This thread reminds me of the early iOS 7 reactions and this funny page: https://jonyiveredesignsthings.tumblr.com/page/5
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iOS 11 UI design.
- Thread starter Old geek 959
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Funny, except the grotesque cartoon of OS X is pretty close to the washed-down Yosemite disaster he created, and his team's design poison bled over into ruining the Instagram icon worse in real life than it appears in that parody site:
So iOS 11's continuance of flat, buttonless, simplified, non-confrontational interface...take the Burner app I use at times, and its interface. Thinking quickly, where would you go to change certain settings - the hamburger icon in the top left or the gear icon in the lower right?
So if you guessed "gear" icon, you'd get this, below.
And what do you think the three dot-dot-dots in the upper right do...why, they get you to more settings (called "SETTINGS"...)
And here's where the hamburger settings icon gets you -- another batch of settings/options:
So there you have it, three locations for settings/options, and none of which are easily memorable to the point that even after a year of using this app, I have to think & hunt & guess to find various settings options. Hooray for the continuance of futuristic non-skeumorphic non-intuitive interfaces!
In case anyone was wondering, the flame in the top image is not a pressable actionable item, it's just an actionable-looking decoration. (Can't you tell by looking, and without complaining about the time it takes to press it and then lock into memory every various app's intricacies, including their unique non-pressable-looking pressable icons and their pressable-looking non-pressable icons?). If any of this aggravates you, don't worry, you'll get relaxed when you try to make a call using the soothing dialer interface and its minimalistic presentation that's devoid of stressful contrasty details by use of impossible-to-see minimalistic gridlines between the buttons so they don't look like buttons, and where each tap of a number barely lights it up so as to not shock you by notifying you that you pressed something (in the screenshot below, I'm pressing #9 believe it or not, but where my finger is touching the '9' icon so I can't see the 9-digit greyed-out while I can barely tell the color differentiation of the pressed "button" area, so I just have to trust that my data got entered like I was hoping, or I just look up at the number-entry area after each press, so nice & convenient).
Much good design! So ios7-11-esque! So much nice!
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Apple isn't responsible for that app. Why are you giving them all the credit for an interface someone else designed? If you want to whine about their interface, why don't you track down their forums and complain there? This has absolutely nothing to do with iOS 11. At best some app developer attempted to follow the new style guidelines Apple put out and did a poor job (per your sensibilities). That's totally not Apple's fault and I fail to see why it's being discussed here. The people that aren't buying into to your opinions aren't going to be swayed by this at all. It screams of desperation at this point. This example is barely more relevant than posting a photo of your pets.
I have submitted feedback to the app developer, often. But if they're tied to Apple's ios7-ios11-esque UI and "design principles," how much freedom do they really have to create something more robust/intuitive? Certainly the developer's decision to offer three unintuitively confusing settings/option entry points as well as a dialpad screen that looks like it's playing a blend into the background camouflage game are their own poor decisions, but if you find no fault with Apple's continuing to stick to promoting an iOS full of UI principles centered on monochromatic & flat presentations with entry points that are too often low-contrast small-font white text on light-colored backgrounds and/or flat "buttons" completely undistinguishable from non-pressable/non-actionable graphics instead of sticking with a robust & intuitive UI that sets up app developers for success and isn't so centered on minimalistic fashion and which leaves the door too wide open developers to create minimalistic disasters like the Burner app..............then that's your opinion and no amount of blind deference to Apple's poor sense of current UI design is going to sway us any of us who find major fault with the current UI heading into iOS 11
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Hey I remember this, those were great times. It was so accurate at the time. Now it's become the fashion though. So bad.
Hahaha that's hilarious yet so accurate.
[doublepost=1499402460][/doublepost]I quite enjoy this one myself:
http://i.imgur.com/C5RlnLs.gif
Yay for "Jules" who commented in the below link. He gets it.
https://getflywheel.com/layout/shouldnt-use-flat-design/
More designers need to ask themselves: “Am I designing for others – or for myself?”
https://getflywheel.com/layout/shouldnt-use-flat-design/
More designers need to ask themselves: “Am I designing for others – or for myself?”
Far more than is evident in the screenshots you posted. They choose to go flat, it wasn't forced upon them. I have post-iOS 7 apps that aren't anywhere near that flat. Or ugly. That's just nasty looking (my opinion), flat or not. And clearly it's very poorly organized.
EDIT: I was just browsing around raywenderlich.com and ran across this article. The very first sentence in the article is: "Although skeuomorphism in iOS apps is a thing of the past, that doesn’t mean you’re limited to the stock appearance of controls in your iOS app." I'd say that answers your question quite well. Even if you don't read code, you should scroll through there to at least view the screenshots. They also discuss (but don't get into) the fact that you can also build your own UI elements. Don't like the new buttons? You're welcome to create your own (though not recommended).
I never mentioned my preferences. I have better sense than to argue religion, politics or Apple design principles. It's a loosing battle where two or more people discuss, then argue and eventually devolve into name-calling without ever changing the other person's mind. It's fun to read what the loons are saying of course, but I have no interest in being part of the entertainment myself. At the end of the day, like it or not, iOS 6 is gone and not coming back. All the screenshots in the world and posts on forums aren't going to change that. You can accept it and move on, accept it and NOT move on or you can not accept it and find a different manufacturer that is a better match for your design aesthetics. But if you're holding out for a return to iOS 6 like design from Apple, I suspect you're going to have a very long wait.
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Just because iOS 6 is gone
I think that your way of thinking is wrong. Where would we be as a society if we blindly accept everything that comes to us and don't question anything. It doesn't matter if the discussion is about a tech company or human rights, etc. We as people should always question everything, because our voice can change things quiet often. Believe me, we don't want to complain. We don't complain because we hate Apple, we complain because we love this company so much and we want them to make great products. Steve Jobs established a very high standard and we hate to see Apple loosing it.
It's not about photo illustrative vs. flat design. It's about a design that used to be fun, engaging and well crafted. And more importantly it's about a design that only Apple could do, which is not the case anymore.
Honestly, I'm tired of this discussion. Some of you advocates of Apple's current design just can't admit that lots of things in their design, and I mean elementary (basic) things, are wrong, poorly made and rushed out. We can already see, that Apple acknowledged that some of their design choices were wrong. The problem is, that they're not doing anything new, they're just going back.
It shouldn't matter to us if something is gone. By your logic it certainly won't come back soon, but by my logic we could push them to bring something great way sooner. And you know what, Apple is listening.
I suppose you're welcome to your opinion, but it should at least be an educated opinion. For example...
I'm not sure how you missed it since you quoted me twice, but here it is again: "I never mentioned my preferences". Just to make that clearer for you, I never came into this thread (that I can recall) and specifically said I prefer the older look or the newer look. I only jumped in when someone started using someone elses work to illustrate how badly Apple has screwed things up. But I never specified which side of the fence I'm on.
Ok, I'm sorry you're right. My post was meant to be rather general, so my apologies to you that I got carried away. So would you tell me your opinion? It's OK if you don't want to tell, I'm just curious.
I know why you came to this thread... Developers can make as good apps as good is the SDK and design guidelines and resources, right? Apple should make their design guidelines clearer and simplify them if some developers don't get it, or simply reject those confusing apps. That's what I think but I'm not a developer though, so I could be wrong. They rejected some apps in the past for smaller things than this and there are so many apps that suffers from this kind of problem.
I resemble that remark.
Friend, I'm sure some ios7-11 era app makers figured out how to wrestle the iOS7-11 UI basics into providing something that most users consider to be intuitive & interesting-looking, but they are few and far between as far as I've experienced. Really it's fine if you fail to agree with the justness for blaming Apple as the root cause for how most every app I use now is worse than it was 4 years ago, with most seeming to blindly follow Apple's common theme of over-minimalizing what's on the screen via lots of blank unused space (ironically during a time phones keep getting larger) and too much borderless white content (and light grey text), and unnecessarily oversized round flat buttons that themselves take up too much space, forcing common tasks to be hidden off screen behind menus/clicks instead of on a main screen for easy use. Apple deserves a lot of blame for setting up developers with a UI/iOS that's not loved by quite a few here...Simplisafe app -- I've managed to hold onto to the ios6-era app that's easy to use with a clear, tasteful, and efficient presentation that effectively uses "button-looking" buttons, flat buttons, colors, & borders/regions to help the user get the job done without any guessing, showing all the into you need on one screen instead of via unnecessarily frequent tapping/swiping thru multiple buried menus:
Then, the new & improved post-iOS7 app. Self-explanatory degradation in usability from removing multiple functions from a single page via lots of wasted space, unnecessarily big & round circles (looking at those screenshots, are they pressable ? Are they information only?) just to stick to apple's silly theme of circles, and especially -- the tiny white font on pastel backgrounds. Very much like iMessage, with white font on blue or green bubbles, very unreadable.
Even Instagram, which I so respected for holding out for the longest time with their ios6 pressable icon that looked so unique, sold out to the all-white borderless look where text from one photo runs together to the next:
And, depending upon where you've positioned the photo you're viewing, the lines blur between icons for a photo and icons/buttons for control of the app:
It's OK if you disagree, and it's fun therapy for me to whine here and sense agreement from other users with what I consider to be similarly good common-sense taste. Like was said above by @Feyl: if one doesn't voice their concern, it will never get heard by hopefully someone in a position one day to do something about it.
That's pretty much it.
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Ok, I'm going to jump into this with an experience short story.
Three days ago, I was bored and decided to mess around with my iPhone 4S on 6.1.3, I thought, "Hmm... What would happen if I put in my AT&T SIM in this unactivated Verizon phone?" I grabbed my Nano to Micro SIM adaptor and inserted it into the phone, to my surprise it notified me saying. "Waiting for Activation." I waited and the carrier logo popped up in the corner and all services started working perfectly, which made me happy, because I now have a backup phone, and I can go back and really see what changed after I switched to the 6S back in 2015. I was impressed to say the least, battery life was outstanding compared to my 6S (especially at idle in my pocket), performance was pretty good, experience was outstanding; I have don't really have any complaints with it. If Snapchat and Discord supported iOS 6, I doubt I would even use my 6S at all.
Three days ago, I was bored and decided to mess around with my iPhone 4S on 6.1.3, I thought, "Hmm... What would happen if I put in my AT&T SIM in this unactivated Verizon phone?" I grabbed my Nano to Micro SIM adaptor and inserted it into the phone, to my surprise it notified me saying. "Waiting for Activation." I waited and the carrier logo popped up in the corner and all services started working perfectly, which made me happy, because I now have a backup phone, and I can go back and really see what changed after I switched to the 6S back in 2015. I was impressed to say the least, battery life was outstanding compared to my 6S (especially at idle in my pocket), performance was pretty good, experience was outstanding; I have don't really have any complaints with it. If Snapchat and Discord supported iOS 6, I doubt I would even use my 6S at all.
Would absolutely love to go back to the pre-iOS 7 era if I could too. A 4S running on iOS 6 can still do many of the things that an iPhone 7 can do today, but it's unfortunate and inevitable that the app support is slowly dying off as the days go by.
Wouldn't it feel crammed going from a 4.7" display to a 3.5"? It's quite a big difference, and I imagine it would feel very weird typing on that way smaller keyboard. It will, however, be easier to reach all aspects of the screen with one hand.
For me it isn't really an issue because I have never stopped using my 4S entirely. Ever since I got my 6S, my 4S always has a charge and is ready to do whatever I want it to.
I like the iMessage image the most of them. The other ones looks cluttered and, honestly, it wouldn't look that way if Apple designed it.
Personally, I liked skeuomorphism, but thought some features of iOS 1-6 took it too far. I preferred 3D look over flat, but some areas were also to far, like iMessages.
But to me the real UI/UX question isn't looking backwards, but forwards. We're in a shift away from the traditional screen experience to a new user experience (UX) where augmented reality and voice are the next big thing. This is where skeuomorphic design and 3D return. ARkit is all about mapping real-world objects (skeuomorphic) back into the display and voice commands: Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Assistant are the next leap beyond keyboards and some of our touch features.
So how will the next UI work with that? This is where we abonden iOS 1-6's old design and iOS 7-11's design and delve into a new UI/UX where we speak and look at skeuomorphic/augmented reality objects mapped into our phone experience.
What will that look like, who knows? But I don't think looking at the past design is correct, as I don't think the current UI can last much longer either.
This is where the next phone UI breakthrough will occur. I don't think Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon can wait much longer, but the way we interact with our phone and the Internet at large is changing.
This is where ARkit is exciting. You can already see a toe in the water with Maps flyover using ARkit, but wait until the entire UI is re-imagined with AR.
We talk about kids that grew up with the iPhone and not knowing the world or it interfaces before it revolutionized the UI/UX. When we get to AR and voice, the next generation of kids will have a hard time believing we typed, tapped and acted with today's devices, so antiquated.
But to me the real UI/UX question isn't looking backwards, but forwards. We're in a shift away from the traditional screen experience to a new user experience (UX) where augmented reality and voice are the next big thing. This is where skeuomorphic design and 3D return. ARkit is all about mapping real-world objects (skeuomorphic) back into the display and voice commands: Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Assistant are the next leap beyond keyboards and some of our touch features.
So how will the next UI work with that? This is where we abonden iOS 1-6's old design and iOS 7-11's design and delve into a new UI/UX where we speak and look at skeuomorphic/augmented reality objects mapped into our phone experience.
What will that look like, who knows? But I don't think looking at the past design is correct, as I don't think the current UI can last much longer either.
This is where the next phone UI breakthrough will occur. I don't think Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon can wait much longer, but the way we interact with our phone and the Internet at large is changing.
This is where ARkit is exciting. You can already see a toe in the water with Maps flyover using ARkit, but wait until the entire UI is re-imagined with AR.
We talk about kids that grew up with the iPhone and not knowing the world or it interfaces before it revolutionized the UI/UX. When we get to AR and voice, the next generation of kids will have a hard time believing we typed, tapped and acted with today's devices, so antiquated.
Speaking of ARkit. Does anyone know whether somebody is already building an app that spreads out your iTunes album covers on the floor around you, allowing you to select one? Seems like a fun application, especially if you were wearing AR glasses instead of having to hold up a device.
I doubt that we're about to see some kind of a breakthrough in UI & UX in the near future. I think that people are too conservative and lazy to learn a totally new concept of controlling their smartphones. It would require a new kind of device to change the game, like it was with Mac, iPod and iPhone.
I agree with you and disagree at the same time. Perhaps the phone will remain the same and is already the hub of communication (for now), but at the same time I believe the watch or Apple glasses/headgear will become that UI/UX device, or AirPods, or whatever that speaker is called (HomePod, marketing fail). They will in time replace the phone in terms of interaction. That is why the race for the car, home speaker, watch and eventually AR/VR headgear will eventually decouple from the phone and have new way to interact beyond a keyboard and touch interface.
But how will that affect the phone. I'm already using Siri more and more for everyday tasks. I'm using the keyboard less and less. But you're correct that it's incremental, not truly evolutional, yet. But it could be, and I think that's where the next redesign (or the one after) will take us.
I can already envision ARkit being used more and more with the phone. I imaging an Apple Maps that instead of a street view, an AR overlay of what my camera is seeing as I point it around. This is what Google Glass did, even though the deployment was a disaster and before its time. I think we're on the cusp of the next great redesign, similar to the original iPhone.
This will most likely be the Google Glass, or Apple Glass concept device. Whenever that becomes mainstream. Idk about 1-2 years, but I'd say phone's will be replaced with that (for a lot of functionality, anyway) eventually.
Tech glasses of any type won't become mainstream. People don't want to wear glasses of any type when they don't need to. That's the same thing with VR glasses. VR won't become mainstream if people need to wear it on their face. Look how Google Glasses and 3D TVs flopped. People were amazed by it first, but they realised that it doesn't make sense in this form.
[doublepost=1499549560][/doublepost]
I don't think that people want to talk to their devices in public. I personally don't use Siri at all and when I do it's only for basic commands like "create alarm, etc.".
I love AR and ARkit though. I like it because I don't need to use anything else but my iPhone and use it comfortably and effectively. That could change things profoundly I think.
I've been gone a week (my son is visiting from The Netherlands), but I'm happy to answer the question. Though I honestly feel it won't have been worth the 10 days to get your reply.
I don't think either version got it right. There are some things I liked in the old days, there are some things I like better now. I don't see it as a black & white choice. There are more options out there than pre-iOS 7 or post-iOS 7.
I will say the one thing that bugged me the most was the switch to the new icons. Oddly enough, that hit me harder than the apps themselves getting a new look. I thought the old 3D, almost photo realistic icons were amazing. Then most of them got replaced with flat, ugly icons. Oddly enough, I don't care about the apps themselves. I seemed to have no issues adjusting to what is vs. what isn't a button. The white space doesn't bug me. The lack of skeumorphism didn't even phase me. Things had a new look. In some cases, even the design itself changed. I adapted without any issues and didn't even mind. But for whatever reason, I really hated to see all the pretty icons go away.
Beyond that, I don't care a lot about their design because I don't spend a lot of time admiring the UI. I care more about what it can do than what it looks like. I care more about the apps it's able to run and less about the system that is running them. To put all that in perspective, I'm the guy who is still starting at the default Windows desktop and has been for years. Here at work and at home. The only reason my iPhone, iPad and Mac have custom backgrounds is because I thought it would be cool if they all matched. So about 3-4 years back, I set them to the same built-in wallpapers. If I had the option to customize my system font, colors, etc., I most likely wouldn't fool with it. I don't mess with it on Windows. I don't on my Mac. So I can't imagine I would if it was on iOS.
So I can say with all honesty, I don't care what iOS 11 looks like or its design. Or to be more accurate, I'm fine with the screenshots I've seen so far. I'm sure it's not perfect. But as long as my apps still run, I don't mind.