Skeumorphism vs Flat Design

This video is part of the Bachelor Thesis I of Lukas Hofstätter. In his Bachelor Thesis he determined which Software Style is more effective for functional software - Skeumorphism or Flat Design.

The video should give a short overview over the experiment and the result.

[VoodooGMusic]

It is scientifically proven, that people living around buldings that have only minimalistic design and lack texture on their facades, tend to be more depressed, than people looking around beautiful aesthetic buildings.
You glance over a flat facade and only focus on what is functionally important, this is efficient, but cold and emotionless, it makes you sad.
If you look at something with details and beautiful design, you are happier, you see shapes that remind you of nasture.
Humans are programmed to appreciate beautiful things, because what we consider beautiful stems from what was once essential or benefitial to our survival.
I would argue that user interfaces are no diffrent.
Skeumorphic design inspires and makes us happy, whereas flat design is purely based on function and efficiency. The 2 seconds of efficiency here when using an app for the first time are in my opinion not worth the significant emotional impact that flat design has over a long period of time.
Is it a coincidence that people have reported being more sad after skeumorphism has somehow gone out of fashion and was replaced with flat design?
No one asked for this, the designers of major companies just did it to save time, and everyone followed.
Many people complained, and I am still complaining.
We have more than enough processing power to make virtual things beautiful, so we should do it.

[Warm]

I hope sometime in the future Skeuomorphism makes a comeback.all the flat stuff is ugly and hard on our eyes which were not made to look at single colors 24/7 but at a much wider variety of them

[GodFury]

The reason why Skeumorphism it takes a bit more time because we stop to admire the beauty of it
Flat - just let's over it fast as possible, so we can move away from these souless boring squares

[orhoushmand]

Flat design is very boring for me, the last version of Windows with a good design is Windows 7 and I was sad when I realized that Windows 8 and later versions of Windows are not as skeumorphic as Windows 7 and older ones. Unfortunately, other companies were drawn after Microsoft and made similar boring flat designs too and made damages to the user's experience. All I hope is that the skeumorphic design will come back soon and Windows and other softwares will look good again.

[blankearth]

I prefer Skeuomorphic design. One of things that I noticed back in the iOS 6 days is that the skeuomorphic design made things feel like they were going to be just as good or even better to the actual real life thing or place that
the design was mimicking. It brought a feeling of being more connected to, and part of, the world around us where as flat design looks more separate from the world. Another interesting point of view is that Skeuomorphic design made things look like there’s more to it than just by how it looks. Like the exterior design of the iPhone for example, it looks simplistic, but when you turn on the screen and see the home screen, the skeuomorphic design made the iPhone look like there was much more to it than just by how it looks on the outside of the iPhone. The current flat design takes that away because it’s mimicking the iPhone’s exterior design.
“Design, like many disciplines, is about a diversity of approaches as soft solutions rather than hard truths. It’s a spectrum, not an either-or decision about whether to skeu or not to skeu.”
—John Maeda

[misatzu]

0:45 There is really _nothing_ "beautiful" about lazy flat design ... it's just oversimplified to the degree of pure ugliness.
Also it's "trendy" and will therefore eventually die (by being replaced with more symbiotic and intuitive variations of it).
Skeuomorphism, on the other hand, will never die and always survive in one or the other form like in Material design.

[cal]

i have no idea how to use garageband after ios 7

[tom]

I hate flat design, most apps look identical nowadays due to the bland uniform style all apps use nowadays.

[cal]

Dear Apple,

This is a message on behalf of all iOS, tvOS, and macOS users. The vast majority of us believe skeuomorphism is the better design. Flat design hurts mental health, the reasoning for this is that people living in grey, flat places are proven to have much less happiness levels than people living around beautiful places. The current design is something that has impacted me along with many others. This flat design is just an excuse for developers to be lazy. Please add a setting for skeuomorphism or put skeuomorphism back in completely. Please, for mental health, happiness, and even more, re-implement skeuomorphism.

[BRBallin]

Flat design is the best! We're seeing more and more flat designs for logos and UI