My only exposure to the new iOS 7 has been through what was presented on stage and through screenshots. I don’t really have and won’t really have an opinion until I have actually played around with it. However, I have been amazed by the reaction, especially from the design community, the majority of them being critical of the new flat-design that replaces the older, more literal and texture-heavy design of iOS. Intrigued, I asked the question to my Twitter community. Here are some of the responses.
@om without having played with it: visually it lacks affordances and a clear visual hierarchy. Happy to chat.—
Gino Zahnd (@gino) June 11, 2013
Multitasking, tabs, Control Center, AirDrop, and general interactions are looking fantastic in iOS 7. But wow, the ugly stick.—
Jason Santa Maria (@jasonsantamaria) June 10, 2013
You gotta wonder if they took their phones outside and looked at all that thin-lined icon + transparency stuff in the sunlight.—
Josh Brewer (@jbrewer) June 10, 2013
An interesting observation: designers who have actually done any mobile OS design work really seem to dislike iOS7. /cc @om—
Sami Niemelä (@samin) June 11, 2013
@om Icons seem poorly designed and over-complicated. Not enough spacing. Color palate is extreme. Menus like Control Center seem cluttered.—
Matt Galligan (@mg) June 11, 2013
@om on purely visual level it feels unfinished and not that well designed. Helvetica Neue Ultra Light is a weird choice for type, too.—
Sami Niemelä (@samin) June 11, 2013
Am I alone in thinking the iOS 7 home screen icons look ugly, poorly balanced, and of an unattractive color palate? http://t.co/MYt1JMIzje—
Matt Galligan (@mg) June 11, 2013
@om I think it’s really just the icons. The apps themselves look decent. I’d rather the icons have no gradient than look like they do.—
Andrew Burwell (@Raddock) June 11, 2013
Apple designers and engineers: you should be proud. Herculean task to redesign and re-imagine your entire OS. Respect.—
Cap Watkins (@cap) June 10, 2013
Tom Coates, co-founder of Product Club, who in a past life worked at BBC and Yahoo’s Brickhouse, wrote back on Twitter in a string of tweets:
At least in part because it looks so much like wireframes with placeholders for things. Bit like a webpage with Times New Roman….It’s cramped in places, childish and garish in others, icons blend in with the background. And some of the design fetishes it has are as egregious if not worse than ios6 — frosted glass, fake depth, sliders with shadows. There are many good things about it too. Don’t get me wrong. App switcher is nice, etc. Interaction wise it looks and feels solid.
But on the other side of the coin are those who actually appreciate the new look.
The good news: the new UX is a big improvement and the UI skin can be iterated and polished over time #iOS7 #WWDC13—
Ben Cline (@yocline) June 11, 2013
@Mike_FTW @om There’s work to do; no question (looking at it, a shit ton, for what it’s worth). But the general direction is the right one.—
Raphael Schaad (@raphaelschaad) June 11, 2013
@akosner @om Classic issue with most design critique, people over inflate the value of visual design. OS7 is indeed pretty, but other issues—
Scott Jenson (@scottjenson) June 11, 2013
Mike Monteiro (of Mule Design) wrote in a Twitter DM (direct message):
It’s a breath of fresh air. Where was Apple going with the current crap? This opens up all manner of possibilities. I’m excited because it’s new. And fresh. The Forstall crap went to its logical conclusion. Any design system that can no longer be extended is death. The new stuff is a fresh start. Eventually it’ll die too. But right now I’m excited about how it can grow and be extended. It’s not perfect. But, as a designer, that excites me. As a consumer? I dunno.
Craig Mod, who is one my favorite design and content-focused thinkers, wrote:
iOS7 shows us that we’re at a point where design of digital device interfaces simply cannot be accurately assessed from afar. These are living things — systems. Where the physics, the parallax, the subtlety of the movements are all part of the ‘design’ and surface design is just a rather boring tip of an otherwise very deep iceberg. Until we live with the new OS for days, it’s hard to say how successful the new design is or isn’t. What was outlined today looks like a very rational base on which to extend the OS — somewhat timeless, far more timeless than what we had before. The only truly red flags I saw (aside from bad iconography which is trivial to fix) were the decisions around translucency. I’ve never seen an instance where translucency brings clarity, not muddle, to an interface. And from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it falls on the muddle side in iOS7, too.
Justin Rhoades, a Portland-based designer, said:
I think the design had to be reset so that newer interaction models could surface. More gestures, more animations. They added a physics engine to the SDK. It’s like a pendulum swinging from obvious visual affordances to engaging kinetic ones. The parallax effect, the physics of the messages bubbles and I’m sure many other ‘kinetic’ behaviors are new to devs in iOS7. Apple wants apps to use more motion and less visual design.
There is a furious debate going on over at Quora, where someone asked the question: is iOS7 an improvement? You can either check that out, or take a moment and share your thoughts regarding the new iOS 7 in the comments.
We’ll be digging into experience design at our annual RoadMap conference in San Francisco in November. Tickets will go on sale later this Summer, and you can sign up here to get first access to them.
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