Goods & Bads of iOS7
I think it’s fugly too, but let’s not be so superficial now
I’ve been busy and saw the iOS7 reveal late, like really late. I went from a state of “Oooooh” to “ah, ok” on to “hummm” and then “wtf is this”, then finally resting on “they are onto something, they just don’t know what exactly it is yet”.
The Bad Stuff
The visual appearance of the home screen itself. This is what users see countless times a day whether you like it or not and for whatever reason, Apple decided to turn it into a candyland of gradient mess. Here’s my classification of the gradients:
．Sunny side up (top light, bottom dark)
．Reverse box checked! (top dark, bottom light)
．Neon goodness (Safari, iTunes)
．From the future (Game Center, Compass)
．WTF is this (Notes, Reminders, Settings)
Rumors of Apple having 100 designers working on the iWatch is obviously wrong because they were actually all on iOS7 resulting in the circus we see today. Without going into too much details, and as a by-product of Apple’s secrecy I believe (no one gets to see the “full picture” except execs), I think I’ve successfully identified the people responsible for each icon designs:
Sure the icons need to be distinct so users can quickly tell what each icon does at a glance, but I am pretty sure there’s a way to make it all more cohesive at the same time.
Apple said they’ve introduced a grid and everything lives by it, but I don’t buy that. Where’s the alignments below? Yes the Safari icon did fill all the way up to the outer-most ring, but none of the other icons do the same. The dots for Reminders are just floating in the middle of nowhere and the horizontal lines look like they are about to fall apart.
Look at the Safari toolbar icons, what do each of them do? I had to grab my iPhone to remind myself again what was at the bottom — especially the Bookmarks icon, it looks more like a broken design where the middle line went too far and someone forgot to correct it.
Some icons seem to pack too much details like Flashlight and Genres icons below while the Trash icon went on a diet and grew taller. The Save to Camera Roll icon almost looks like a folder, and, really? So simplified they even stripped the camera icon from the snap button?
The Good Stuff
I like how Apple is trending towards a more “high-tech” finish for the iOS designs and the do-away with chromes and borders will allow more flexibility on the designs in future. It makes the system look smart, advanced, and full of possibilites not yet realized. The compass UI is the best example being ultra simple, slick, and modern with a great touch on the animations.
The newly-defined UI layering is a beginning to reorganizing the OS overall as a system. It brings a 2nd dimension to the OS instead of just the directional navigations. It’s clear when you look at sample videos where the UI no longer slides left and right quite as often when “diving in deeper”.
It’s easy to make ugly designs into something prettier, but much harder to systemize a process, reorganize information, and be functionally different.
While a lot of functions and interaction seem to be “borrowed”, it’s not the first time Apple’s stolen from others anyway. It’s the polishing, educating, and marketing aspects that Apple does best. Like this video.
Shifting the Perspective
If we take a slightly different perspective on the new overhaul and think: what if the UI was really designed for younger generation? what if the UI was designed for a bigger screen with much more breathing room that’s about to come?
The designs now make a bit more sense and comforting — but it could also just be Apple not saying enough “no”s this time and rushed iOS7 out the door too soon with execs trying to step out of the shadows of the past.
Without a dictator things are bound to be messy for a while but as long as the grande vision is clear, things will eventually fall in place. Changes are hard, changes take time, but people are more adaptive than you think. Eventually we’ll get used to it, eventually it’ll be refined, eventually Apple will straighten its vision again.
Mark my words that when iOS7 officially launches a lot of the icons will have been redesigned. My only fear is that Apple is stepping out of the extremely-simple-even-the-dumbest-person-can-use-it zone and into the do-everything-and-have-all-the-features-on-your-phone.
PS. If you change your language to Japanese, the OS and visual styles look a lot better somehow. It just fits.
