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swiftcodertoday at 6:03 AM1 replyview on HN

> Good UX I believe doesn't mean that the implementation details are hidden, but conveyed in a way that is human-readable. You do not hide the machine from the man, but translate between them in a way that makes neither of them invisible.

This is where skeuomorphism used to be king before computers ate the world. In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked, so document readers presented as books. Everyone knew how a tape deck worked, so audio apps presented as tape decks. Floppy disk as save icon, etc

Unfortunately, the passage of time is inexorable, and by the late 2000s we had a lot of users who had never actually seen a tape deck/floppy disk. And the whole skeuomorphic project came crashing down.


Replies

andyroidtoday at 7:51 AM

Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. Still, they get it. Some icons outlive their era, some don’t.

> In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked

I hope that’s still the case!