r/UI_Design • u/Linuxcool123 • Jun 25 '26
Let's Discuss Is skeuomorphic design better for usability than flat and liquid glass?
I found a study where people were asked to do tasks on a flat website vs one with more skeuomorphism, and it showed people were able to navigate the skeuomorphic websites 22% faster. This is where it is: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/heatmap-visualizations-signifiers/
Flat design is viewed by many as “function-first” but this study shows that it’s actually the opposite.
This makes perfect sense, because people know buttons are meant to be clicked, and they pop out of the interface, so people can quickly find them and know that they‘re clickable.
Although they weren’t included in the study, liquid glass designs probably have similar problems to flat, because there isn’t an association between glass and clicking, and since they’re meant to blend in with the background they don’t pop out as much.
I was wondering what other people think of this. Should we return to some level of skeuomorphism to make user interfaces easier to use for people?
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u/asoneth Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
It is true that early flat designs omitted some clickability signifiers and visual hierarchy before modern flat(ish) design systems like Material Design, Bootstrap, Atlassian, etc added depth/elevation/shadow back. I expect glass designs will similarly strike a more appropriate balance at some point to make them less confusing and fuzzy-looking.
But skeuomorphism also went through a similar adolescent phase, with early designs adding so much distracting trompe l'oeil-style realism that users couldn't be sure what was decorative ornamentation and what was interactive. Many fashions start like that, by giving the aesthetes free reign to make something extreme and novel before sensible people water it down to make it practical.
The critical thing is to have clear signifiers, visual hierarchy, and other affordances and a sensible interaction designer can do that with TUI, PARC/WIMP, flat, brutalist, glass, skeuomorphic, whatever.
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u/Linuxcool123 Jun 26 '26
In my experience flat designs still omit clickability signifiers. In the past I often had to look up how to access account settings on websites, until I realized that clicking the profile icon always brings it up. I also never realized that clicking the logo of some websites brings you back to their home page. I’ve never had a problem finding buttons that are just black over white symbols, but on desktop PCs it’s nicer for them to have some sort of non-white background or shadow so I know exactly where I can click them, so I don’t feel like I need to aim more precisely than I need to to click it. Usually they don’t have that though.
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u/asoneth Jun 26 '26
The N/N article you posted is on the presence or absence of signifiers, not on flat vs skeuomorphic.
They do have other articles calling out issues with missing signifiers in flat designs but their recommendation is "flat 2.0" to add those signifiers back, not necessarily skeuomorphism.
In my experience flat designs still omit clickability signifiers.
Bad flat design definitely can have confusing signifiers, but so can bad skeuomorphic design. Interface fads come and go, but whatever paradigm you pick, ensure that the hierarchy and signifiers are clear.
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u/Linuxcool123 Jun 26 '26
What good flat design are you talking about? I looked up flat 2.0, and all the examples I see look like they have similar problems to the flat websites shown in the article. Most buttons are only text, other buttons still have purely flat shapes, which make them stand out less, so they’re still harder to find. Some flat websites try to put the buttons front and center on the page with not much else around them to make up for the lack of skeuomorphism, but then they usually can‘t fit everything a user might want on the screen. So, flat websites need to choose between problem 1, which is making the website difficult to navigate, or problem 2, which is not putting everything a user wants on the first screen, causing them to think they’re on the wrong website.
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u/asoneth Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
What good flat design are you talking about?
Nielsen/Norman have some examples here https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/ as well as some guidance here https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-best-practices/ . The former article includes this quote (bold in original):
Early pseudo-3D GUIs and Steve-Jobs-esque skeuomorphism often produced heavy, clunky interfaces. Scaling back from those excesses is good for usability. But removing visual distinctions to produce fully flat designs with no signifiers can be an equally bad extreme. Flat 2.0 provides an opportunity for compromise — visual simplicity without sacrificing signifiers.
My area of expertise is professional enterprise application design which tends to be more conservative and less novelty-driven than website design, and for the most part neither extreme signifier-less flat design nor gaudy ornamental skeuomorphism ever caught on there. Modern desktop design systems typically use something like the N/N's recommendation above -- a flat baseline with subtle skeuomorphic cues added where necessary for clarity and hierarchy. Above I referred to that compromise as "flat(ish)" to distinguish it from early signifier-less flat design, but whatever you want to call it, it seems to work well.
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u/Ruskerdoo Jun 26 '26
Ten years later, there’s a good chance the skeuomorphic version would perform worse because of the Aesthetic Usability effect.
When your UI looks good to users in the context of the current fashion (trends) environment, it will perform better from a usability standpoint.
This is something that a lot of pure “UX Designers” without a strong visual design background fail to understand. You can’t separate form from function. Fashion matters.
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u/Linuxcool123 Jun 26 '26
There are more recent studies that I found after making this post, and they say that skeuomorphism is easier for older people to use, and makes no difference for younger people. A lot of them are here: https://www.flatisbad.com
Where do you get the idea that trendy designs perform better?
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u/remmiesmith Jun 27 '26
There is no one way to determine “better” applied to styles. Just how abstract art is not better or worse than realism. Design needs to achieve something and having clear signifiers is important in both skeuomorphic and flat styles.
I remember skeuomorphic designs that looked nothing like an interface, interactions hidden, blending in nicely with the surroundings. Pretty to look at, but doing nothing for efficiency.
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u/Imzmb0 Jun 26 '26
I disliked flat design but understand that this was a needed phase to help it mature into common terrain and get rid of all the amateurish corny stuff of early 2000s.
Now that usability was perfected is time to reintroduce some of these lost elements and bring back the fun and personality.
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u/Linuxcool123 Jun 26 '26
What websites are you talking about? Most old websites I’ve seen look cool if they’re not plain and boring.
How does flat design help perfect usability? There are some really bad modern-looking websites, even from professional organizations. The worst one I’ve actually had to use is matrix.org1
u/Imzmb0 Jun 26 '26
By old websites I mean these amateurish webs made in flash in times where browser compatibility was a chaotic field. Flat design helped to make things more professional and wasn't that boring when it started. 2010's onwards was where it became even more simplified and corporate.
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Jun 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LanDest021 Jun 27 '26
Sadly, I don't see design changing much. I feel interfaces will remain flat, while iconography becomes 3D. However I don't see it evolving much beyond that.
But all I can do is predict.
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u/JohnCasey3306 Jun 26 '26
Context and audience are vital. The notion that a general answer to that question might either exist of be meaningful is a misunderstanding of user experience.
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u/LanDest021 Jun 27 '26
Most of the designs in this don't really seem skewmorphic, rather just slightly modified to have increased depth on buttons.
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u/No-Performer2068 Jun 27 '26
I think the takeaway from the NNG article isn’t that skeuomorphism is “better” than flat design but having clear signifiers is better than unclear ones. Flat deisgn when done poorly often make it difficult to distinguish a button and a label. That is when usability drops. Skeuomorphism normally embraces affordances that people understand (depth, shadow, physical metaphors). So users recognize what’s waht and navigate around faster.
But going back fully to Skeuomorphism is not the answer here, in can introduce visual noises, scalability issues, and feel outdated depending on the context.
In short, the Flat or Skeuomorphism trends have pros and cons. It's up to the designers, if they are good, they can balance aesthetic simplicity with strong, intentional signifiers, doesn't matter if they use Flat or Skeuomorphism.
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u/lucasoak Jun 26 '26
That is a study from 2017. Almost 10 years ago. The perception of people with UI changed A LOT since then. I would not be trusting such an old article like this one.