When I saw my first F-150 Lightning in the parking lot in Dorset this summer, I was shocked at how big it was; our Subaru parked behind it wasn't as high as the tailgate. And the front end! It's my shoulder height with the big hood enclosing... nothing. Where once there was an engine there, now it is a 'frunk' or front trunk, 400 litres of air, with a lid that blocks visibility of little people like me in front, destroys aerodynamics, and is significantly more likely to kill the people who get hit by it, sending them under the truck rather than over the hood.
The textbook example of skeuomorphism is the original iPhone, which was introduced with notebooks that looked like paper and magazines that came on wooden bookshelves. Apparently, Steve Jobs felt this was important to help us get used to the newfangled device, but those are just images. As Thompson notes, 'skeuomorphs also wind up hobbling the new invention. Because skeuomorphs are based on the physical limits of an old-fashioned device, they get in the way of a designer taking full advantage of the new realm.'
My favourite example of how skeuomorphs hobble is the digital camera. Its predecessor, the film camera, was designed around film rolling out of one spool, across the back of the lens, and then rolled up again. In a Single Lens Reflex (SLR), the thing on top was a pentaprism directing the light from a mirror that flipped up when taking the picture. The camera is designed around the moving film and the light path rather than ergonomics or usability; we had to adapt to it because of the properties of film and light. When the digital camera revolution hit, Nikon and other camera companies developed des
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