Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Going Flat

Microsoft’s Metro (or “modern”) design language has helped start a trend away from more realistic visual designs, towards design languages that eschew overuse of textures, 3D effects, and other such details. Apple’s iOS 7, along with Android versions launched around that same time, are following that trend. People sometimes call this style of design “flat” design, although this is a bit of a misnomer, since these design languages still make use of shadows to create multi-layered visual designs.

Removing some of the extraneous or outdated visual metaphors from our operating systems was perhaps long overdue. However, some of the design decisions made in the name of “flat” design overshot their goal by a fair margin. Apple, for example, ...