Google Currents - Yet another contribution to the UI-fragmentation of Android
minming.posterous.com
minming.posterous.com
IMHO, this was to be avoided. I think this move on Apple's part to move towards such literal skeuomorphism was a major step back. After decades of learning that literal analogies on computing devices simply doesn't work all that well, Apple decided to forget about all of that lesson learned stuff and just throw it all away.
Even Gruber can't manage to fake gushing over it
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/against-skeuomor...
These themes aren’t lies. They’re not designed to help users understand how these apps work. They’re just decoration. They’re per-app branding. Apple no longer endorses system-wide visual uniformity. Special apps are supposed to look special. Why is Find My Friends wrapped in rich Corinthian leather? Because someone at Apple likes (and, sadly, if my guess is right, better said liked, past tense) how it looks.
I'd say in general the design gods are not happy with this move
http://www.andymangold.com/skeuomorphism-the-opiate-of-the-p...
http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy
http://kensegall.com/blog/tag/ical-address-book/
http://cushley.net/2011/07/in-depth-os-x-lion-review-part-3-...
So in less than half a dozen links this design trend is called cheap "kitsch", "infantile", patronizing lies, "hideous" etc. These are not slight disagreements, these are fighting words.
I agree that Google's Android apps suffer from terrible UI consistency problems, but using Apple's trend towards textured apps as an example of consistency cum success doesn't work here.
A better example might be the pre-OS X guidelines that Apple used to publish. You couldn't tell one company's application from another!
In the end though, I'm not entirely sure that it really matters all that much. Users will learn how to use the apps they want, and they'll think about those apps as tasks, each with discrete ways of doing things. e.g. opening a car door is different than opening a fridge door is different from opening a closet door is different from opening the screen door is different from opening the shower door etc. UI consistency just isn't that important, it's just annoying when you notice it.
Secondly, Apple does in fact still publish Human Interface Guidelines, and while they're not followed to the degree that they were pre-OS X, they are still taken seriously by most developers and designers of Mac software.
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx...
Right, which is the problem IMHO. Even Apple can't muster up enough will to follow them these days with their own apps.
Are the apps generally good looking on their own? Most of them are, there's a few "what were they thinking" moments.
The problem though is that even Apple isn't following the HIG these days and that spells doom and gloom for anybody who wishes to hold them up as the high water mark for design houses to follow. Pre-OS X it was a very solid design language. Pretty much everything looked like everything else, and it all looked pretty good. You really had to work hard to make an ugly piece of software.
Both because of culture and because of the built-in toolkit
And you are also right with this, having a built-in toolkit, with all sorts of good looking, consistent, well-behaved interface elements is the key here. Android gives you layout control (great for different screen sizes/resolution) but doesn't seem to provide anywhere near the level of toolkitting needed, while iOS takes up the lessons learned in the pre-OS X days and provides an awesome toolkit.
Then Apple manages to ignore the whole thing and try to make everything look like something I threw away 15 years ago because computing devices were better.
Is a non sequitur insult really necessary to this part of your post?
The problem with the original article is that it assumes that whatever Apple does must be good, which is flawed thinking. To use it as a counterweight to the problems in Android apps is fundamentally flawed. Using Gruber as the far end of the scale was intentional and not insulting. After all, calling a Banana yellow isn't insulting is it? It is what it is and Gruber is who he is. He serves his purpose as the thought leader championing the Apple way.
Plus it wasn't non-sequitur, Gruber was specifically talking about the trend towards Skeuomorphism in Apple's design language as a bad thing.
I thought that was the whole point of what they were doing.
But I do want to pick up on this idea that touch-based interfaces should all have the same look and feel. That idea made (and to some extent still makes) sense when you have a large desktop shared by a number of different applications, and the user is constantly shifting between them as part of their workflow.
But I think there's been a shift over the last few years. On the desktop we have monolithic applications where the user's workflow is expected to be entirely within the application, and these applications have increasingly adopted their own specialised UI style and assumed that they will run full screen. I first saw this with 3d graphic applications like Blender, but you can also see it in things like Aperture and Lightroom with their inconsistent dark palette.
And I think this is more pronounced on smartphones and particularly on tablets, where the application you are running takes over the whole display. They aren't described as "immersive" for nothing. I'd argue that when an application is something that you completely immerse yourself in, the need for visual consistency is reduced (though not removed). Yes, we need some common visual language, and for people to understand how that relates to common gestures for interaction. But I think the stand-out applications will be the ones that have a visual style that is consistent with the content of the application, and maybe with other applications from the same publisher.
I'd draw a comparison with magazines, particularly as that's representative of the kind of content that is making its way into custom applications on tablets. We don't expect Vogue and Wired to share a consistent font and the same iconography to help the reader navigate - instead we expect each of them to have their own house style consistent from issue to issue, but different from other magazines from the same stable. At the same time we do have certain common expectations that come from the conventions and physical form of the magazine, and we may also notice some common design elements due to them sharing a publisher.
I'd compare this with Apple's use of skeuomorphism in some applications. Maybe we should think of it as Apple's house style for some of its applications, and not seek to ape it in our own. It's quite Ok to develop your own house style building on a common design vocabulary - look at how Tapbots (http://tapbots.com/) work their own style into their apps for example. We're still working out what works best on these devices, but I'm not convinced that consistency of visual design is all that important any more.
That being said, I agree that Google should strive for even more consistency in their OS and their own apps. I do think they are learning and moving in the right direction, though. They just need to do it faster and even more holistically.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fragmentation
[EDIT] actually this one is accurate:
"the disintegration of norms regulating behaviour, thought, and social relationships."
Presumably there are user tests that show that these apps are straightforward to use.
What exactly makes you think that? And more importantly, if these were backed by real experimentation why don't they agree on their conclusions?
As stated the biggest problem is that they don't provide a consistent model for how developers should build their apps. And that shows, 3rd Party Android apps are far far less consistent than those on iOS.
Third party apps on iOS are similarly inconsistent. The Facebook app works very differently from the Twitter app. I think that's okay.
Putting more effort on their UI guideline pages might help. It seems its not updated recently to include any of the newer UI elements yet. Since their own apps are using them they should be good enough for the guidelines: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...
Thoughts?
"Posterous is unavailable at the moment. We're reloading the site and we'll be back in just a minute or two."
The irony is that I decided to start my blog at Posterous because I got one of those cheap web hosting which I thought would easily crush under load. The irony...