[eyevariety]

Bashing skeuomorphism is the easy way out.

Non physical affordances don't come easy, and like it or not our brains are trained in a world of 3 dimensions made of matter. Dieter Rams built things around their functional components, the materials available and the other constraints given to him by a physical world.

Edward Tufte preaches that content rules and all else is extra. We can certainly minimize everything that isn't the focus, we should, after all. But abandoning the lessons from skueomorphism really means you are throwing out every hint of natural world affordances in your interfaces. The first 3 dimensional shading or shadow and you have veered into the land of skeuomorphism - and that's ok, because a world of flat squares with Helvetica labels takes a whole lot more mental cycles to process than that beveled 3d button, and it always will.

I look forward to seeing what you are doing with kicksend- with or without hints of the physical world.

[zevyoura]

"...a world of flat squares with Helvetica labels takes a whole lot more mental cycles to process than that beveled 3d button, and it always will."

Do you have a citation for that? I'm genuinely interested in reading more about it, because it seems somewhat counter-intuitive. The idea that simpler shapes would be harder to process visually is very fascinating to me.

[eyevariety]

Its not that a simpler shape isn't easier to process, its that its harder to infer purpose when there is so little information (like in the case of Metro). A button is something that needs to be 'pressed' so it should look like it can be- and by doing so you understand that it is a button much faster.

Donald Norman and Jakob Neilsen have long preached this and they have a bunch of info on affordances and why they work: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

More recently see Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think"

[zevyoura]

Interesting, though I have to wonder if that's necessarily true; it seems that you could designate a button using only rectangles and solid colors in a way that would be clear and unambiguous (e.g. Google+'s buttons). Either way, interesting application of Norman's ideas of 'affordances.' DoET is a perennial favorite of mine.

[panacea]

>(e.g. Google+'s buttons)

They actually have slightly rounded corners, an outline and subtle gradient going from top to bottom that hint at three dimensionality and offers affordance. There's also a slight darkening on mouse-over which suggests they're interactive and can be pressed in.