Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Makes Users Less Efficient
▻http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure
Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Makes Users Less Efficient
▻http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure
Conclusion
Please don’t think that because your younger users can adapt to poorly designed interfaces you’ve got a blank check to design careless, signifier-free interfaces. When users aren’t sure where they can click, they lose that sense of empowerment that is so critical to a positive experience. They have to slow down to determine where they can go next, which is an unnecessary addition to their cognitive load.
The motivation behind minimalist and flat design was a desire to get the ugly distractions out of the interface, so that the focus is on the content and user tasks. It’s ironic, then, that the misuse of these design styles slows users down by forcing them to think harder about what options are available to them.