Who is ruling the mobile UI?
Some thoughts about a new perspective for mobile UI announced today.
Some time ago my iPhone (iOS6) started to bore me: I got a feeling of stagnation seeing the same UI design for years. By frustration, I decided to jailbreak it. Jailbreak brought me a new user experience, the possibility to install tweaks and themes to customize my device. I felt free to do whatever I wanted with my iPhone.
Some months later, I discovered the Xiaomi 2S at GMIC in Beijing. The phone looked really amazing. Built on the top of the Android OS, Xiaomi offers a beautiful MIUI V5 interface, cool interaction effects, thousands of custom themes, and much more. But the Xiaomi phone is made for China and doesn’t have Google Play installed by default. That means you can’t use your everyday apps such as Twitter and Facebook without installing Google Play store. The latter operation requires some quirks. I really loved MIUI V5 default theme, so I just installed it on my Android phone to benefit from a new user experience.
Today, Apple unveiled iOS7. Many iPhone users, especially UI designers, were disappointed with iOS7 new flat design. Jony Ive version of iOS looks radically opposite to the previous Scott Forstall versions. At first glance, the home screen looks fresh, but looking closely at the icons is a shocker: They look unfinished. This might be explained by the fact that we were used to the old skeuomorphic iOS design. But still. I can identify three types of disharmony:
- Use of extremely vivid hues in gradients.
- Lack of consistence in gradient direction: some apps have vivid color on the top (Messages, Phone), others on the bottom (Mail, Weather). No rule?
- Shapes lack of proportions, e.g. Safari icon.
- Too much contrast: a solid black color is used for the Compass and Stocks apps, which make them look like “non-related” to the overall theme.
I am a UI/UX designer and I love to play with the trendy flat design concept. As a designer, I worshiped Apple as a company who is inventing concepts, a leader in design industry. Today, I see the impact of the innovative flat design concept brought by Microsoft Windows 8 on Apple design approach. I appreciate the Windows 8 pure design concept, despite the color scheme and some UX problems (e.g. buttons depth). Apple seem to behave like Microsoft throwing away the old-school design benchmarks and bringing a totally new different design approach. Fresh, but too distant from the recognizable Apple UI users were familiar with. Unfortunately, Apple still remains a closed platform and doesn’t allow users to customize their devices, change themes, install widgets.The UI is still imposed to the user: Things haven’t changed.
Besides users, Apple has a huge developer community and many apps that match the previous design. Will developers follow Apple new perspective? Will Apple retain its position of the UI design leader? Who will rule the mobile UI in the future?
Feel free to discuss on Twitter: @tweetfr
