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Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

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Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#181

Post by rojcyk »

Wow, lots of assumptions or designer blaming in this thread. Not that it is unexpected, but it still hurts since it is not as black and white as people here draw it to be. Let me give you my perspective as a designer who spent quite a lot of time on this topic.

1. The fact that some designers ignore other devices than their own is definitely true. That is why I created a Figma plugin to broaden the perspective. https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/732240841094697441/Vi... But developers do the very same thing and as often as designers. Just further down the pipeline.

2. Not supporting the smallest possible devices like the original SE is a reasonable business decision. It is not even making it into the charts at all the products I'm currently working on. It is simply not worth the effort (since the effort is not as insignificant as people here say).

3. Supporting the smallest devices is definitely not free. And it has a real monetary, technological and UX cost. It costs a lot of money to properly test, report, design, and implement every possible edge case for every possible viewports. Developers HATE creating special layouts or cases for specific devices (speaking about native mobile development) and if I recall correctly, Apple might even prohibit it. And lastly, design is about making the best possible solution, for the biggest amount of people. Quite often you will find yourself in a situation where you have to decide whether you will vastly improve the experience for the 99% of people and make the experience not ideal for the 1% or vice versa. Which is the better call?

4. Blaming it all on designers is just too harsh. Yes, not everyone is perfect, and designers often miss it, but more often than not it is a simple business decisions. Designers can decide to ditch a certain viewport because it can benefit the majority, the same way developers decide to drop certain OS support.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#182

Post by silvestrov »

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

> you [...] have labels, it’s not going to fit

or you have to localize in German.

Words don't translate 1:1 into another language. Sometimes labels are much longer in other languages.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#183

Post by tinus_hn »

djrogers wrote: post #161
tinus_hn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple TV example looks a bit disingenuous, the huge black space normally holds an image promoting one of the shows. That’s why it has so much space. I don’t know why in his situation the header is empty but that has nothing to do with layout on small screens. You could complain the promotional image is too large but it’s really obvious you can scroll down to reveal the rest of the content and I don’t think anyone…

> But on your device you can get to these icons as well, try to find out how! Uhh, I scrolled just like the emoji keyboard (which every iPhone user has figure out) and it worked? There are also partial icons at the edge hinting of more to the right. This wasn’t/isn’t exactly hidden.

To me it was completely non obvious; I know that there are much more emoji than shown in the first view, there’s category buttons that suggest there are more and the icons are layed out in such a way that most of the time you see half of an icon on the right, which suggests there’s more to find.

For this folder design where for the icon choice (which appears rather superfluous by the way) I have no idea how much icons there are supposed to be in the grab bag the developers provided, there’s no categories and they are layed out as a vertically scrolling list with icons neatly arranged flush against the right edge.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#184

Post by brundolf »

Wait this is the 2020 SE? I.e. an iPhone 8, not even the older one? I'm even more surprised because the Mini exists now as a first-class citizen. Apple has historically been good about making sure all approved apps provide a good experience on all the devices that they should; I wonder why they've dropped the ball on this one

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#185

Post by kps »

dbg31415 wrote: post #113

Seeing a lot of issues here that would also be violations of WCAG guidelines, and thus be something you could bring an ADA accessibility suit against the companies over. https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/dominos-pizza-and-web-ac... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/dominos-supreme-court.html For all of your web projects... 90+ score in Lighthouse is a good bar to aim for. And look for any errors in Wave or Axe -- the…

I'm no fan of ADA ambulance chasers, but if they start going after mobile and web ‘designers’ my schadenfreude will be unermesslich.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#186

Post by brundolf »

rojcyk wrote: post #181

Wow, lots of assumptions or designer blaming in this thread. Not that it is unexpected, but it still hurts since it is not as black and white as people here draw it to be. Let me give you my perspective as a designer who spent quite a lot of time on this topic. 1. The fact that some designers ignore other devices than their own is definitely true. That is why I created a Figma plugin to broaden the perspective. https…

Not supporting people jumping to bad conclusions or being toxic, but it's worth pointing out the author said this is the 2020 SE. Which is to say the body of an iPhone 8, not a 5. Which is to say roughly the same size as all iPhones before the X (and larger than the brand-new Mini!). That's not Edit: I was wrong about the mini being smaller; it's somewhat larger than the 8/SE

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#187

Post by brundolf »

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

With how stringent Apple's review process and focus on user experience are, I'm surprised these apps got approved for the App Store at all in this state

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#188

Post by derefr »

brundolf wrote: post #186
rojcyk wrote: post #181

Wow, lots of assumptions or designer blaming in this thread. Not that it is unexpected, but it still hurts since it is not as black and white as people here draw it to be. Let me give you my perspective as a designer who spent quite a lot of time on this topic. 1. The fact that some designers ignore other devices than their own is definitely true. That is why I created a Figma plugin to broaden the perspective. https…

Not supporting people jumping to bad conclusions or being toxic, but it's worth pointing out the author said this is the 2020 SE. Which is to say the body of an iPhone 8, not a 5. Which is to say roughly the same size as all iPhones before the X (and larger than the brand-new Mini!). That's not Edit: I was wrong about the mini being smaller; it's somewhat larger than the 8/SE

> Which is to say roughly the same size as all iPhones before the X (and larger than the brand-new Mini!)

This isn’t about physical size, though; it’s about screen resolution and aspect ratio.

> iPhone 12 mini: 2340×1080 @ 476dpi

> iPhone SE 2020: 1334×750 @ 326dpi

Yes, the 12 mini’s screen is 5.4” while the SE’s screen is 4.7”, but if the SE had the 12 mini’s DPI, it’d have a workable, modern-ish resolution. (Note how the OP never complained about how these apps look on the 12 mini. They look fine on the 12 mini.) The SE 2020 only ended up at the “outdated” resolution of 750p because its pixel density didn’t keep up with the times; not because it’s small per se.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#189

Post by lh7777 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #138
irae wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I held on to my original SE for as long as I could. I have dozens of screenshots similar to the ones on the article, and I was getting tired of reporting unusable or hard to use apps on small screens. This was one of the key factors for me to switch to the iPhone 12 Mini. And even though some apps still have issues, they just don't test bellow the regular 12 size. The worst recurring bug across apps that still happen…

Similar here - I just went up to a 12 mini because the SE I had was... well - still worked, but I wanted to 'forward proof' myself a bit. I suspect it may not go past iOS 14 (I just upgraded - was on 12 for a long time). For things like banking, etc, I wanted to know my device will work for the next few years, and this is the smallest I can get that still is in the ios/apple world. I somewhat regret this, as I miss t…

> But people wanting 5" phones are apparently in a minority.

Let alone 4" phones! I'm still happy with my original SE, but the nuisances are starting to add up. I really prefer TouchID to FaceID and still use my headphone jack, so there's nothing in Apple's current lineup for me.

Fingers crossed that the rumors are right about the return of TouchID and the rumors are wrong about the mini being discontinued. If they finally dump Lightning in favor of USB-C, that'd solve my headphone jack dilemma as I could just use USB-C headphones on all devices. I'm not optimistic that all of this will come together before Apple discontinues support of the original SE, though.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#190

Post by tinus_hn »

Nextgrid wrote: post #128
tinus_hn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you consider the app in the example, the ‘Globe’ carrier app, you’ll almost immediately see that the problem is that it is a confusing navigational spaghetti that is designed to force users to explore an app littered with ‘promotional offers’. Why else would you need a special ‘discover these precious diamonds’ button in the toolbar, with the useful paths hidden in the hamburger menu and then patched over with…

The main problem here isn’t that apps/services don’t follow the guidelines per-se but that more and more software is designed not to solve a particular problem efficiently and get paid honest money for that effort but to waste as much of the user’s time as possible showing them “offers”. The industry calls this “engagement” and a large chunk of people’s salaries and careers (including mine at the beginning) is based…

This is kind of kicking an open door but the guideline explicitly is to design your app ‘to solve a particular problem efficiently’
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