilots see a button that has a lever to show that what was originally a lever used to operate something is now no longer available or needed, and now only a button is used. It got me thinking about how we move between the past, the present and the future. As iPhone was trying to bring in new things, it was trying to let people know that they were not just moving into new things leaving a vacuum between what was and what is or is going to be, but they anchored it in the look and feel so that you felt comfortable with new things.
But it seems that they have now moved away from that people don't need those kinds of associations to let them connect with what they are doing in the present or where they are moving people into the future. All this was very interesting to me. The Economist has an article quoting Gadi Amit from NewDealDesign where he says, "These metaphors that were, in the early days of the computing revolution, relevant to assisting people in bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds, are no longer necessary. Our culture has changed. We don't need translation of the digital medium in mechanical real-life terms. It's an old-fashioned paradigm."
Interestingly, in today's world, high-resolution smart phones are capable of almost near-perfect photorealism. So the move away from 3-D back to 2-D seems to negate all that can come from it. This also made me think that sometimes we flog a dead horse; we've moved on and yet we continue to use some of the old paradigms that were necessary five or ten years back but are not necessary anymore today. I wonder, as I look from an application standpoint, what are we hanging on to in the past that really doesn't need to be part of what we need to convince people that we are moving forward. I've always thought that to move forward, you have to have your eyes in front looking ahead to things that are not there, but one hand behind holding on to people so that you can connect with them and lead them to where you want to go. That's what a visionary is. But sometimes we can get so engrossed in trying to hold people that we forget to look ahead. We're just using old redundancies and getting mired in them.
I thought as I looked at this word skeuomorphism, whether the tools that we were using to shape what we were doing, were redundant. What is it that you and I use in our personal lives as we try to infuse vigor and energy into our teams? What do we use that may be redundant today that are not connecting any more? People have no idea what we are talking about because we are using examples that we've moved on from.
So I thought that I would talk to you about that this morning and ask you, as I kept asking myself – what are the redundancies and irrelevant things that I am still using to get people in the team, around me, to get to the place where we ought to be, but I am not able to communicate it because of the kind of language, the skeuomorphism that is being used that is no longer relevant? So like any kind of dead wood that needs to be taken off and we don't need to carry, today might be a good day to see whether we need to drop some of those things, whether we need to think afresh, we need to understand our world a little better, so that we can communicate more easily what it is that we see ahead and how we can get people to follow us there without using things that are redundant.
Skeuomorphism – a design word! But I think it's a life word for us too as we look at the tools that we need and ask the question – are they relevant? Then look to see how we can morph or shape the people or the dreams that we have so that they are the right tools to get the desired shape.
That's my thought for you on this Tuesday morning and as always, I rely on the wisdom of God to bring that perspective into our everyday lives. Allow me to pray with you this morning.
Almighty God. On each one of the precious ones on this call, would you give us wisdom to be able to know whether we are using redundant things, redundancies in our lives that are not allowing us to move forward but are in fact, holding us back. Show us those things. Show us how to think with fresh ideas and see the world to be able to move ahead to the goal that you have in store for each one of us. Give us that wisdom Almighty God, and we ask this prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.
• Olof Schybergson, Fjord. "Skeuomorphism is (finally) dead: So what is Apple's next design move?" http://gigaom.com/2012/11/03/skeumorphism-is-finally-dead-so-what-is-apples-next-design-move/
• Sean Madden, "Design Lessons from iOS 7" http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/design-lessons-from-ios-7/
• Quote by Designer Gadi Amit in "Will Apple's Tacky Software-Design Philosophy cause a Revolt?" found at: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670760/will-apples-tacky-software-design-philosophy-cause-a-revolt
• Jonathan Ive, Apple's design head: "Jony Ive: The Man Behind Aplle's Magic Curtain" http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/19/apple-jony-ive-craig-federighi/2834575/
• Skeuomorph definition: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Skeuomorphism
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