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Apple (iOS, OS X), Google (Material Design), and Microsoft (Metro) all believe that flat design is the way forward, but a new study suggests that flat user interfaces attract less attention and cause uncertainty: the Nielsen Norman Group presented two versions of different websites (one with 3D-styled elements, the other with flat buttons) and found that people spent more time locating elements with the latter.
...users spent more time looking at the page, and they had to look at more elements on the page. Since this experiment used targeted findability tasks, more time and effort spent looking around the page are not good. These findings don’t mean that users were more “engaged” with the pages. Instead, they suggest that participants struggled to locate the element they wanted, or weren’t confident when they first saw it. 22% longer task time for the weak-signifier designs may seem terrible. But remember that our metrics reflect time spent while looking for where to click. The tasks we measured were very specific and represent just a small component of real web tasks.
...users spent more time looking at the page, and they had to look at more elements on the page. Since this experiment used targeted findability tasks, more time and effort spent looking around the page are not good. These findings don’t mean that users were more “engaged” with the pages. Instead, they suggest that participants struggled to locate the element they wanted, or weren’t confident when they first saw it. 22% longer task time for the weak-signifier designs may seem terrible. But remember that our metrics reflect time spent while looking for where to click. The tasks we measured were very specific and represent just a small component of real web tasks.