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Confusing UI in iOS7

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Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#151

Post by blub »

callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

If you want to see broken UI set a recurring alarm for workdays at 7:45 and 8:00 and then try to select each alarm in the week view. This must be the worst interface I have ever seen in an iOS app, the people that did it don't deserve to be called designers.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#153

Post by nnnnni »

rsl7 wrote: post #127

that's it? that's so specific. For me this update brought the feeling that I can hardly see anymore. I'm always squinting now to try and distinguish things, whereas in iOS 6 and before I had no problem. What is it? The colors, the lack of depth, the low contrast, the super thin lines - all of it together and I struggle to make sense of it. That white on green is just blinding. This is the problem - changing the l&f a…

The thin lines and low contrast are the worst part. It's horrible.

I can't wait for Winterboard to make iOS 7 usable.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#154

Post by stevenwei »

aw3c2 wrote: post #139
robterrell wrote: post #80

My biggest gripe with iOS 7 is how I can't predict that a UI element is tappable. With every new app (i.e. every app I already have that has been updated for iOS 7 and automatically upgraded by the iOS without me really knowing) I find myself having to tap various bits of UI stuff to figure things out. What's fascinating to me is seeing how my 2 year old does with it.

It's even better when those taps lead to actions. I permanently deleted some messages because of a non-descript icon (on Android's confusing modern look). The worst thing about all this icon frenzy to me is that they often even take up more space than text that could descripe their function.

* The worst thing about all this icon frenzy to me is that they often even take up more space than text that could descripe their function. *

That highly depends on the language that you're using... Having localized our app into 16 different languages I've found that there are many languages where the text simply does not fit into the allotted space. In those cases I think using icons are a lot more effective than a bunch of ellipsized text.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#155

Post by joeblau »

The under pinnings of iOS7 are great (from a developer standpoint), but this release honestly doesn't feel like an Apple product. I have the iPhone 4 and Instagram's filters are cut off on the bottom and the photo/video frame is also mis-aligned.

I feel like any other company could have come out with this release and it would have been met with far less analytical criticism. Why is there so much analysis on v.1 of a their new UI?

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#156

Post by coldtea »

callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

>This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not.

Wrong on all counts. What the author complaints about are examples of broken standard usability guidelines that all experts agree upon.

Like consistency, affordances, the principle of least surprise, color coding actions, etc.

The excerpt you provide is characteristic: "When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it?"

The similar looking button in the Timer screen DID give visual feedback when pressed. In a consistent UI, either this button would do too, or neither would.

>These comments are disingenous. You didn't get confused by these things. You, as a person who's analysing a UI, have an almost totally different mindset to someone who is just using the thing for real.

Wrong again. Even a UI expert, or someone like me, who's been using DOS, Windows, SunOS, HPUX, Linux, FreeBSD and OS X UIs for 20+ years (and has designed some apps' UIs) can be confused by a UI, even in the most common app and in the most basic actions.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#157

Post by minor_nitwit »

EGreg wrote: post #29

Is it just me or is all that gray stuff kinda ugly? And I thought WE started the gray trend way back when... (see http://qbix.com ) :) I think iOS 7 is Apple's Vista :-( Except instead of functionality gaffes, it's the UI changes that no one really wants.

Incidentally, they did go with the frosted glass look.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#158

Post by matt-attack »

ajanuary wrote: post #115

I can't confirm it because I don't have iOS 6 to hand, but I'm pretty sure the difference in button highlights will be the same. The buttons in Timer works based on the OS wide standard of activating on release. For a stopwatch, however, you want it to be instant because it's time sensitive. It would kinda suck if you're timings were all out by a bit because you kept you're finger on there slightly too long. This is…

> If your buttons are simply color tinted text, it's difficult to unambiguously use color tinting to highlight text of note such as the current day.

This is an excellent point.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#159

Post by aufreak3 »

coldtea wrote: post #156
callum85 wrote: post #97

This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. > When I tap it, it turns red — but wait — it doesn’t give me the visual feedback. Did I break it? > The alarm is shown as a red filled square, so when I tap it, it should per…

> This kind of post annoys me. It's driven by the fact that the author has some theories about UI design, and wants to share them with us. There's nothing wrong with that. But this post pretends to be like a real usability audit, which it is not. Wrong on all counts. What the author complaints about are examples of broken standard usability guidelines that all experts agree upon. Like consistency, affordances, the pr…

> The similar looking button in the Timer screen DID give visual feedback when pressed. In a consistent UI, either this button would do too, or neither would.

Visual feedback needs to serve a purpose. This is a stop watch we're talking about - one that shows time in tens of milliseconds, which is less than one frame interval at 60fps. Any animation done would hinder the function of the stop watch and raise ambiguity about when the stop watch actually started and stopped. So not using an animation is the right thing to do here. If they'd gone for consistency in this case, it would've been "foolish consistency" [1].

[1] "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

edit: typo fix.

Re: Confusing UI in iOS7

#160

Post by josephlord »

habith wrote: post #147
Pxtl wrote: post #12

I'm actually surprised that there's so little visual consistency there... this stuff usually would be handled by reusable widgets - which, of course, gives you consistency for free. Still, people bag on Apple's design problems because Apple's stuff often feels almost perfect. I tried out a BB Q10 the other day and I couldn't even figure out how the heck you get to the home screen. I got stuck in the voice-search app…

> I'm actually surprised that there's so little visual consistency there... The Stopwatch and Timer start buttons behave differently. The timer provides some visual feedback because it starts the timer when you take your finger off the screen, you can touch and hold the button all you want but nothing happens until you release it. The stopwatch on the other hand starts as soon as you touch the screen. I can see how t…

Most actions in iOS are consistently handled on touch up and the timer is correctly consistent with this.

The stopwatch is for accurate timing and choosing to break the iOS convention for this specific use case does not seem surprising or arbitrary to me but a conscious design choice to improve the function of the feature. Guidelines are of course made to be broken (occasionally).

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