Cutting Edge Design or a Beginner’s Mistake? – A Semiotic Inspection of iOS7 Icon Design Changes

Abstract

This work follows an ongoing discussion on the implications of skeuomorphic vs. flat design for interface design. Therefor two subsets of the standard iOS6 and iOS7 system icons were reviewed with a semiotic inspection method and compared against each other. The subsets were chosen according to an open online user rating. The findings suggest that missing information due to design simplification is a major issue for less user acceptance. This study shows that especially flat design affords a more careful focus on the semantics of the used elements.

A Comparative Study of Skeuomorphic and Flat Design from a UX Perspective

“…The study conducted by Li et al [22] concluded that flat icons scored higher on semantic scales such as "timeliness" and "simplicity", but they fared worse than realistic icons in "identity", "interest" and "familiarity" aspects. Stickel et al [23] investigated the implications of skeuomorphic vs. flat design for interface design and their findings suggest that flat design must tackle the problem of missing information due to simplification and should put careful focus on the semantics of the used elements. In addition, Burmistrov et al [24] stated that, according to their study, flat design means higher cognitive load, longer performance times and more errors and should be reconsidered using research findings and [25], in an eye tracking experiment comparing different kinds of clickability clues, argued that flat UI elements attract less attention and cause uncertainty due to weak signifiers that required more user effort.…”

Visualizing the Provenance of Personal Data Using Comics

“…Instead, they have a "flat" look without any textures, decorations, shadows, or three-dimensional elements. Flat design became popular in mobile UI and icon design [18] and despite of the fact that study results shows a higher cognitive load for searching flat icons [19], we stick to flat design in the first appraoch since we have use cases in mind, where the comics are incoporated into mobile applications. Table 1 gives an overview of the shapes we selected to reflect the different types of elements in the Quantified Self PROV model [6].…”

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

“…To interpret this result properly, it is necessary to analyse the semantics of all four icon versions in detail. [22,28] The skeuomorph Photos icon depicts a pile of real photographs, whereas the flat version is reduced to one prototypical and more abstract photograph. In this case, the higher iconicity [18] (more detail and therefore greater similarity between signifier and signified) of the skeuomorph icon leads to better recognition.…”