Sorry, but those buttons are absolutely atrocious. I get that underlined links aren't that great, but I'd much prefer it to that. Or maybe something like this: https://dribbble.com/shots/7299868-Download-Buttons
The very word 'button' is is a skeuomorphism referring to a physical object. There is nothing wrong with visual cues hinting at a physical button if you are going to call the object a button.
A lot of hate for skeumorphism comes from using ux that resemble or preserve obsolete physical objects. Like floppy disks, corded desk phones, flip phones or analog clocks.
Buttons are great. We still press lots of them every day.
They might not be to some non-tech-savy people... If you don't understand the concept of a virtual button that thing might just look like a rounded, blue rectangle with text in it. Nothing hints that it is supposed to be touched, it might as well just be some kind of highlighting.
Things that look real-world buttons or switches are more obviously a button in isolation than things that require a lot of context. Things can look "pressable" without context.
I'm no UI pro but there's one thing I'm confident in saying through my experience and it's that you can't be certain something is intuitive until you've tried it on real people in a real scenario.
Your example button is fine with me but I feeling like it's the sort of thing that would confuse my mother. Acceptable depending on your app but I'm guessing that's Skype or similar and the 60+ market is probably important for them. But maybe I'm wrong, test test test.
Lots of websites use that little pill shape for other things.
A button should announce that it is clickable, while the rest of the UI isn't. Just because something has a different background and shape doesn't tell me it's clickable.
Many of Hacker News visitors would probably disagree. What most of us don't seem to understand is what Hacker News says is not the common statement of most. People here tend to be on the less design side of things, most on the can I use this entirely with my keyboard. Most of the population however is not like that.
I don't see any statistics that the average user has any preference over which button to use out of the 3 examples provided. I think most users would assume buttons are supposed to look like the sites/apps they visit/use most, amazon, facebook, google, instagram, etc. If you button functions similar to those examples your users would be happy.
Normal users tend to be "less on the design side" when it comes to actual usability. They might (or might not—I don't think most companies bother to find out) care that you came up with some hot-shit pretty design that impressed the VPs, but for UX the more "designery" your site the greater the odds it'll be hard for normal people to use.
[EDIT] which is to say I think a lot of application design hours/$s have more to do with cargo-cult "brand styling" from the marketing department, and internal promotion of a project + personal portfolio-building and design-insider signaling than with benefits to end-user marketing, sales, or usability. It's not all useless from that perspective, obviously, but I'm very confident a lot of it is.
> People here tend to be on the less design side of things, most on the can I use this entirely with my keyboard.
Wrong dichotomy. "Design" is not about the amount of eye-candy. Design is about how to make a product so that the user can use it most effectively. Making it visually appealing is an integral part of that, but only part of it.
Really? I personally doubt users would prefer Skeuomorphic buttons. I know most of my friends are hit by nostalgia when they see something Skeuomorphic, sort of a "Remember when things were this way?", and I honestly do not want any of my products to perpetuate this emotion.
I think it genuinely depends on what your users are nostalgic over.
You can look cutting edge while taking advantage of nostalgia.
To be entirely honest, the "flat design" doesn't look "cutting-edge". It looks basic, which is because, well. It is. Intentionally so. If users don't care what your buttons look like, why spend tons of time making them look a specific style. That's just more time spent.
I'd argue that the reason it's become so prevalent, is exactly that. Less time spent designing, more time spent on features.
> Really? I personally doubt users would prefer Skeuomorphic buttons.
Have you tested this assumption, or is it simply something that you suspect? There's nothing wrong with having an opinion, but don't mistake it for an analysis!
