Why Apple Products Feel So Intuitive
Flashback: Year of the iPhone
It was 2007, and I was around 10 back then but I still remember when my dad brought the new iPhone home. I was excited as he unboxed it, peeled the plastic and then turned it on for the first time. I waited patiently — I wanted get my hands on the coveted gadget and finally see for myself what all the fanfare was about. But when I finally got to use it, I remember being thoroughly confused.
If you asked 10 year old me what I liked about the iPhone, I wouldn’t know how to answer. Logically, it didn’t make sense for anyone to like. It had no games, the camera on it was worse than my second hand Nokia and it just felt — limited.
And really, the iPhone’s success is bizarre. At launch it wasn’t that great. It was:
- Not capable of supporting 3rd party apps
- Missing basic features like copy/paste
- Considerably more expensive than any of the other phones on the market
What was was it about the iPhone? Why was such a radical yet limited innovation such a success?
“The iPhone was a harmonious blend of hardware, software, great design that simplified the user experience”
This is the typical, unsatiating answer plastered on the first page of a google search. True but painfully obvious. I want to dig deeper. There is a fundamental ingredient that made the early iPhones (and really, many Apple products) so successful — and that is…
Skeuomorphism
Skeuomorphism — or a skeuomorph is an object that mimics the design or feel of their real world counterpart. In the digital realm, the definition expands quite a bit. But first, an example.
Look at the “grille” on one of the early Tesla cars.
Front grilles in gas vehicles serve a technical purpose. Air flows in to cool the engine. Electric car motors don’t have that problem so why is there a grille-looking thing there?
Well, it’s simply because people expect it to be there. We tend to like things that are familiar and seeing them provides comfort — and so it’s purpose shifts from being technical to aesthetically functional.
Similarly, Apple used realistic skeuomorphs throughout their early iPhone operating system to make the interface feel familiar. Here’s a few examples of early iOS skeuomorphs and their real world counterparts:
When all you’re doing is touching glass, it becomes important to compensate for the lack of a tactile or spatial experience. Apple capitalized on our existing mental models of various real world objects in order to orient us to a new interface.
And look, skeuomorphic design isn’t an iPhone exclusive, nor is it an Apple exclusive. We’ve had skeuomorphism in digital interfaces for decades. Folders and files on your computer are logical skeuomorphs that communicate hierarchy. The recycling bin on a Windows PC is a skeuomorph that helps you conceptualize the action of deleting. In fact, even your early Nokia phone menu was skeuomorphic.
So what made iPhone an exceptional exception?
Attention to detail.
Apple’s skeuomorphism was exceptional because it not only captured the aesthetic of its real world counterparts but also a certain magic and emotion.
Emotional skeuomorphism
I bought a Kindle last year. I was really excited about being able to carry tens of books without carrying tens of books. And it was a great first week. The second week, however, was quite average. The pleasure of reading on a Kindle was deteriorating. Tapping the screen and watching the page refresh to the next felt a little soulless. And despite it’s many logistical benefits, it just wasn’t a book.
Books have special qualities to them. The countless paperbook-evangelists on Reddit will convince you of it. The scent of the pages, their gradual caramelization and perhaps my favorite quality — the sensation of progress as you flip to the next page. These are qualities that hold tremendous emotional value — it’s the reason many people, whether they know it or not, won’t convert.
Apple knew this and more importantly, respected it. Let’s take a look at the debut of ‘iBooks’.
Opening it up, you were presented this skeuomorphic bookshelf, detailed with shadows and wooden textures. When you open a book, the pages are stacked on each other on either side — it emulates the thickness of the book and gives you context of your place in the story. And lastly, the page flip animation. An interaction skeuomorph that’s so iconic that it perisists to this day.
These small details create enjoyment in the digital reading medium — more so when you compare it to the Kindle alternative.
Another example of this is the old YouTube TV icon. Remember that? The icon was skeuomorphic because it communicated: “Watch videos here!” Pretty straightforward. But why was the icon a TV from the 1950s? Surely we would have understood it all the same if they used a plasma TV or something more modern.
It’s because the 1950s was the decade of TVs. Television programming had a huge impact on the world and culture and the TV was one of the most tremendously important consumer technologies at the time. Perhaps we don’t can’t recall those facts but we do recognize the immense cultural value through our shared knowledge of history — It evokes a greater emotional response than a plasma TV ever could.
It’s the cumulative effect of these small choices that make all the difference. It’s why, in the early years, Google, Samsung, LG and many others couldn’t come close to Apple’s user experience in spite of having access to more advanced technologies and experience. In fact, I’d argue Apple is steps ahead of the competition even today.
On that note, today our phones look quite different. Our software no longer emulates wooden shelves, felt tables or stitched leather. Today, design is more ‘flat’. So that begs the question…
Is Apple’s Skeuomorphism dead?
No and if you hear people say so, they probably don’t understand skeuomorphism. When iOS 7 came out with a ‘flatter’ design, people exclaimed that ‘skeuomorphism was dead’, when it was really just a design update.
Apple’s SVP of Design at the time, explained the update.
“We understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits. So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally.”
Letting go of some of those hyper realistic visual metaphors allowed Apple to do new interesting things with the interface.
Although less apparent, skeuomorphs still persist today. Look at the notes app:
Also, try taking a picture and you have a shutter sound (That’s right — skeuomorphs can also be auditory). Start typing on your keyboard; the keyboard clicks sound an awful lot like a typewriter. Perform a transaction with Apple Pay and you’ll hear a cash register ‘cha-ching!’.
Skeuomorphism is still here, and Apple’s still really good at translating real world experiences over to a digital medium.
Takeaway
Apple’s brand of skeuomorphism is unique because of the respect the designs pay to not only the aesthetic of the real world object, but also the experiences and culture associated with them.
And I believe skeuomorphism has been the ace up Apple’s sleeve ever since the introduction of the graphical user interface in the Macintosh. Skeuomorphism is here to stay.
