A Request to Developers Implementing 3D Touch

Have you used an iPhone 6S or 6S+ yet? If not, you owe it to yourself to check one out! One of the terrific new features is the ability to use physical pressure on the screen as a gesture. Apple has defined a new user paradigm which they call Peek and Pop.

Peek and Pop allows a user to peek into the content of another screen before committing to opening it. The “Pop” aspect is when a user decides they indeed want to commit and continue to the next screen by pressing a little “deeper”.

Apple has implemented this in a number of their applications, one of them being Mail. After using Peek and Pop in Mail for about a week and half, I have a request for developers who implement this feature.

Let’s look at how Apple has implemented Peek in Mail. Lightly pressing on a item in the list will Peek into the message as shown on the right. Neat! Right?

Well, here’s my complaint. The preview itself is around 548 points tall but 138 of those points (or ~25%) are wasted on information I already saw in the list (except that the received time has somehow changed?).

My request to developers is to avoid wasting the real estate in your Peek views. I would much rather see more of Natasha’s excellent newsletter than the message header.

In some instances it may even make more sense to provide a well designed summary view of what is on the next screen rather than a preview of the next view itself.

I cannot wait to see what developers come up with, 3D Touch has already become natural and expected for me as a user.