Agree with these, but in my opinion, the date selector wheels in iOS are a terrible design. Three rolling wheels just doesn't map to most people's concept of a calendar
Agree. I would rather try my luck tapping a too-small calendar date as pictured on the right. I'll often get it right the first time, but even accounting for the extra time of an error and a retry (2 extra taps) it will still be faster and less frustrating than setting 4 separate scroll wheels.
What I absolutely hate is minute picker. 60 items is just too much to scroll. For most usages 5 minutes step is enough and 12 items much better.
As for calendar, I never had any problems with it. Of course it's not standard way that most people get used to, but I think any person will understand what to do.
This is a great example of when it's more important to stick with a familiar interface (i.e. the calendar) than to go with something that is "designed for touch".
Do you have a better example? I don't find the select diag's like in Desktop Chrome easier to use especially on a mobile. I think what they've done is better than anything else I've seen. With enough following it'd become the norm like anything else.
Personally I love them. I hate when apps put in their own calendar control. It's always more time consuming to get where I want whereas with the wheel I can quickly spin it to move to where I want quickly.
Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more reflective?
I also feel like iOS has gone downhill. I know they were trying to get away from skeuomorphic design, but I feel they went too far in the opposite direction. Everything is flat, it's hard to tell what is a button that can be clicked on sometimes (usually it's just a blue label with no distinguishing background), and there seems to be a frequent lack of contrast generally.
Grey text on a white background is generally accepted as easier on the eye/mind when reading sentences, whereas on the header it is not necessary, it's just one word, there is no train of thought to follow there. This would be considered good UX [source: I don't have anything to link to right now, but I do have a degree in Interaction Design]
The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at Apple is listening. The power button on the keyboard is retarded (no other word for it, sorry), super glossy screens so you can't even see it in your own house.
As for Apple shortcuts, well, many make perfect sense and this isn't something anyone else does better. MS Word even changes them depending upon system language, so Word in Norwegian uses Ctrl+F for "fett" or bold. Imagine how annoying that is when someone asks you for help.
It happens at application level too, especially with non-US keyboards, just press ctrl+[ to access this feature, and no you cannot remap the shortcuts. Well, dandy, I can't access [ without pressing 2 other keys already. So I'll just press the X in the corner instead.
Most likely, that shade of grey was chosen precisely because the section headline is black. If both were black, it would compete with the typographic hierarchy, making it distracting to skim the entire page.
Good design is a form of engineering. You have a set of principles and successful patterns– such as the ones on the linked page– but your job is adapting to real world constraints. In this case, the challenge is making a headline look like a headline only relative to the example, not the page.
As far as the Safari tab shortcut, that's consistent with the rest of OS X. How did they originally arrive at that shortcut? They probably tried several combination, all within reach of the home keys, and that felt most right.
Why include the power switch on the keyboard? I know every user's first question is "where is the on switch?" and that position seems highly visible, and it can be consistent across all macs. In my entire history of using Macs, I've never had an issue cleaning the power key.
No idea why they made the displays more reflective. But given their overall attention to detail, a lot of thought probably went into it.
OS 10.9 and iOS 7 have taken contrast and thrown it out the window. They are both following current designer trends of less contrast overall while claiming better readability. The low contrast trend started around 2011 to 2012 with web sites. It typically takes Apple one year to catch up with the trends on their operating system releases.
Both their recent releases result in more eye strain for me looking for a way to fix their messed up ideas of contrast.
Well, good design is obvious once you know it. But before you know it, it's as opaque and obtuse as anything else. It's just that design has this strange property with us humans in that, when done right, it feels so natural and emergent to us to the point we automatically take it for granted the instant we "get it".
In the realm of modern-day web-design, most bad design is because the website was built before a lot of these good design principles and conventions were invented (e.g. responsive grids, tons of padding, flex-direction(column), etc.). Next followed by prideful "designers" who steadfastly refuse to use a design framework because the site they're building must be a special snowflake. Next followed by the missing-the-point-followers of RMS (that is, they're not following RMS for the free software philosophy) who plainly look down on CSS and design as something that is beneath them. Finally, I'll give you laziness.
Most of the stupidly bad design decisions I have seen come from somebody high in the hierarchy (product manager, CEO or founder) demanding a change, even if both designers and developers rally on how awful it would be.
I have not yet found a solution to this problem.
I'd find it more forgivable if it was laziness, but I've seen too many cases where designers put in extra effort to make things worse to believe that. I think it's ego. Good design is about doing what the users want rather than what the designer wants; bad design is the reverse.
I agree that most of them are obvious. I don't agree that bad design is because of laziness. There are many reasons for bad design and most of the time I'll only find one or two of the "dont's" in a given app, but this will ruin my experience. Case in point: I can't even count the number of HN readers I deleted because they didn't display the content without vertical and horizontal scrollbars or had really small text. Everything else was fine though.
Agreed completely. This is all Design 101. I'd worry about someone who was employed as a UI Designer who did not already understand all this inherently.
Their "contrast" section belies their determination, since the text there is grey on a white background, and true black on white would unquestionably be more readable. (looking at UI designers more generally:) I'm so sick of UIs that have repetitive, huge, contrasty, readable headings... only to have the core useful text be grey-on-something, tiny, possibly italic, and so on. Idiots, and they are legion. More subtle issues like older folks having lower visual resolution, and many folks (men mostly) having significant color blindness, never seem to occur to UI designers as a problem.
"Blurry" is not what most people would perceive. They won't perceive a problem with the site at all and in most cases will never notice or care.
Sure it's nice to use hi-res images, but I prefer using just one image that is slightly higher resolution than normal... maybe 1.5x and then increase compression. The result is noticeably better, satisfying the perception of "sharp" but still uses just one image and often only a very small increase in file size.
Delivering two versions of the image for all your regularly produced content is an inefficient practice relative to the benefits IMHO.
What advantage is there to shipping a single asset?
On the web, use the "srcset" attribute on img tags. If the device supports @2x, it'll fetch the right version.
On an iPhone app, any advantages are far outweighed by the headaches of resizing "@1.5x" assets for each device resolution.
Now consider the iPhone 6+, which has @3x resolution. At 1.5x it feels blurry.
But forgetting that, would @2x users notice? They won't be able to articulate something is wrong, much like if you pick a suboptimal line height, they won't be able to articulate "it's less legible." It's all these little things, combined, that make a project feel amateurish.
I feel like this is a poor attempt to try and craft some cohesion in the app store. Google has done a much better job of writing guidelines with their Google.com/design site, specifically the Material Design Guidelines[1]. In my opinion, Google has really shown that it has a stronger design sense than people give them credit for.
Apple's watch UI document is there, too. That's interesting. Apple has very tight control on the watch interface. Apple owns the knob and the button; you can't use those. You must use white text on a black background. You can use only one font other than Apple's "San Francisco". Voice input is not a watch UI component; voice input appears to be reserved for talking to Apple's Siri.
[+] [-] johnnyo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonahx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vbezhenar|10 years ago|reply
As for calendar, I never had any problems with it. Of course it's not standard way that most people get used to, but I think any person will understand what to do.
[+] [-] beloch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mandatum|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wampus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bananaboy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kagamine|10 years ago|reply
The rest of your points get top marks and I hope to Cod that someone at Apple is listening. The power button on the keyboard is retarded (no other word for it, sorry), super glossy screens so you can't even see it in your own house.
As for Apple shortcuts, well, many make perfect sense and this isn't something anyone else does better. MS Word even changes them depending upon system language, so Word in Norwegian uses Ctrl+F for "fett" or bold. Imagine how annoying that is when someone asks you for help. It happens at application level too, especially with non-US keyboards, just press ctrl+[ to access this feature, and no you cannot remap the shortcuts. Well, dandy, I can't access [ without pressing 2 other keys already. So I'll just press the X in the corner instead.
[+] [-] sandofsky|10 years ago|reply
Good design is a form of engineering. You have a set of principles and successful patterns– such as the ones on the linked page– but your job is adapting to real world constraints. In this case, the challenge is making a headline look like a headline only relative to the example, not the page.
As far as the Safari tab shortcut, that's consistent with the rest of OS X. How did they originally arrive at that shortcut? They probably tried several combination, all within reach of the home keys, and that felt most right.
Why include the power switch on the keyboard? I know every user's first question is "where is the on switch?" and that position seems highly visible, and it can be consistent across all macs. In my entire history of using Macs, I've never had an issue cleaning the power key.
No idea why they made the displays more reflective. But given their overall attention to detail, a lot of thought probably went into it.
[+] [-] Washuu|10 years ago|reply
Both their recent releases result in more eye strain for me looking for a way to fix their messed up ideas of contrast.
[+] [-] camillomiller|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namenotrequired|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaolinite|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julianozen|10 years ago|reply
I found this one of the more annoying changes in the iOS 7 redesign. Buttons and tap targets are incredibly difficult to recognize in certain places.
For instance, it is very hard to discern which of these text labels are buttons, and which are titles. http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/05-tell-me...
Or in the iOS start guide, several of the buttons, don't have large enough tap targets behind them making them annoyingly difficult to press http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/blog/en/2013/09/ios-7-welco...
[+] [-] shogun21|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffn|10 years ago|reply
In the realm of modern-day web-design, most bad design is because the website was built before a lot of these good design principles and conventions were invented (e.g. responsive grids, tons of padding, flex-direction(column), etc.). Next followed by prideful "designers" who steadfastly refuse to use a design framework because the site they're building must be a special snowflake. Next followed by the missing-the-point-followers of RMS (that is, they're not following RMS for the free software philosophy) who plainly look down on CSS and design as something that is beneath them. Finally, I'll give you laziness.
[+] [-] on_and_off|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwallace|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldmanjay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LoSboccacc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emsy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vogt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johanbrook|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|10 years ago|reply
Or more likely time constraints.
[+] [-] AgentME|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottfr|10 years ago|reply
http://dropbox.scripting.com/dave/misc/appleHumanInterfaceGu...
300 pages of detailed ui/ux guidelines and rationales. It honestly was a joy to read when I first came across it 15 years ago.
[+] [-] jamesrom|10 years ago|reply
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...
[+] [-] ehmorris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erlkonig|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mandatum|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radley|10 years ago|reply
(eg. @eli_schiff - he's been ranting about them today).
[+] [-] exodust|10 years ago|reply
That's quite an exaggeration.
"Blurry" is not what most people would perceive. They won't perceive a problem with the site at all and in most cases will never notice or care.
Sure it's nice to use hi-res images, but I prefer using just one image that is slightly higher resolution than normal... maybe 1.5x and then increase compression. The result is noticeably better, satisfying the perception of "sharp" but still uses just one image and often only a very small increase in file size.
Delivering two versions of the image for all your regularly produced content is an inefficient practice relative to the benefits IMHO.
[+] [-] sandofsky|10 years ago|reply
On the web, use the "srcset" attribute on img tags. If the device supports @2x, it'll fetch the right version.
On an iPhone app, any advantages are far outweighed by the headaches of resizing "@1.5x" assets for each device resolution.
Now consider the iPhone 6+, which has @3x resolution. At 1.5x it feels blurry.
But forgetting that, would @2x users notice? They won't be able to articulate something is wrong, much like if you pick a suboptimal line height, they won't be able to articulate "it's less legible." It's all these little things, combined, that make a project feel amateurish.
[+] [-] mlex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cairx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtirloni|10 years ago|reply
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...
[+] [-] aesthetics1|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduct...
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaolinite|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yAnonymous|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marvel_boy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enlightenedfool|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alajarvela|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nielsbot|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewhitetulip|10 years ago|reply