Hipmunk really makes the problems of flat design stand out. There is a common belief that simpler design means better UE. The things that are being tossed out in flat design are the things that often made good designs intuitive in the first place though. Many designers are reaching incorrect conclusions about simplicity and the whole KISS principle. The whole KISS principle doesn't require throwing out pixels and properties in the name of "a trend".
Good UE is memorable and intuitive - and is often lacking in the many flat designs I've been seeing lately.
I really fear that flat design trend is making products less emotional, memorable and usable.
The problem seems to be some people tend to do more than flatten their designs dimensionally (as in gradients, bevels, specular highlights etc).
They also 'flatten' the design as in reducing contrast, reducing lines/borders and other ways of separating and organizing information/data.
That's the problematic part to me. Hipmunk did that here.
SeatGeek is an example of almost pure dimensional flattening. It's pretty much the same. Just feels a bit cleaner and more elegant.
Especially notice how they replaced the shadow with a grey border. The shadow played the role of a separator. Thus they replaced it with a flat separator.
What the other kind of a 'flattener' might do is just throw away the separator completely. And that is where you can screw up.
Reducing contrast is really a problem in my opinion for users. I totally agree with you.
SeatGeek is elegant (I like the visual), but as with most flat designs, affordance is a problem. I believe that the word Filter on the right side of Great Deals might be clickable/tappable text (based on my previous flat design button hunts and the previous iOS7 image with a gear). The problem is, I don't know for sure without actually trying it.
When I have to go beyond skimming to discover basic functionality, the user experience is broken in my opinion and cognitive load increases.
> Reducing contrast is really a problem in my opinion for users.
The most terrifying example, in my opinion, is the team selector on the InfiniteHoops app. It keeps the skeumorphic 3-dimensionality of the old selector, but strips out all of the color and context and makes the text hard to read, turning the whole thing into a real mess.
Good UE is memorable and intuitive - and is often lacking in the many flat designs I've been seeing lately.
I really fear that flat design trend is making products less emotional, memorable and usable.