WWDC 2013: Why design matters.
Design makes the difference between customer satisfaction and customer delight. Giles Peyton-Nicoll
This is a very simple statement, but it can make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of difference. Companies like Google, Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, eBay etc are focusing on their user interfaces and plowing money into their UI and UX departments… and it’s paying off. Formerly design-challenged Google has undergone a revolution in how people interact with their apps and products (eighty-five percent of American adults now have a “favorable” view of Google compared to 72 percent for Apple) and are fostering the kind of love that Apple used to have.
That’s right. Used to. When you look at commentary about Apple‘s UI these days, even from the Apple obsessives, the vast majority of it is negative and about how “out of date” they are. Apple pushed huge boundaries with the iPhone…but that was 5 years ago (which is a lifetime in UI design). They’ve barely updated the styling let alone the UX (the springboard hasn’t changed at all - widgets please? close all running apps?). They have a familiar and in some ways satisfying design but it is long past the point of delighting people. Apple were the leaders in the past but they have stagnanted, whilst the market is rapidly evolving; they are being left behind. The upcoming WWDC conference is going to be pivotal for Apple. They need to, once again, give that WOW-factor that people have come to love them for. So many third-party apps are just showing them up in terms of design (especially Google’s own iOS apps) that it’s becoming embarrassing. It will be interesting to see what changes they make on Monday and I hope they prove my doubts wrong, but a part of me worries that they are refusing to make the leaps they need to impress.
The fact that Sir Jony Ive was appointed leader of Human Interface design raised everyone’s hopes and, I think, for good reason. Apple itself is not shy of following other good product ideas (as with Android’s lead on the notification tray) but more importantly almost all of Ive’s iconic design from Apple were heavily inspired by the Braun designer Dieter Rams. I would be very surprised if he didn’t notice the trends that have been happening in third-party app design for iOS and react to it. As I wrote about previously, there is a lack of gloss and skeuomorphism employed on many of the icons for leading apps these days. They’re not quite flat but are very different from the current iOS native styling and Apple seems to have followed this lead for their WWDC icon.
“Great designers are no longer a nice-to-have.” Ev Williams
Design has become one of the number one differentiators for enterprise software companies and they can’t settle for just satisfying their customers. To survive and succeed, you need to find ways to delight. Now that much of the tech industry is getting on the design train, it’s high time Apple showed it still knows how to drive it forward.
You can read my previous thoughts about how they might start this process of evolution in my previous post on the subject here;
The future of iOS design? - Almost Flat.
There’s a Dribbble shot to go with this article and a more professionally written version on the blog of the startup I work for, Divide.
