The Flat Life

Flat design has kicked the door in. It wants attention. It wants you to do things its way. Microsoft was really the first to largely implement a flat design standard with their metro design on Windows Phone. A lot of the concepts and principles are starting to be borrowed by Apple and Google as well. Is this because it actually provides a better, cleaner user experience; or are we just thirsty for change?

I was pretty upset when iOS 7 was revealed back in June. Not upset in the sense a Facebook user typically claims they’re quitting Facebook every time they change something, but upset in the sense I thought changes were being made just for the sake of it. Following suit with everything your competition does is not always the best way to approach to how you improve your product… heck sometimes ignoring things they do can help you focus on things that are really important.

We see shifts in design like this all the time. After the iPhone was announced in 2007, we saw a mobile movement unlike any other. Mostly because no other mobile platform had really fostered that need for a quality experience that Apple demanded. We saw it again with the iPad and numerous Android tablets. Responsive design became a must-have for many web agency clients. The newest kid on the block is flat design.

I think that its benefits can also be its pitfalls. Flat design hinges on this necessity that content is king. You shouldn’t need to add glitter to something for it to work the way it should. If it doesn’t work, who cares how it looks? Right? Well… sort of. Textures, gradients, shadows, embosses help provide context, direction and barriers.

This flat design trend isn’t misguided or wrong; it’s just being adopted in areas that don’t demand it, and it’s users fear the change more than they want to try and understand it.

Maybe this will be the best thing we never asked for.