[petilon]

>Decoration distracts.

This is the principle that lead to the abhorrent and unusable flat design. Sometimes, lack of decoration distracts. Because it is this "decoration" that makes things look familiar. Without the decoration people have to stop and think and figure out things.

iOS 6 and below is an example of decoration making things more familiar and intuitive. As Steve Jobs designed it, the world inside the iPad screen was a seamless extension of the world outside the screen. When you went inside the iPad, everything looked familiar. But now we have a hard boundary at the device, and different rules apply inside that boundary. You have to learn and memorize new rules because the outside rules that you are already familiar with are of no help inside the screen.

[fermienrico]

I think you're confusing skeumorphism with decoration. Decoration is adding elements to design for the sake of aesthetic ornamentation. For example, Geocities websites had all kinds of blink tags and fireworks going on inside a webpage. That is decoration.

A save button icon that looks like a floppy disk is not decoration. It is a use of skeumorphic semiotics that takes advantage of historic familiarity - which is what you're referring to. I agree with you that it has its place in design. The original discussion of this thread is whether we should decorate websites with architectural motifs whether it is art-deco or brutalism.