iOS 7's Design is Confused | Hacker News Reader

iOS 7's Design is Confused

andrewmunsell.com

56 pointsandrewmunsell45 comments

> or remove useless buttons like the calculator and timer buttons

Pure opinion here. Personally I use the calculator a lot on my phone, and love having a quick way to access it. The timer icon is actually the clock app, I got confused by the icon too.

After playing around with the Beta for a while, I can say that the design doesn't make sense until you actually use it. Give it some time.

Just started playing with the beta and I have to agree, it is something you must experience to judge accurately. Using iOS 7 feels good. There will definitely be refinements to come, but I think it's a huge step in the right direction. The stock apps, especially the App Store app, feel much nicer to use.

Although I have to agree with the OP about the app icons. I just don't think they look that nice.

The gradients are only problematic if interpreted as lighting. If merely decorative, no problem. Note that almost all of the gradients involve hue shifts.

The spacing of the balloons is actually clever. Balloons from one party are closer spaced than balloons from different parties. I prefer space around the text to space around the balloons.

I agree that the calculator et. al. Could be customizable. That aside, it's more or less the same controls as before but using more screen real estate rather than requiring flicking between screens. I think it's a serious improvement.

Personally, I don't really like the hue shift. It's kind of jarring in my mind, since I am used to using gradients more subtly.

I never really thought about the spacing between balloons in a group message between different people (is that how it works?), and if that's so, then I guess that makes sense. Though, the spacing still is odd looking to me-- maybe I'm just claustrophobic.

I agree the spacing could be adjusted a hair. I don't care for several of the gradients either, but I don't see them as lighting so mich as someone's idea of decoration. Note that the non gradient icons are mainly white or black backgrounds.

We already have a terms for "gradients that are not meant to be interpreted as lighting", we call them "optical illusions" and they're immensely confusing to the visual system.

Don't be silly, there are all sorts of gradients in nature that have nothing to do with lighting.

Like what? I honestly can't think of a single example.

You can't think of a single object that isn't a uniform color?

How about flowers? Rocks? Fruit? Animals?

Try harder.

Other than animal skins, the examples given seem to be dominated by lighting.

Besides the examples mentioned by others, gradients can arise due to look angle. For instance, looking upon a field of mixed grass and dirt from straight above versus 10 feet towards the horizon will yield a gradient from green/brown to totally green. There are lots of similar examples, for example, look at a mixed asphalt/composite road stretching off into the distance.

Don't get me wrong-- I like change, and the direction Apple is headed in with some of the UI changes (the calendar) look fine, but there are still a few problems with iOS 7 that make it look a little bit amateurish in some areas.

That was my first thought. It looks like a first attempt by someone trying to learn Flat UI. For some reason, it just looks a bit to kludgy for me.

To be fair, this is the first time Apple's tried flat UI :P

What about the original Mac?

Good point

I would guess there are about 0 people on that team working on this team.

That is true but there are 100's of resources to learn how to do Flat UI correctly. I tried to learn Flat UI a few months ago and I ran into a lot of the issues that I see in Apple's interface and I'm not even a trained designer.

This is kind of how I feel. My least favorite so far is their new Contacts app. It's just so plain-jane that I feel like I'm looking at a CS101 app or something.

I really wish someone beyond Ive had the final say in the graphic design of this. That's really all I can say about it. The usability of the home screen and the new springboard are great, but the design is just... uninspired. Black and white and blue is not only boring but missing the subtlety that I admired in iOS of the past (skeumorphism aside).

What's confusing about crowded speech bubbles?

The icon backgrounds now look largely redundant. Apple could have done better by getting rid of the backgrounds altogether like Android.

The completely arbitrary icon sizes look absolutely terrible on Android, IMO : http://cdn.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/nexu...

Having arbitrary sizes for icons / tiles I think is still required. I'd maybe go with a consistent gradient / no gradient approach.

Personally I'd go with no gradient and a flat colour.

While Google's lack of consistency in icon sizing is frustrating (though it is getting better, slowly), real world usage does look much better than that, as the icons are centred rather than placed on a baseline. http://i.imgur.com/CYUVTw8.png

That being said, I do think that rounded squares are an important part of iOS's design and that style icon is associated with iOS, so I don't think it should be changed.

They don't look anything like the messy image you posted at all.

I think the design absolutely requires its motion to be considered in connection with the visuals.

A lot of the stuff is not much to look at until you start moving it — the Messages list, for example, is particularly impressive with independent physics applied to each message within a table cell (causing them to stack and bounce as they inherit the scroll velocity).

That said, I'd be happy if they tweaked a few of the icon designs (Game Center is bizarre). But there's an incredible pleasantness to the motion that seems to suit the lighter choice of visual design — most elements seem very appropriate.

One thing I can't understand, why would they make the blurred background on the Control Center lighter and put white text and controls on it?? Is this supposed to be customizable?

Yeah, that's like design 101. One thing I really like about the default Android UI is that it's mainly black/gray with blue, which makes it easy on the eyes and nice to look at in various environments (at night, for example).

I was actually really looking forward to iOS 7. I'm currently on an old feature phone and I haven't quite decided between iOS or Android. I've messed around with an old Galaxy S 4G and an iPad 2, and after seeing iOS 7 I think I'm definitely leaning towards getting an Android based phone.

It's not clear which color is enabled versus disabled. Huge mistake.

These are all minor complaints in comparison to the huge sigh of relief I am experiencing thanks to the removal of the faux-leather, faux-paper, etc. The skeuomorphic apps are the only apps I can't use (it's painful) and I've downloaded a dozen note taking apps just to try to find one that is designed well.

Skeuomorphism was cool back in 1987 when it was novel that VGA existed.

If it takes Apple until IOS 7.1 to fix some of the subtle gradient issues, so be it.

This author is confused. Anyone who's tested any BETA 1 of iOS knows how unfinished it can be. This isn't your Google "beta." It's a legitimate beta.

The design won't change significantly in the next months. For example, the Game Center design is likely there to stay for the most part. And, by the way, I acknowledged that it's a beta and there's time to improve.

What's your source for that? Based on experience with previous betas, it could absolutely change.

In the iOS that Game Center debuted, it didn't even work until BETA 4.

It didn't work but the design was more or less done.

I've been running the beta 1's since iOS4, and while they can be glitchy, buggy, and crashy, the UI is never really incomplete.

If Apple substantially changes the designs (iconography included) between now and shipping, it would make for a first.

I feel similarly to the author. Overall I like the design and think it's a much-needed step forward for the OS, but the iconography is distracting. The removal of any kind of affordance in the slide-to-action bars is also a step back.

There are lots of places in the OS where I'd expect, under normal circumstances, some pretty substantial redesign, but Apple has never been known to overhaul their designs significantly between beta and release.

The UI was fairly complete in previous betas, but it was also largely the same as the last major version.

I don't think any of us know how the beta as it sits today is going to compare to the final release, but saying that it won't change because previous betas didn't change doesn't seem like a fair comparison.

They didn't really call it "Flat" design. So we can't really blame them when elements don't follow the "rules" of Flat design.

He makes some good points, except for the complaining about the app icons. If all the built-in apps had consistent icons then you'd have half the icons on your homescreen looking the same and the other half that are made by 3rd parties all looking unique and different. It's better when ALL the icons look completely different.

I think in terms of UX, iOS 7 will be a win. But in terms of graphical design I think it's much less successful.

Ive may be a master of industrial design and user interaction, but it's looking like that mastery doesn’t translate to graphic/user interface design.

I think the problem is that so much of this looks like other companies design language.

It's not bad, but I miss the iOS-ness. I thought this would have been a refinement and extension of their current style. A lot of their stuff is good. I don't think they needed such a massive overhaul.

I largely agree with this post, and I feel like the UX changes he addresses will make it a bit more confusing for first-time iOS users, while experienced iOS users probably won't even notice a difference.

This is first pass for developers. Lots can be tweaked before Fall.

Not likely. They have a nice little graphic on their website showing how much effort they put into the icons. Probably not going to change...

meh , it's ok imho , they flatten their UI , but it's not flat/flat. I think it's a good compromise. Anyway i'm more interested in the dev features themself , and i found them a bit disappointing , no great deal of changes.

I was actually pretty excited to try out Airdrop (and the joke about bumping phones was pretty funny), but then I realized it was iPhone 5+ (though, I do have an iPad Mini).

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