To the disdain of many designers, neumorphism is trending in design circles. Some have predicted it to become the leading design trend of 20202. More and more examples of UIs built with neumorphic elements are popping into my Instagram feed, Dribbble shots, and Pinterest boards.
Neumorphism, also known as "soft UI" due to the way soft shadows are used to create the illusion of three dimensional objects, is certainly an interesting design style. The approach has its roots in skeuomorphism, a movement in design aiming to closely mimic real world items digitally. Apple made heavy use of skeuomorphism in its original releases of its iOS software. The calendar app looked like it had a real leather binding, the camera app closed a "shutter" when you took a picture and the calculator had buttons that looked like, well, actual buttons. Apple would eventually abandon the skeuomorphic look for the flatter look it uses today, introduced originally in iOS 7.
The development of neumorphism has been gradual, some claiming it to be mostly in reaction to the predominantly flat UI systems used today. Multiple shadows are used to create a look of protruding buttons and layers. Heavily rounded corners are commonplace, and text inputs appear pressed into the page. It's an interesting look to be sure, but not one that I believe will last long. Why? Glad you asked.
For starters, the lack of contrast between different elements makes it difficult at a glance to discern how information is organized. If you have a simple interface with limited information displayed on a screen at one time it may work well, but I don't believe the system scales well. I've seen a lot of examples of dashboards and store pages using this technique, and by and large they don't look like a product that would be that easy to interact with. When everything looks the same it’s difficult to determine hierarchy.
Secondly, there are questions about accessibility. As a product grows and scales, designers are tasked with considering and developing for maximum accessibility and the softness inherent to the neuomorphic style creates some challenges. The softness so desired in the look severely limits the usability of common UI elements, buttons being the greatest weakness. When an element is designed to blend in with the background it’s placed on, how do you clearly show varied states? How is active different from hover different from inactive? How do you design meaningful interactions?
I find the style fun. I think it creates an interesting look, but I don’t think it should be applied wholesale to a redesign as I’ve seen in many mockups. I think the really interesting cases moving forward will be those demonstrating how to incorporate this style with other existing styles to create useful accents. So for now, my answer to the question is no. No, we shouldn’t be grabbing hold of neumorphism and putting in all our work. Yes, we should play with it to find new ways to use it, but it shouldn’t be the foundation of a design system right now.
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