It wasn’t that long ago that almost every mobile operating system (and variant thereof) was heavily stylized after tangible items that we come across every day. Notepads apps looked like legal pads, volume controls looked like dials and knobs, toggle buttons looked like switches, and so on. Pushing beyond just tangible “things”, many OEMs incorporated skeuomorphic hints in their textures and backgrounds. Patterns modeled after stitching, denim, paper, and even fine leather could be found in our UIs.

Skeuomorphism

One of the main arguments for skeuomorphic design is the relative ease for users to recognize a correlation from a physical thing to a digital thing. Those who are familiar with the physical object will be able to easily identify and use the digital equivalent of that object with virtually no learning curve – or so the theory goes. Where that concept begins to break down is when a significant portion of end-users have absolutely zero experience with the original, physical object that the digital version is modeled after.

What do I mean by that? Take a look at the icon for your smartphone’s dialer app. What does it look like? Most will say it’s a telephone handset, the kind that has an earpiece on one end, a microphone on the other, and a handle that connects the two.

When was the last time you actually used one of those? How many years as it been? Go ahead, don’t be shy.

Other than the novelty Bluetooth handset I bought some years ago, I haven’t seen an old-fashioned handset that looks like the dialer icon in decades.

My parents made the switch to cordless phones when I was teenager (perhaps even earlier than that). My kids have never used a handset that looks anything like the dialer icon.

The late Steve Jobs was a proponent of skeuomorphic design, but since his passing Apple as well as the rest of the industry has moved away from that design pattern, favoring simplicity over hints of the physical world.

Nowadays our smartphones are usually black or white slabs with glass on the front and some sort of plastic on the back. They’re cold. They’re lifeless. They lack any connection to the comfortable, physical world in which we all live. I felt the same way when I strapped on my Pebble smartwatch and later my LG G Watch. Then I put on my Moto 360, and everything changed.

Instead of wearing a modern, digital device that tried to be a timepiece, the Moto 360 was a timepiece to begin with. It was round like a real watch. Its faces looked like their physical counterparts (both analog and digital). The strap that wrapped around your wrist wasn’t plastic, it was leather. That’s where it changed for me.

Until I’d worn my Moto 360 for a few months, I hadn’t realized how out-of-touch with natural textures and surfaces I’d drifted – not consciously anyway. It was at that time I started to notice that I was using my fountain pen and leather-bound notebook for taking notes more frequently than I had in the months prior.

Analog notes are so much less efficient than their digital counterparts. You can’t sync them. You can’t copy and paste them like you can digital notes. It’s completely illogical to use a fountain pen and paper in today’s modern world. Yet there I was not only using them, but embracing them.

Natural Textures

There’s something inexplicable about the experience I savour while putting pen to paper. I miss it. I long for it, in much the same way that I missed feeling a leather watch band around my wrist.

That’s when I saw LG’s latest smartphone, the G4, backed in stitched leather. I have to say that I was impressed. Finally, a phone looked less like a phone, and more like a timeless piece of equipment. Leather looks great and feels even better, and thanks to what looks like traditional leatherworking processes, the phone looks less like a slab and much more warm and welcoming.

Leather is natural and will continue to adapt and change, weathering with wear to a beautiful patina, all the while looking great and feeling even better.

I’d forgotten how out of touch with tangible things I’d let my everyday life get. As phones get more personal with their classy, finer touches, perhaps we, too, will follow their lead in our own lives.