Hook, Line & Sinker
When Apple lost it’s focus
I don’t know what disappointed me the most while i was watching Apple unravel the big redesign of iOS. The clearly unfinished and fundamentally broken state of the UI or the fact that Apple no longer “skate to where the puck is going to be” (Steve Jobs quoting Wayne Gretzky in 2007) but instead skated “to where it’s been”.
I think it’s the latter, because the first one can be improved upon over time and will probably ship in a more mature state when the redesign hit our iPhones in fall. With that said, it saddens me that years of evolved UI design with unparalleled consistency and well defined visual hierarchies, great readability and clear interactions, have been sacrificed in the wake of a design trend.
Hook, line and sinker. Sir Ive and his team swallowed the bait. I did not expect Apple to fall so flat (pun intended!) and become a follower instead of a leader in a territory they owned for years.
(as shown on stage at WWDC 2013)
What bothers me is not sloppiness in the design execution, to tell you the truth, it bothers me more that Apple is no longer steering the ship. Apple has, for as long as i can possible remember to give a crap about UI design, been in charge of driving the user experience forward with delightful interfaces with an almost unhealthy level of polish and attention to detail. The user experience always had the front row seat in every decision the company made, but somewhere along the road staying on top of design trends became more important.
I deeply respect that following up one of the most successful UI’s for an operating system in the world is an daunting and almost unachievable task (i can’t imagine the anxiety!), but IOS7 does not feel genuinely flat, it feels flat for the sake of being flat. In a amateurish way, where the user experience is no longer the highest priority. I expect more from a design driven company like Apple.
I strongly believe that there is a connection between the drastic design change of Windows 8 and the ultra-low adoption rate. The UI is disorienting at best. In their strive for simplicity and clearity they made everything harder to grasp and alienated ordinary users like my Mom. This makes me wonder how the drastic change to iOS7 will appeal to the world outside the tech and the design community.
Last but not least, i am a slightly confused about the sudden disconnect between Mac OS X and iOS7. Ever since the iPhone was launched there has been a consistency and shared visual language between the platforms. If you bought an iPhone and got used to the dock, the icons and the look and feel of key apps, the barrier to feel at home on a Mac was minimal. Which was not only a good business strategy but also a great user experience. That connection is now gone and the platforms drift in parallel worlds. But, of course, nothing stops Apple from making the Mac OS X flat as well. You can already see some subtle design changes in Xcode 5 that will give you a hint of things to come for the UI.
With all this said and to be perfectly clear, i am not against flat UI’s per say, i actually think (for exemple) Google does a stunning job with their redesign and there are loads of well executed and visually delightful UI’s out there on the web, but iOS7 in it’s current shape is not a first class citizen in a flat world.
