While I understand the author's case for expressive design, I think it's important to use the correct logic to make an evaluation.
And the base of that logic is in the premise, which in the author's case is that expressive design, using simulacra of real life, somehow gives a user a better understanding of the actual use of the digital object.
I believe that logic to be fundamentally flawed. As someone here already said, humans have been trained to look at symbols far less time than they were trained to look at real objects. As such, there exists a fundamental divide between perception of a symbol and the perception of an object (even if it's a simulacra, not a real one). Marshall McLuhan outlined it best in his Gutenberg Galaxy, by separating letters (cold medium) from drawings (hot medium). As he was saying, perception accuracy varies between this hot and cold mediums, with hot having the highest accuracy, and cold the lowest.
Now, given this perceptual situation, I contend that given the nature of the digital medium, any kind of symbol used within it will be perceived as intrinsically cold by a given generation/cohort of users. I willingly shift my attention from the symbols to the users because I believe that they should be the true focus of the discussion. And the reality is that the very nature of the digital world and the understanding of its functionality and laws is a very high barrier to consumption for a lot of users.
My argument is way longer, but for the sake of simplicity, let me say just this: I believe that design should focus on advancing the understanding of the object that one uses. As such, I do not believe that expressive interface design holds all the necessary keys to that advancement, being that, in its intrinsic nature what it does is to simplify matters by simulating objects that the user is already familiar with. There are only so many ways to use a hammer and the representation of a hammer is contextually limited.
Minimalism is a temporary finish line. As the author noted, painters and sculptors in modern art have trekked across a very large conceptual space before arriving at minimalistic design approaches. Did this temporary finish line stop development? No, it generated a diverse set of reactions, with some painters re-approaching realism from different directions and some others exploring the limits of minimalist symbols.
I believe that "flat" design is just a way-point, and that having reached this way-point, there are myriad avenues now open to explore more in depth the semantic interconnection between symbols and humans.
And the base of that logic is in the premise, which in the author's case is that expressive design, using simulacra of real life, somehow gives a user a better understanding of the actual use of the digital object.
I believe that logic to be fundamentally flawed. As someone here already said, humans have been trained to look at symbols far less time than they were trained to look at real objects. As such, there exists a fundamental divide between perception of a symbol and the perception of an object (even if it's a simulacra, not a real one). Marshall McLuhan outlined it best in his Gutenberg Galaxy, by separating letters (cold medium) from drawings (hot medium). As he was saying, perception accuracy varies between this hot and cold mediums, with hot having the highest accuracy, and cold the lowest.
Now, given this perceptual situation, I contend that given the nature of the digital medium, any kind of symbol used within it will be perceived as intrinsically cold by a given generation/cohort of users. I willingly shift my attention from the symbols to the users because I believe that they should be the true focus of the discussion. And the reality is that the very nature of the digital world and the understanding of its functionality and laws is a very high barrier to consumption for a lot of users.
My argument is way longer, but for the sake of simplicity, let me say just this: I believe that design should focus on advancing the understanding of the object that one uses. As such, I do not believe that expressive interface design holds all the necessary keys to that advancement, being that, in its intrinsic nature what it does is to simplify matters by simulating objects that the user is already familiar with. There are only so many ways to use a hammer and the representation of a hammer is contextually limited.
Minimalism is a temporary finish line. As the author noted, painters and sculptors in modern art have trekked across a very large conceptual space before arriving at minimalistic design approaches. Did this temporary finish line stop development? No, it generated a diverse set of reactions, with some painters re-approaching realism from different directions and some others exploring the limits of minimalist symbols.
I believe that "flat" design is just a way-point, and that having reached this way-point, there are myriad avenues now open to explore more in depth the semantic interconnection between symbols and humans.