Designed for Use

Chapter 12Realism

Pick up any reasonably modern device—say, a tablet or a smartphone—and you’ll quickly notice that a lot of work has gone into making the user interface appear realistic.

You see shadows, gradients, 3D effects, and textures. On-screen elements and whole applications are based on real objects. Even the user interactions themselves are patterned after the real world: you can touch and move sliders, you can toggle switches, and if you give a scrollable area a push, it keeps scrolling for a bit, steadily slowing down as if there were actual friction. The book application on your tablet device resembles an actual book, and the calendar ...