But it's not postskeuomorphic...it predates skeuomorphism which gives
you *pre* or *ante*skeuomorphic And skeuomorphism is the deliberately
outdated evocation of the old, which is the opposite of what we are
talking about...so, logically, but absurdly, it's antiskeuomorphic or
anteskeuomorphic. Good news for those who struggle with spelling unusual
words:)
If you want to get ethnographic (semiotics) about it, virtually every
sign is outdated. The letter a comes originally from aleph which was an
ox. So I suggest the term 'posthieroglyphic';)
On 17 Aug 2016, at 19:25, Sam - MacAmbulance wrote:
How about post-skeoumorphic if the icon relates to an outdated
real-world representation of a computer element.
Regards
Sam
MacAmbulance Ltd.
Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development
Sam Mullen
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On 17 Aug 2016, at 19:17, Ben Rubinstein <[email protected]> wrote:
With all respect to Gilly's grandson, that's not quite right. At
least, the term may have evolved to have that meaning in Sydney, but
that's not how it's used by user experience practitioners / interface
designers here.
At least in the UK/US, affordance refers to the perceivable properties
of an element, especially with respect to the actions you can take
with it. (The term is corrupted from use in other disciplines - it
should really be "perceived affordance" or similar - but I won't go
into that.)
So the icon of a floppy disk is an affordance only to the extent that
we've all been trained to recognise that clicking a button with that
icon will save our current document (even those too young to have ever
used an actual floppy disk). But the term applies equally well to any
other clear and obvious control, even if it doesn't implicitly refer
to something very old (e.g. airplane icon on the button to select
airplane mode) or indeed refer to something concrete at all (e.g. the
reload icon of a circular arrow). Or indeed to a button with the word
"Save" on it.
I don't know if there is a word with the meaning that Stephen actually
wanted - an opportunity to coin one! The nearest I can think of is
"anachronistic", but that's not quite right - there's nothing wrong
with these icons, it's just that their derivation relates to something
historic.
Let us know what you come up with....
Ben
On 15/08/2016 09:50, Gillian Snoxall wrote:
Hi Stephen,
I put your question to my grandson (who was an Apple Genius in
Sydney), and he immediately came up with “affordance” as the word
you are looking for. Sounds crazy to me, but he insists that that is
the technical term to describe the use of icons depicting things that
no longer exist, in modern applications.
Gilly
On 13 Aug 2016, at 15:06, [email protected] wrote:
… describe icons used in modern applications that show items that
are obsolete or dated and not used for the task in hand?
For example, at work we are quickly phasing out flatbed scanners and
very strongly encourage people to use phones and tablets to
photograph documents and send them to us. Our new interface has a
“Send document” button which shows a flatbed scanner!
The latest MS Word (for Windows) has a floppy disc icon to click
which saves your work. Neither of the two guys I work with have ever
seen or used a 3.5” floppy disc.
The generic icon used for a storage device is frequently a hard disc
even when the device has Solid State storage.
And will the same soon apply to the icon for a camera?
Just idle Saturday wondering.
Stephen
"Technology is the knack of rearranging the world so that we don't
have to experience it" - Max Frisch
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