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Comment by munch117 | original | Bug Blindness
[−]munch117 · 2026-08-30 Sun 08:21 UTC · link
Skeuomorphism didn't fail. It feel out of fashion with designers.

We should distinguish between skeuomorphic interaction design and skeuomorphic iconography. Attempts at skeuomorphic interaction design did fail badly, I'll give you that. Document readers that expect you to turn the page by pulling at the edge of the page, mimicking a page turn in a physical book, they're terrible.

But skeuomorphic iconography works: The more detail you add to an icon, the easier it is to form mental associations with what it does - and that goes even if you don't know the original object that it's based on. Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable.

[−]thaumasiotes · 2026-08-30 Sun 09:26 UTC · link
> Sure, a lot of people have never seen the floppy disk that the traditional Save icon is based on, making the icon less intuitive now than when it was designed. But what would you replace it with? Any alternative you might suggest is just going to be less recognisable.

Obviously you replace it with the three stacked cylinders that symbolize a hard drive. ;D

[−]yorwba · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:46 UTC · link
Are you sure they don't represent drum memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory
[−]drewstiff · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:15 UTC · link
A solid state hard drive...?
[−]asddubs · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:54 UTC · link
I've seen an SD card icon used for a save icon before. I think conveniently the shape is similar enough to a floppy that you find it while scanning for it as well