Confusing UI in iOS7
medium.com
medium.com
> When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it?
> The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should perform a negative action, right?
These comments are disingenous. You didn't get confused by these things.
You, as a person who's analysing a UI, have an almost totally different mindset to someone who is just using the thing for real. You know this, so here, you're just play-acting. You're thinking, what might I get confused about if I was a normal user? That's a bad way to look for what's really wrong in a UI design.
Yes, when you present points like these, they sound reasonable, but that doesn't mean they're right. Perhaps the alternative (e.g. banning the use of red anywhere in the OS other than for a negative action) might be over-restrictive as a requirement, which could cause excessive complexity elsewhere in the UI and lead to a worse overall result. Or perhaps you're right, the colour–meaning thing should be 100% consistent above all other considerations. Either way, you don't know, and speculation about what might confuse a real user should not be presented as fact.
Theories just guide us in what to test.
What right do you claim in calling the OP a liar? Do you not think that he is capable of observing his own emotional reaction to UI independent of his intellectual understanding of it? Are you really claiming that he disliked the iOS UI because his theory told him to?
That is utter hogwash. No sane person goes out of their way to assign an explanation of dislike when there wasn't dislike to begin with. It's entirely reasonable to dislike something, and it is also very reasonable to then check with theory as to why that might be the case. Moreover, if someone takes the trouble to a) make screenshots, b) write it up in a blog, and c) share it with the world then I think they deserver far better than to be called a liar.
I didn't, I said his comments were disingenuous (what was your "[sic]" for btw?). I meant exactly what I said. I wouldn't call it lying, I'd call it disingenuous (i.e. put-on naivety).
> Are you really claiming that he disliked the iOS UI because his theory told him to?
No. I'm saying his theories about what's confusing, while sometimes interesting, are not necessarily representative of what regular users will actually find confusing, and you'd need to do testing to find out. The problem is he presents them as if they're definitely true, with absolutely no evidence.
...
>disingenuous
Nope
We're not debating the outer contours and nuances of this idea. The article presents a cut-and-dry analysis of basic application of it.
You put far too much stock in your own experience and comfort exploring a tablet UI, and yet you seem to hold yourself as more representative as a "real user" than the author. I disagree. I've witnessed people in my personal and professional life get basic things wrong. What you perceive as a button, a data grid, a message window, they often perceive as an indiscriminate arrangement of text, lines, and color. Which is why I think the author's analysis, in those terms, is worthwhile.
Nope. We're both totally unrepresentative, the moment we start analysing.
My complaint is: I don't believe that all the points the author made came from him genuinely finding things confusing and then working out which design inconsistencies caused his confusion. I think his ability to make those judgements are clouded by his endeavouring to analyse and critique a design (as would be mine). That's why we have user testing.
This was exactly my reaction. The author points out things which are "confusing" within the context of some logical UI design theory. But nothing in the article is practically confusing. From the article:
The Plus could mean “Add Something”, but why does it have no outline? And why is it red? Does it perform a negative action? Confusing.
This feels like forced criticism. Immediately, they guess the correct function of the UI element (to add new alarms). Why should the plus sign have an outline? Why is it confusing that the plus sign is red, when the app has red as a primary component of the color scheme?
The author's points are interesting from a certain perspective, but it just doesn't matter in practice. I mean, is the biggest critique of iOS7 that a rectangle is clickable in one place and not in another?
Wrong on all counts. What the author complaints about are examples of broken standard usability guidelines that all experts agree upon.
Like consistency, affordances, the principle of least surprise, color coding actions, etc.
The excerpt you provide is characteristic: "When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it?"
The similar looking button in the Timer screen DID give visual feedback when pressed. In a consistent UI, either this button would do too, or neither would.
>These comments are disingenous. You didn't get confused by these things. You, as a person who's analysing a UI, have an almost totally different mindset to someone who is just using the thing for real.
Wrong again. Even a UI expert, or someone like me, who's been using DOS, Windows, SunOS, HPUX, Linux, FreeBSD and OS X UIs for 20+ years (and has designed some apps' UIs) can be confused by a UI, even in the most common app and in the most basic actions.
Visual feedback needs to serve a purpose. This is a stop watch we're talking about - one that shows time in tens of milliseconds, which is less than one frame interval at 60fps. Any animation done would hinder the function of the stop watch and raise ambiguity about when the stop watch actually started and stopped. So not using an animation is the right thing to do here. If they'd gone for consistency in this case, it would've been "foolish consistency" [1].
[1] "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
edit: typo fix.
Also, while some of the experiences are not consistent within the time apps, they are artifacts that users already recognize- did he really get confused by the "cross?" Its a plus and its in the upper right hand corner of an app where you can add alarms...
This kinds of reminds me of an anthropologist trying to get a paper published in an journal for psychologists. Where is the rigorous application of science? Where are the statistics?
Still, people bag on Apple's design problems because Apple's stuff often feels almost perfect. I tried out a BB Q10 the other day and I couldn't even figure out how the heck you get to the home screen. I got stuck in the voice-search app and couldn't figure out how to back out. That's one of those "I'd give it a detailed critique but where the heck do I even begin" moments.
I think that kind of UX contributes to the divisive nature of BlackBerries; people either love them or hate them. The ones who love them are all well past the initial speed bump of learning the gestures and the ones who hate them pick it up in the store, get in to an app, get stuck and throw it down in frustration; the same people who stumble on to Vim would (and no doubt do every day).
The difference between iOS7 and BB10 is that the lack of consistency and affordances in iOS7 seems to result from inconsistent design choices, while in the Q10 it's a deliberate design choice designed to speed users up.
So, rather than evidence of bad design, this could be evidence of good design.
Stanley Kubrick "You can if you freeze it."
http://blog.ittybittyapps.com/blog/2013/09/20/lifting-the-li...
And something else that we have accepted is that Apple's services are what they are. For example, iOS 7 has polished the Photos and Camera apps. But in the big picture, Apple's ecosystem for photos is still a complete mess. There is Photos.app with its own Camera Roll, iPhoto for iOS, Photostreams, Journals, Moments, iPhoto '09 with its own Events, and no sane way to keep everything in sync.
Sometimes the issue isn't so much making the interface usable, but instead teaching the user how to use it and in a way they won't forget.
I was referring to what takes but a second to learn and makes perfect natural sense thereafter (not to be confused with learning painful rote/ugly process). Interface should be obvious in context - but that doesn't mean the user has ever encountered that context before, and initially doesn't understand it enough to know what constitutes "obvious". If you've never encountered gravity before, walking (i.e.: stand, then fall forward, then stop yourself with a foot, repeat) is not something you'd think of doing, but is obvious once you see it done.
The issue is trying to pare your widgets down to their bare minimum. The minimum you can get away with depends very much on the context of the widget.
In iOS 6 they used the same design for navigation widgets as action button widgets. This made them consistent between the different widgets, but left the navigation widgets slightly heavier than strictly necessary.
In iOS 7 they pared each widget down to the minimum they could in the particular context the widget is used in.
The result is screens that individually look like they're made up of inconsistent widgets, but OS-wide the use of the widgets is consistent. Whether that's enough I guess we'll see as more of the general public use iOS 7.
The Stopwatch and Timer start buttons behave differently.
The timer provides some visual feedback because it starts the timer when you take your finger off the screen, you can touch and hold the button all you want but nothing happens until you release it.
The stopwatch on the other hand starts as soon as you touch the screen. I can see how that would be useful if you're timing a race or something that takes less than a second.
Incidentally, my double click/touch interval seems to be averaging around 0.12 seconds :)
The stopwatch is for accurate timing and choosing to break the iOS convention for this specific use case does not seem surprising or arbitrary to me but a conscious design choice to improve the function of the feature. Guidelines are of course made to be broken (occasionally).
I had the same issue (with a different language). I really hope it's a bug because it makes no sense. Here goes:
In General > International, you can set "language" to english. So far so good. Then you can set "region format" for things like date and time formatting to use a sensible local format instead of e.g. the crazy US date format.
But when you go into Region Format, it turns out to be some sort of weird mix of countries and languages.
If you select a country — e.g. Germany, Finland, Croatia — , you'll get the english dates in the region's format but if you select a language (and possibly a territory for the language) — Chinese > Singapore, Cherokee (United States) or Lingala > Congo Brazzaville, you'll get the date formatted in that language instead, with your specified system-wide language ignored.
By default, you probably have a language selected — I had anyway. I think it's the same setting as in iOS6 but the semantics have changed.
edit: after checking, it worked the exact same way in iOS6 and a colleague (who also updated to iOS7) had the right setting without changing anything, so I guess both TFAA and I had the "wrong" setting in iOS6 and it got ported over to iOS7. Yet as TFAA I was kind-of shocked to see dates in a language different than the rest of the OS in iOS7 even though I apparently did not notice it in 6.
German region format obviously also emtails German day and month names. That's really quite obvious.
No it's not obvious at all and it's shouldn't be that way. If I set my language somewhere it should be applied everywhere. I want Monday as first day of the week, not Montag.
Other companies that seem incapable of getting language right: Microsoft and Google.
That is not even mentioning that "ISO 8601 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times" puts Monday as day one.
Plus all the clients that aren't broken and can separate language from style.
Oh well, I think I got trolled -.-
It's not. In fact, it's nonsensical. If I have a language setting, I want things in that language, not in an other one.
The format spells out where items are relative to one another, what the various separators and interspersed characters are and if applicable what size the various elements are (e.g. months could be spelled out in full, only the initial or in abbreviated form).
And this is supported since There are a "Germany" or a "France" format which do not override the language setting.
They're not, and their relative ease of use is only because users have learned over years that a few words looking markedly different (but not emphasized) might just be links.
A web developer can override both those conventions and when they do, their links become less recognizable and their apps become less usable. Since there's no cursor on iOS touch screens, losing the visual cues is a similar problem.
[edit] You might argue that just tapping on something serves as the way to discover if a visual element is tappable on iOS. But it doesn't, as the original article states, it just makes the user wonder if something might be broken.
Also in this case the problem is if a site has some text that's blue & clickable, and some text that's blue & not clickable. That's more or less what iOS 7 is doing. Colored text doesn't mean it performs an action. It might, it might not. Similarly, black text might be clickable, it might not. It might have a border, it might not. And these are all mixed together in the same app, or even a single screen such as the case of the alarm that the article is talking about.
Actually, it's a learnability problem: once you learn how to use its features, iOS 7 is a vast improvement over 6.
If you mean people were complaining that the controls were too visually complex and they attempted to differentiate themselves too much, I guess personally I'd have to disagree with those people.
But that can be said about anything which involves "knowledge in the head" vs "knowledge in the world": Once you learn how to use it, it's superior to simpler systems restricted to only what can be operated by knowledge in the world alone.
And so far everyone has argued that iPhones are "better" by virtue of being "simpler" and "more intuitive" than Android because you don't need to figure out how things works, i.e. it only depends on knowledge in the world.
And now with iOS7 the tune is that you just need "knowledge in the head" and all is good. That's not a very consistent story.
So, the popup is shown by clicking on a bright blue "i" in a circle or a square dark grey "More" button, and the title of the popup is "Details"...
Also, if you type and press enter too quickly, you can make the app crash.
If anyone wants evidence that iOS 7 was rushed, all they need to do is see things like that (and the parent post). All this is fixable though, rather than something endemic in the design of iOS 7, so I'm hopeful it'll get fixed soon enough.
The one thing I don't agree with is how the writer argues that, because the UI elements like the "+" button are red, it means they might be misinterpreted as performing a negative action. I think it's not a good point because it's easy to tell that red is the accent color of the application (for example the active navbar button is red), and thus it doesn't really play a role in telling the user whether the action is a positive or a negative one. The fact that the big round buttons start as green, and only become red once tapped (along with a change in their label), should make it easy to tell that they're not red because it's the accent color of the app, instead they're red because they perform a destructive action (in this case, resetting the timer). Their label further confirms their purpose.
As a last remark, I don't think that even the least savvy users are to be treated as "dumb". If they care enough, they will figure it out nonetheless. This isn't one of those issues that would make it impossible to use the app. You just need to put a small amount of thought in using it.
The green circles shown are the inconsistent buttons. They're trying to do too much, both compensating for the choice of red and encouraging you to click them. Their thick circle borders are redundant, and the lack of consistency on these custom buttons is indeed an issue.
The calendar is probably set to a different language/country's date formatting. That's a feature and is observable in other OSes. (English menu, arabic dates, for example)
The unique bit about alarms -- for iPad only -- is that table representation. They should have cut it out until the next iOS revision.
Isn't "Don't make me think" widely accepted as a design mantra to aspire to?
flat design seems even more applicable for print design, i.e. completely non-interactive
The worst thing about all this icon frenzy to me is that they often even take up more space than text that could descripe their function.
That highly depends on the language that you're using... Having localized our app into 16 different languages I've found that there are many languages where the text simply does not fit into the allotted space. In those cases I think using icons are a lot more effective than a bunch of ellipsized text.
I think iOS 7 is Apple's Vista :-(
Except instead of functionality gaffes, it's the UI changes that no one really wants.
iOS 7 is such a large reset from previous iOS versions, and I would expect to see this new design language evolve over future releases. The best comparison I read: think of the changes between OS9 and OSX.
We use iPads during "Tech days". On iPads that we have updated to iOS7, people that normally have no problem are having a heck of a time with the new UI, where things are, new actions with swiping, buttons, fonts, ect. It's not as, dare I day, intuitive. Even using more outlines on the new blue buttons (like in the App store) would make it better
Yes, most will relearn it, but it will take months for some. Great UI, Flat UI, doesn't have to mean less intuitive (borders around buttons, ect).
So we are sticking with iOS 6 on most of them.
The only intuitive things in human experience are fear of heights and the location of your mother's milk (I'm probably quoting but can't remember who). What people call intuitive is merely the familiar, all else is learnt.
IOS7 requires relearning, as you have confirmed.
I wonder how many people that aren't looking at this with a UX hat on are actually experiencing these problems.
"Content first" was one of the main topics in the UX crowd lately, and frankly, iOS 7 is a good example of this concept.
Pointing out inconsistencies can be fun, but I believe that it distracts from the overall feel you get from using an improved OS.
The arguments of keeping a 90 year old grandmother up to date with the UI seems a bit ridiculous to me. They can always stay on old versions if they need to. You can keep their PCs on Windows XP as well. Progress should not wait for the lowest denominator of users.
PS. Your grandma says you never call. She knows you're busy but still, a phone call once a week never killed anyone.
True! But not by a rational person.
There are many valid complaints that may annoy designers and may initially confuse people, but in reality in really shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get oriented with even the most confusing UI changes.
There, fixed that for you.
You may not agree with the tone of the author but his point (albeit small, repeated and not explained fully) is accurate.
Far better to test, watch, measure and iterate.
The teaching experience I've had running through how to use applications is almost exactly the same as here. (Though I must say that this is on IO6). Simple things like the way you 'Add' or 'Edit' something being inconsistent really do throw her off. I'm sure anyone who has guided very none-technical people through using technology can relate. It's nothing to do with being 'an idiot'.
There are plenty of older people who take a lot longer to pick up technology like this, and it's also worth noting that as a demographic they are often wealthier than their younger counterparts, and a valuable customer segment.
The assertion is that the author is pretending to be an idiot in the way he is claiming the iOS7 is somehow worse than iOS6.
There are faults in iO7, but there is no evidence that it is harder for people to learn, and plenty of evidence that it is basically more usable.
The point I was trying to make is that if you're taking the view that your users need to have a significantly higher than average the level of knowledge in a domain area (i.e. equivalent to the knowledge of the domain area that the product designer has), you're going to end up with an un-usable product for the left end of the bell curve of your user population.
That left end of the bell curve is relative (as you point out) to your user population, but exists nonetheless - an "idiot" radiological engineer is not an idiot in relation to the general population, but is one in relation to the 99th percentile best radiological engineer (and, hopefully, in relation to the radiological engineer building your product).
What I was trying to say is that a well-designed UX requires that the 1% "idiot" of your target user population still knows what to do...
Now the article did seem to be coming from a place of "I have never seen a computer, phone or tablet before in my life how does this work?"
I just tell myself it's all a giant A/B test and iOS8 will consolidate one specific set of styles.
" With iOS 7, we have also created the largest number of design critics, UI designers and UX experts in history - Everybody is now an expert and we believe the world will be a better place for it. "
As bad as the critics make it out I wonder if they have seen it used in the wild by someone non-technical. My mother in law asked me about upgrading her iPad on Sunday. She did so and I expected a bunch of confusion and questions re: photo's and email; the two apps she uses most (besides mindless games that aren't affected by any OS changes whatsoever).
Her comment last nigh? "It's really different I really like how they organized my photos for me."
So that's an n of one. But it's closer to observing it in the wild vs. a small circle of tech savvy perfectionists.
If the critics want me to take them seriously they should not focus on themselves so much but the average person and their experience immediately after upgrading, a day later, a week later and a month later. Otherwise, IMO it's just a whiney tech pundit fishing with link bait.
Everybody is an expert in deciding what they don't like. It doesn't matter how much designer-speak bullshit you can spew, if the person using it doesn't like it or finds it too confusing, it failed.
What I find particularly unsettling about this is that the user doesn't even need any kind of visual feedback. The only feedback that truly matters is the one from his ears. Imagine if your TV obscured a big chunk right in the middle of the screen every time you adjusted the volume. I find this deeply distracting and in direct contrast with the iOS7 design philosophy portrayed by its designers.
As I read that one of those in-viewport, youtube-a-like progress bars was repeatedly shooting across the top of the screen.
This is the problem - changing the l&f across the board is not a good MO in 2013. Yeah, I know, it's Apple and their fashion dictatorship. I've been through Mac UI changes since 1988. But I feel like I can barely use this tool now for what should be surfacey and easily hackable issues. I like the fundamentals, the animation is fine, the general UI tweaks are great.. it just hurts to use it now.
Apple needs to solve the one-size fits all UI problem. I don't care how they do it, I don't have a great suggestion ('theme support' is not one) -- but this state of affairs just sucks.
I can't wait for Winterboard to make iOS 7 usable.
Usability? There are loads of examples of usability not being as much of a problem as many make it out to be. You can start with Windows as an example of something that billions of people use without problems while usability experts blog about how horrible it is --yet five year olds in schools all over the world seem to not have any issues. Another one is computer games. No two games seem to have the same interface (save such things as basic navigation commands) yet people adapt and become very adept at operating them. I always take usability reports with a grain of salt. Some are legitimate and honest, most are less than that.
I expect the Mac OS X interface to become worse with time, too.
The buttons in Timer works based on the OS wide standard of activating on release.
For a stopwatch, however, you want it to be instant because it's time sensitive. It would kinda suck if you're timings were all out by a bit because you kept you're finger on there slightly too long.
This is actually an example of breaking a convention to improve usability [1]. It's also an example of how if you're looking hard enough you'll find inconsistencies and things that are theoretically horrific in stuff you've been using absolutely fine for years.
The real inconsistency on this screen is that the Reset button doesn't activate on release. If ever there was a time you want to be able to back out of an action by moving your finger away from the button before release I'd say this is it.
While the faux naivity is a bit irritating, it does make a valid point (if not entirely novel). The more you pare back your UI the more you lose distinction between interactive and non-interactive elements. If your buttons are simply color tinted text, it's difficult to unambiguously use color tinting to highlight text of note such as the current day.
What makes iOS 7 really interesting is how it tries to counter that. For example, color hinted text in the edges of the screen will always be actions, so color is enough; color hinted text in the middle of the screen could just be marking interesting things, so actions are usually accompanied by thin borders.
An proper dive into the design and the trade-offs rather than endless "look at this edge-case" would be really interesting.
[1] Caveat because I'm sure otherwise someone will try and pull me up on it. No, this isn't amazing revolutionary design by Apple or super-human attention to detail. I'm sure the Android and WP 7 equivalents work the same.
This is an excellent point.
The overall experience is considerably smoother and more cohesive with less cognitive clutter. There is a definite transition period; stick with it and you'll be happier on the other side.
As of the last beta and GM, either iOS suddenly changed drastically for the better, or my perception finally adapted.
Either way, now the old version is frustrating, lacking essential features to accomplish common intents. I believe it's my acceptance or comprehension of the new flow that shifted.
FWIW, I work with several major versions in the course of my day, from 4.x through 7.x.
For now at the very least, 6 is faster, more consistent, more stable, and better supported by both devices and apps. Maybe they'll fix most of that soon - with an initial showing this bad, I'm less hopeful than I normally would be. Bigger changes will be harder to swallow until iOS 8.
As I often say, life is about balance. Apple used to have way too much UI chrome. Now they have way too little. I hope they swing back a bit and find that balance soon. An I hope they stop sticking so many pure white backgrounds all over the place, it makes it hard on the eyes, at least for me.
Skeuomorphic vs. Flat aside, the sparseness in how iOS7 looks on my iPad prompted me to revert the upgrade and go back to corinthian-leather-infested iOS6 for now.
The lack of visual cues in iOS7 is a bit off putting combined with the "designed primarily for iPhone" keep me from upgrading mine and my parents' iPads.
That said, I'm loving iOS7 on my iPhone5. It feels liberating.
The incorrect text is a UI bug, certainly, but the underlying issue suggested in multiple places is, how can you distinguish between a negative action and an accent in apps where both of those are identified by the same colour?
The release of OS X, and the subsequent program rewrites to support it, put apple back on the tech map. I find it hard to believe this doubled as their usability death sentence.
But there was a price was a hit to the UX and UI. which were actually pretty sensible. All the fancy graphics and lack of helpful text labels and assistance has become more a pain for new users.
I feel like any other company could have come out with this release and it would have been met with far less analytical criticism. Why is there so much analysis on v.1 of a their new UI?
Red (in those two cases) means stop, so the button turns red. Stopping a stopwatch is an expected action to perform, so the button remains white (to be consistent with start). Stopping a timer is an unexpected action—you are cancelling the timer. To denote this, they use dark grey.
This really isn't news.
If so that is quite clever...
Just one comment. Don't people know you can drag and drop alarms; you just have to tap and hold? Similar to rearranging apps on home screen.
Plus it's impossible to downgrade, so any iOS 7 user in a statistic might be an unhappy one; or the other way around, maybe I would love iOS 7 on my iPad 3rd gen, but I won't irreversibly upgrade for now.
This is what I'd love to see, regardless of the results: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/windows-8-disappointing-usab...
As far as I know, the closest thing that's publicly available are customer satisfaction surveys.