Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Metro simply defaults to text as the basis of communication between the software and the user. The advantage is that this allows for localization both in linguistic and cultural terms - "save" translates into multiple languages and is recognizable by people who have never seen a 3.5" floppy disk or who are coming to computers for the first time.

It's not that designers cannot round corners or simulate woodgrain to their heart's content. It's just that it isn't necessary for developing software which fits within the overall design aesthetic...a designer can even use serifed fonts if they wish, it will just be more work than using the standard and probably to little benefit for the user.

Where Metro excels is in allowing the use of branding to communicate with users - e.g. Twitter and Facebook applications are recognizable by their logos - and Metro's simple aesthetic favors designers who can develop similar iconography for their products.

"save" translates into multiple languages and is recognizable by people who have never seen a 3.5" floppy disk or who are coming to computers for the first time.

Even further than that, the "Document" icon that looks like a page is becoming more and more foreign, as programs shift toward single purpose apps that handle all of their own data. It makes sense to people who are used to the paradigm of "paper" documents living in "folders" in their computer, but if you've never seen a directory or your app doesn't expose individual data files, a whole lot of other traditional icons start to turn meaningless.

You make a good argument for skeuomorphism: single purpose apps should reflect the task they're purposed for. :)

If anything, I think I make an argument against it. You can make an app look like a physical address book, but I've never seen anyone use a physical address book. You could make a YouTube player that looks like a television too, but to what end? Pretty soon, people won't have seen televisions that look like anything more than a screen with a thin black bezel.

And as we move toward more unified gadgets that a lot of people have grown up with, what do we do? Make a mail client that looks like a smartphone because that's how people read mail? An eReader app that looks like a physical Kindle?

I don't think a leather address book is any more valid than a 3.5" floppy save icon. A single purpose app for contact management should reflect that it's a database of contacts, sure. Should it reflect that it's a book? Eh.

Unfortunately, the cognitive cost of reading and understanding "save" versus a floppy disk icon is much higher. My brain has to slow down and read/comprehend the text. Icons exist for a reason. Even if I don't understand a language, I know that a stop sign is always red octogon/circle with white letters.

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