In an eyetracking experiment comparing different clickability clues, weak and flat signifiers required more user effort than strong ones.
Agree with 2_listerine_pls, "The article is poorly titled. The issue is not about Flat vs Non-Flat. It's about emphasis of elements in a flat context. The article highlights "flat 2.0" as a better choice given that it uses 3D shadows.“
Summary: Flat interfaces often use weak signifiers. In an eyetracking experiment comparing different kinds of clickability clues, UIs with weak signifiers required more user effort than strong ones.
We took 9 web pages from live websites and modified them to create two nearly identical versions of each page, with the same layout, content and visual style. The two versions differed only in the use of strong, weak, or absent signifiers for interactive elements (buttons, links, tabs, sliders).
In some cases, that meant taking an already flat page and adding shadows, gradients, and text treatments to add depth and increase the strength of the clickability signifiers. In other cases, we took a page that already had strong, traditional signifiers, and we created an ultraflat version. We were careful that the modifications we provided were reasonable and realistic.
When we compared average number of fixations and average amount of time people spent looking at each page, we found that:
The average amount of time was significantly higher on the weak-signifier versions than the strong-signifier versions. On average participants spent 22% more time (i.e., slower task performance) looking at the pages with weak signifiers.
The average number of fixations was significantly higher on the weak-signifier versions than the strong-signifier versions. On average, people had 25% more fixations on the pages with weak signifiers.
(Both findings were significant by a paired t-test with sites as the random factor, p < 0.05.)
