Design going forwards.
How iOS 7 affects the world of UI design.
Now that we’ve start to let the neon stylings of iOS 7 settle in after 10 days, I wanted to offer my thoughts on how I see this affecting design and on what they’ve done.
Jony Ive has completely flattened out the UI of iOS which was traditionally ‘skeuomorphic’ (read as ‘covered in real world textures, depth and styling’) against the absolute flat of Google’s Android and Micosoft’s Metro UI. It had become something of a tombstone around Apple’s neck and although this brings them in line with the rest of the market in terms of styling, whether or not it brings them in line in quality is a different matter. That said, it’s not just beveling and drop shadows which have been vanished, there’s a HUGE amount of white space in iOS 7 and Ive’s quest for minimalism clearly shows through throughout the system. I’ve previously touched on his influence from reknowned German designer Dieter Rams and I can’t think of a more appropriate quote from the man than the following, and one which I had no doubt Ive was inspired by in his redesign;
Good design is as little design as possible.
Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
It goes well with the famous phrase from the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery;
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Although I agree with both of those statements, my issue with this as a designer is that my palette to create delightful and engaging UI experiences has been dramatically shortened in the last fortnight. I believe a designer ought to design their app to follow (reasonably) to the native UI of the platform to accomodate the user. I’m aware that there are instances of flat working on iOS before (Any.do, Clear - although I was never a fan and thought it felt jarring) I don’t think it will port backwards. If the majority of iOS7 is flat, any app with a ‘real world texture’ will feel dated and corny, even more than it already does. This means that all 3 of the major platforms are completely flat. Almost no gradients, no drop shadows, no beveling etc now. My palette as a UI designer to create interactive elements feels like it’s gone from RGB to monochrome. Or does it just mean that we now have to start focusing a lot more of the motion element of the design? We certainly are going to have to get very fucking good at shades of grey but I do believe it will push us to think more holistically about how the whole experience works from a flow perspective particularly when it comes to the animation within apps. Also, simplicity is great but when you have a screen with almost no useful information on, you’ve gone a bit too far, take the stand Calendar month view. It’s absolutely beautiful and utterly pointless. I get no information about my schedule here at all despite there being a tonne of white space.
I’ve been working on redesigning the app I work on in an iOS 7 style in my spare time to see how it would work and it pained me to admit that it actually looked pretty good. However, I still have my bugbears and I’m going to vent them now…
Inconsistent app icons
This is well documented and enough has been said on the matter but I’ll just state this;
“Apple, your new iOS 7 icons are gawdy. The colours look like you gave an intern too much Fanta and a bunch of Global Hypercolor tshirts and gave him an afternoon to make them. Sort it the FUCK out.”
Words as buttons
This feels very web 2000. I’m not against removing button frames at ALL but the thin, coloured font as the main navigational tool? Not really feeling it Jony. Which brings me onto my next point…
Thin lines and legibility
Now I know there’s options to ‘up’ the font size and thickness in the iOS settings but that’s just admitting the fault - some of the uses of Helvetica Neue Light are inappropriate. It looks bad, it reads worse and it’s a terrible UX decision. Also, the coloured fonts in that tiny light font are a fuck you to anyone with halfway back eyesight. As are the generally crappy icons which would be great if you up’d the thickness of the line by a pixel or two.
Generally hapdash
Given the supposed attention to detail at Apple, some of the glaring mistakes in the iOS7 beta release are a bit upsetting - the padding on the back arrow and text, tap radii on certain buttons such as the add button below, the ‘do-I-slide-up-or-left’ of the lockscreen, and after mocking any ‘real world textures’ in the keynote introduction both Notes & Reminders have a paper background…! etc.
That said, it is a beta. I have faith they will fix the mistakes they’ve made and enhance the many improvements. There are examples already of apps created in this style which look and interact beautifully. The prime example is the Yahoo Weather app which is perfectly on trend for iOS 7 and gorgeous… and was released 2 months before iOS 7 was announced. How strange? It’s almost EXACTLY in the style iOS has taken (but done better IMO)… chicken or the egg?
I think one of the biggest issues for the oncoming app redesigns that developers will have to undertake to comply with iOS 7 was caught by twitter user @agiletortoise;
“many redesigns will feel like 7-ified 6 apps in the same way many iPad app felt like blown up iPhone apps in the early days.”
People will ignore the layered, minimalist and motive approach Ive has taken and assume that 100% colour saturation and thin text is all they need to do. There’s a lot of work on how the ‘layers’ of an app fit together and the exploration of the Z-axis which is fascinating in iOS 7 but I’ll cover that in another post.
Either way, flat design is here to stay. Welcome to the new ‘normal’.
