Under New Management ⇥ dewith.com

I keep seeing predictions that Jonathan Ive’s management of Human Interfaces will result in Apple dropping skeuomorphic design choices. Hell, this one’s from the New York Times. Sebastiaan de With, designer of the now-infamous Find My Friends app, has the best dismissal of those notions:

What bothers me, though, is that everyone is flinging around cheap shots at ‘skeuomorphism’ (set to be awarded the Most Misused Term of 2012 award), as Jonathan Ive gaining leadership over Apple’s famous software HI team is somehow assumed to significantly change Apple’s subjective design decisions in the future.

People are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions on design processes at a company that’s so well known for being design-driven and perfectionist. However, it doesn’t tend to be that clear cut when you’re essentially leading the trend of software design. I can’t see things changing in such a black-and-white way: Ive was, after all, closely involved in the design of iOS 1.0.