Skeuomorphism and the pull of mental models

All the news that’s fit to post

The New York Times was one of the first traditional media companies to recognize the growing significance of the phenomenon known formally as the World Wide Web. It decided early on to establish a presence in this new space, launching its first public site in January of 1996. Although it was a trailblazer in an unfamiliar medium, the actual layout would have looked familiar to a first-time visitor. The home page was designed to closely resemble the front page of the printed newspaper, down to the masthead and prominent references to classified advertisements, at the time the financial lifeblood of many journalistic enterprises.

The digital format unlocked by new web browsers promised as-yet unknown capabilities. How readers would engage with the content was hard to envision. Lacking an alternative model, the newspaper’s leadership took the obvious step of translating the experience of reading the physical Times to the virtual world.

Even publications that were expressly created for the internet took an approach that seems quaint when viewed from today’s vantage point. A few months after NYTimes.com went live, a new online-only news magazine called Slate was launched with funding from an unusual patron, Microsoft.1 Shaped around the conventions of a paper magazine, it was actually designed to be printed out at home and then read much as a conventional publication would be. In its layout it aped a print magazine’s sections, and it followed their weekly, staccato publishing schedules—all despite the fact that the medium had no constraints of printing, mailing, or article length.

These were early internet examples of a phenomenon called skeuomorphism, in which objects in one medium are crafted to imitate the forms of a different one, usually a predecessor.

This can happen when an innovation is so far beyond common experience that one’s existing mental models can’t fully comprehend the change. Skeuomorphs utilize references to how things currently are, in order to help bridge the transition to what they might be. Their history goes back much further than the digital era.

Building bridges

Architecture is especially rife with skeuomorphs. For instance ancient Greek temples are notable for their regular design and ornamentation, especially along the roofline. Some of this stonework was purely decorative, intended to evoke the beams and joinery used in prior wooden construction. The long metal strap hinges found on doors in the Middle Ages find new life today as ornamental plastic replicas stuck on suburban garages. Numerous university campuses echo the masonry quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, although this time the stone facings are layered over steel girders and structurally unnecessary. None of these callbacks to prior ways of building are required, but they help inhabitants understand modern functions in relation to the past.

In the mid-1800s the idea of transporting passengers via pre-laid tracks across longer distances was reaching commercial scale. Early engineers had to conceptualize what the new vehicle for carrying people (as opposed to cargo) could look like. Automobiles had yet to enter the scene, so the readiest analogue was the stagecoach. The first train cars were essentially horse-drawn carriages, placed on rails with the newly-redundant horse swapped out for an engine. Otherwise they were left largely unchanged. As riders quickly discovered, stagecoaches were not particularly suited for this new means of travel, leading to the development of enclosed, tightly-coupled cars and eventually to the sleek bullet trains used around the world today.2 In retrospect the changes seem obvious, but until the public acclimated to the new mode of transport these transitional steps were a helpful bridge.

This struggle over skeuomorphism continues on a micro scale, on the battleground that is your smartphone screen. The vast majority of mobile devices operate on systems provided by Apple or Google, both of which have slowly stripped away references to physical objects over the years as users become more proficient with technology.3 Their designers are increasingly successful at ridding software of visual indicators of the items they replaced—think the “leather” stitching on the edge of the digital notepad, or pages that appear to virtually “turn” when you move to the next, even though those features aren’t real or necessary.

As newfangled iPhones and the attendant ecosystem of apps could be intimidating, these cues were implemented to make users more comfortable with the idea of taking notes or reading books on pocketable touchscreens. which were major disruptions to longstanding concepts.4

The mental models invoked by skeuomorphism can help smooth the transition to the future, but they can also limit the imagination needed to fully embrace change. That’s one reason why organizations that succeed in shaping the new models are often those that had no investment in former ones.

The newspaper industry relied heavily on its de facto local monopolies to sustain handsome profits. Yet it was the newcomer Craigslist that started from scratch and eventually came to displace incumbents across the United States as the home of classified advertising, despite lacking the entrenched positions and community prominence of the papers it supplanted.5 Sticking to existing models of engaging with readers held the traditional players back.

In other industries, the future remains wide open for those with the vision to see what could be. In higher education, institutions expend vast amounts of money and time on approaches essentially unchanged since the time of the one-room schoolhouse. The first attempts at online courses were often no more than a static camera positioned in the back of the classroom, recording lectures that were  uploaded with minimal editing, resulting in a subpar student experience.

Innovative education providers outside the established university system took the goals of learning and re-conceptualized the forms from the ground up, creating virtual classrooms with capabilities that are very different from those of the in-person environment.6 Athough some promising ventures are making headway, education’s embrace of technology is still very much in the stagecoach-on-rails phase.

Leap ahead

Doing away with the skeumorphs in your thinking can help you more clearly anticipate what’s coming. The inability to break free of existing paradigms is one reason why large companies sometimes wall off their innovation units from the rest of the organization, providing free rein and a clean sheet from which to envision the future; think Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works or Alphabet’s moonshot division, now known merely as X.

Another way to speed up the shift and drop constraining models is by considering your organization’s mission when stripped to its core, outside of current circumstances or technology. A university is not in the business of lecturing, any more than a news organization thrives by managing printing presses more effectively. The forms taken in a given moment can be a distraction when activities are oriented to them instead of the mission.

At the dawn of the internet age the only mental model many had for journalism was the paper publication, meant to be held in one’s hands and navigated in a particular fashion. After all, this had existed in some form for hundreds of years. When it came time to adapt to the web this concept held sway. It took many years of trial and error before the current era of infinite scroll, recommendation algorithms, social media referrals, listicles, etc., took over.

As computers and then mobile devices took over more of the functions once performed by legacy objects, tech companies are moving from metaphors to new design language that prioritizes the digital environment, enabling its possibilities to be realized more fully.

Any field can be subject to similar transformation. What would your work look like if the structures around it changed or went away entirely? What new approaches have the power to upend the framework you operate within? Most importantly, how could you navigate the transition more quickly?

---

References

Background on the launch of NYTimes.com from the Nieman Lab.

Slate has its own article on its early history.

Train example from Harvard Business School professor Richard Tedlow.

More on skeuomorphism on the blog of the design marketplace 99designs.