Sketching the future
We talk to Emmanuel Sá, the co-founder of Sketch
Sketch (sketch.com) is where developers and designers turn their ideas into apps and, over the years, Chief Design Officer Emanuel Sá has seen many interface design trends come and go.
Where do you think we’re headed now? “Design is a living thing that’s evolving a bit slower than in the past,” he says. “User interfaces today aren’t as plastic and exaggerated as in skeuomorphism days, but nor are they as plain as iOS 7 was.”
Instead of past extremes, “I believe we’re on the path to finding balance: where interfaces don’t get in the way, but merge with hardware more organically.”
What crime design would you ban?
For Sá that would have to be any kind of revival
of skeuomorphism. “I get why designers miss skeuomorphism,” he says. “But I think we miss it because it was fun, challenging and rewarding to design, and not because it was good from a user experience perspective…
“Good design is a lot less about what you see from an artistic point of view and all about how practical, smooth and familiar it is to customers’ expectations.”