As Apple’s chief designer Jony Ive recalls, when he and his team sat down to redesign the iPhone operating system in 2012, it did away with many of the classic skeuomorphic elements: “We understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits. So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally. We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way.”

From here. This is an act of deceit on Ive’s part, but it is the same act of deceit in which all designers engage, which is the same deceit as that of the stage magician: the appearance of disappearance. Design wasn’t “got out of the way” at all; indeed, its invisibility only underscores the ubiquity of its influence over the user’s experience.