[bsenftner]

Flat is poor design, the fad of the moment, and will hopefully be gone in short order. If anything, Flat as a design trend is elitist: it creates "secret knowledge" of how to operate a visually unhelpful interface, enabling "those who know" to help those confused by fucking awful design.

[josho]

I agree with your point. Not sure why the down vote, so I'll add to your thought stream…

I dislike Flat design because it removes visual affordances that help novice users navigate a new interface. I loathe Google Maps on iOS because it is unclear to me that certain icons act as both buttons and draggable inputs. I've been casually using the app since its release, and I continue to be frustrated by it today.

While the original iOS design provided visual embellishments that served two purposes. First, textures provide familiar context giving new users a sense of immediate understanding. Second, basic features were obvious to intuit. It was clear what was a button and what was interface chrome. The same cannot be said with iOS7. Yes, it's easy to learn that colorized text is a button. But, it must be learned, and is easy to miss when quickly scanning the interface.

For these reasons I believe the parent's points are valid. I do not however want to abandon flat design, but personally hope that we find a balance between styles rather than adhere to flat design orthodoxy.

[pdenya]

I've heard a lot of complaints against flat mentioning novice users specifically and I have 2 things to say to that in regards to iOS7:

1) It's a tool people use daily that they'll get used to quickly, I don't mind if new users have a slightly higher learning curve (in theory, I don't concede that it's actually the case here).

2) Anecdotally it seems to not be difficult to figure out. My 3y/o has had no additional trouble navigating my iphone/ipad since I upgraded to iOS7. Neither has my wife or my 4y/o.

[josho]

The key point is flat tends to remove visual affordances. E.g. The iOS6 video player has a bright blue 'done' button. A quick visual scan finds that button immediately. iOS7 foregoes the button for just the text, so now it looks like every other UI control, requiring the user to now read instead of scan. Yes, it's small, but I've noticed that since using the iOS 7 betas I feel a little less connected to my phone for lots of small reasons like this.

Regarding your second point, it is still quite easy to figure things out. But, I'd contend that it is harder than before. I just wish we could have a balance between extreme skeumorphism and flat designs.

[Spearchucker]

So if the novice user is hindered by flat design, why do you think that Windows Phone is killing it in the budget market in Mexico? It's also doing really well when feature phone users move to their first smart phone.