What’s Happening: The User Experience of New iOS 16
The successor of iOS 15 was announced at Apple’s World Developers Conference in June 2022, and three months later on 12 September, Apple officially released the eagerly-awaited iOS 16. This new system is compatible with the latest iPhone 14 and all the other new models until iPhone 8 and iPhone SE. From the key message released by Apple ‘personal is powerful’, we understand that iOS 16 includes a lot more features that allow users to personalise their phones. In this article, we are going through some new features of iOS 16 that stand out and provide our perspective, of course, a UX one.
Lock Screen
If you are an iPhone user who has updated to iOS 16, one big change you would notice is very likely to be the lock screen. We hope you are enjoying the new look of your phone, but if you are not, at least let’s look together at what has been changed and why. Maybe you will change your mind.
Personalisation
As mentioned, the main focus of iOS 16 lies in personalisation, and more specifically, personalisation of the lock screen. There are a few things users can play around with, first of all, the wallpaper. Users can create more than one wallpaper set, with photos (shuffle or not), emoji, and even weather and astronomy. By tapping and holding the lock screen, users can easily switch between different wallpapers based on their moods and needs. If set up, it also coordinates with different focus modes!
It is no exaggeration to say that everything on the lock screen, from the top to the bottom, is personalisable. By default, the lock screen shows the day and date but now users have a few options — it can be changed to upcoming events in Calendar, weather conditions or activity from Fitness.
Users can also change the colour and font of the clock. There are 8 fonts and unlimited colours available. Users get to choose whichever style they like that fits!
Besides, a new section under the clock is added, which accommodates the widgets that users would like to see on the lock screen. The space could fit at most 4 widgets whilst users can also keep it clean.
Our UX consultant Emilia found personalisation a very nice feature to add, not only because it allows people to create, drives engagement, works as a conversation starter, but more importantly because it is beneficial to accessibility. Users get to pick a text colour that has enough contrast with the background, without sacrificing legibility for aesthetics, or vice versa. People have different conditions in regard to colour vision. Hence, it is the best for them to try out different colours with background. For people who don’t have perfect eyesight, being able to choose clock fonts that are thicker or bolder is certainly great news as they could read the time at a glance more easily.
Notification
However, the update of the lock screen does not stop at personalisation. Notification was also on Apple’s radar. iOS 16 moved all the notifications down to the bottom. Users can swipe up to expanded list view to see recent messages or push notifications from apps. But on other occasions, it will be in hidden view or stacked view, which means when a new notification comes in, it would appear at the bottom, hidden or in a stack. Either way, notifications won’t take up the whole screen as they used to. Apple is hoping to declutter the lock screen whilst making notifications less distractive.
Emilia, our UX consultant, paid the updated Notification a compliment in that it does the trick of making the lock screen less distracting and cluttered. Yet even though she likes the idea of a cleaner lock screen very much, Emilia points out that some users might miss important notifications upon updating to iOS 16 as they are not aware of the change and still expect notifications to appear at the centre calling for attention. It is usual that people need time to get used to something new so potentially it might take users some time to get used to the way Notification works in iOS 16.
A feature that Emilia highly recommends to be added is a widget or filter that allows users to prioritise notifications from selected apps. For example, a user might want to prioritise the notifications from Mail, Teams and Slack so that he or she ensures they keep track of everything work-related but at the same time still see the trivia when scrolling down. This could be helpful in staying productive at working and studying. Emilia really appreciates the function of allowing certain app notifications to come through in Do Not Disturb Mode instead of blocking all. She reckons the widget/filter can help further.
Music Player
Lastly, not only is Notification moved downward, music players, including Apple Music, Spotify and even Podcasts, are also moved toward the bottom to leave the lock screen less congested. But if users prefer to let the music or podcasts they are listening to dominate the lock screen, there is an option to display the full-screen music player. Simply by tapping the miniature album cover on the left, the cover will pop to the size of the screen. This is consistent with the message of iOS 16 to give users the freedom of making their iPhones personal.
Whilst the core of iOS 16 is personalisation, the new features improve iPhone’s user experience, especially accessibility wise. Apple have long been praised for its simple designs, setting an industry standard for UX and UI. We hope to see more inspiring ideas from Apple, but meanwhile please feel free to share your thoughts and experience with the update!
UX Connections, the UX agency with UX/UI consultants to help your digital product succeed.
👉🏻Here to find us https://linktr.ee/uxconnections
