I'm probably using the word wrong, then. But those 3D-looking buttons with glare, or faux leather, is exactly what I'm talking about - it is unnecessary cognitive overhead.

A button that looks like a physical real world button that I'd push, with a clear text label beneath it, is less cognitive overhead for me than an abstract squiggly icon with no border or text that I have to interpret.

Bonus points if the icons are hidden inside various hamburger menus sprinkled across the interface - Atlassian I'm looking at you.

I shouldn't be forced to learn some designer's personal visual symbology to use an app. It's hieroglyphics.

I'm not advocating for either of those extremes. To remind, in this thread, we were talking about UI aesthetics of the times when Delphi was popular. That's Windows 9x and NT, classic MacOS 7.x to 9.x, BeOS; and on Unix: Motif, NeXTSTEP, Gtk 1.x, Qt 1.x to 2.x.

So, basically, buttons are chiseled gray (or other color of user's choice), with prominent 3D borders, but flat where the label is for maximum readability. Just enough to capture the essence of a physical button, but without actually rendering one.

faux-leather falls into abusive skeu IMO

The bad skeuomorphism is about replicating physical world design and constraints in digital apps -- and thus imposing constraints that don't exist in the digital world.

Merely looking like a physical product (but with interactivity that takes advantage of what the digital world affords) is not the skeuomorphism people complained about.

One might like or not like faux-leather, for example, but that's just an aesthetic preference (and those things come in circles, in 10-15 years it could be all skeuomorphism in vogue again, as a backlash against too minimal / plain vanilla designs).