How do these apps get by Apple's highly regarded, industry leading, 30% worthy, approval process?
Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
201–210 of 267 posts
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
why? pride in worksmanship, perhaps... because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks... or perhaps just plain old empathy... because not every customer can just replace their device... or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?
How does any of that make money?
Wasn't that the original value proposution of the Apple products under Jobs? That the overall craftsmanship was high and they just didn't feel crappy like their competitors'?
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#203I get frustrated on my iPhone SE by apps that have me fill in a field but then no “done” button to close the keyboard. Between the keyboard and the app’s overly large heading, there’s barely any space to click anything else to close the keyboard without triggering something else. Cronometer is bad for this.
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#204A 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…
> Most of the screenshots in this article are from iOS apps that show Google Material Design. It’s not too surprising this doesn’t work properly on Apple devices[...]
I can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude after visiting many websites clearly designed on - and for - Apple devices. Those gossamer-thin font weights are unreadable on anything else.
Also unrelated, amazing how the tables turn: I remember back in the day when small iPhones where considered to be "the ideal phone size" but the technorati, there even was a doctored graphic to go with it that showed how a thumb would reach the very top of an iPhone screen. It was doctored because the phones were not to scale, in favor of the iPhone - and this was before Apple had a larger phone.
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#205I do all of my iOS development on an iPhone SE simulator. No, not the iPhone SE 2020, the original one.
Scaling designs up to an X class device is much easier than trying to scale down.
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#206There's too many devices and screens/orientations to handle. It's a hassle.
Mobile-first was an approach to fix this but pragmatism usually dictates otherwise.
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#207> Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users. Thanks. This attutude of respect on the UI side is why I'm tempted by the Apple platform. Unfortunately it looks like it's not as perfect as hoped initially and there's a lot of disrespect on other ends.
Apple devices are full of dark patterns (to get you to enable "upload everything always to iCloud") and bad UX. Even super basic stuff like the alarm clock ("bedtime") has become a Rube Goldberg-esque nightmare, and good UX elements have been replaced with garbage in other places as well. For example, setting the time of an alarm requires you to drag in a 5x5 mm area for hour and minute, respectively. Not only is tha…
Yes, alarms are really fiddly.
My favourite bit of alarm related UX is that the “dismiss” button for alarms and timers are in opposite places.
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Android, by convention you can long-press icon-only toolbar buttons and the label will show as a tooltip. Non-native apps (fuzzy definition) lack this far too often, but it’s always worth trying. Not sure if iOS has something like this.
What is the advantage of this? If you can long press a toolbar button to get a label that states what the button is for, it’s easier to just tap the button and see what it is for.
What if you're not sure if you want to trigger the effect of the button?
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#209The Google Maps thing isn’t entirely about screen size (though I would hope it wouldn’t be quite so bad on larger screens—but I’m only familiar with how it looks on a small-by-modern-standards Android phone, where it’s about the same as on the iPhone depicted in this article, or even a little less); it’s about the product’s overarching philosophy, which has changed over the past decade (in a direction I strongly disl…
While we're on the topic: YouTube, which is inherently a video content viewing service, goes out of its way to obscure the video content. The TV app, the mobile app, and the browser app all insist on overlaying the content with random garbage that no sane human being could possibly be more interested in that the content that they launched with the intention of watching! Heaven help you if you open a popular live feed…
I hate those scrolling chat feeds, and I don't understand how anyone's able to read them? I can barely read a 5 word message when it's juddering up the screen at a million miles an hour. Why hasn't twitch et al replaced it with a widget that just draws new messages above the old, scanning top to bottom?
Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s not get me started on tiny tap areas. Virtually every graphic designer I have ever worked with is ignorant of Apples 44 by 44 point recommendation. They just want their designs to look good, but give no though to how they feel, especially when trying to use them one handed or with disabilities.
Yep, too many UX professionals spend 95% of their energy on the look and maybe 5% on the feel.
I agree with this. I think design has a serious principle-agent problem.
A beautiful design will live forever on your personal portfolio, but no one can directly experience usability there. So designers are fighting competing incentives to do what’s right for this product, and what’s right for their professional image. I think this is partly the cause for trend toward stylish-but-less-useable.