Good design is a lot like love; begins with interest, excitement, desire and instigates within your soul – it talks to you, and simply makes sense.
I have been playing around with iOS7 for some time now. I can’t seem to get interested nor even excited – but one thing it does; is that it makes sense.
I am aware that iOS 7 is still in beta and not for public release. And it’s not strange not to fall in love with something when you first see it – after all I never liked the iPhone 5 nor the iPad mini until I simply got to use them.
Lately design seems quite simple that it feels un-designed – gets one wondering if design is a process that allows for coincidence to step in – is it merely luck?
I would refute that it’s not luck at all, it’s rather quite scientific. So much of what we believe or know about an object is simply an interpretation of the world that surrounds us, whether it’s an observation resulting from a mental deduction of how it’s supposed to work or previous experiences with similar objects. These interpretations are all intertwined to form the logic we base our decisions on. The more information we have about the world and the object – the better the perceived design solution will become.
I understand it’s quite difficult to distinguish between logical deduction and coincidence. For we don’t always understand what is it we want, until we get it. And I believe the key to this riddle lies with cross functional teams. In other words – Diversity; it brings to the table different perspectives. Drawing that line between UI and UX.
This brings me to the fact – why I believe iOS 7 makes sense.
Part of this is because of the “new approach” that iOS 7 has introduced; the motion controlled parallax effect. In other words, it’s this trick that allows you to tilt the device and see an apparent shift between designed layers on the screen.
But as Apple notes, "simplicity is quite complicated”.
To get iOS 7 to do that; the phone uses its built-in gyroscope and accelerometer to adapt the layers of the screen and tilt motion speed, to achieve those new sorts of depth. It also uses the phone’s light meter to adjust screen lighting, and thus, improving readability.
Now, this design wonder is a result of intense collaboration between the design and the engineering team. It’s the result of a scientific logical process that say’s a lot about innovation inside Apple.
The introduction of layers brings about new winds of change to interface design. For transparency has been used in the Notification Center (swiped in from the top) and the Control Center (swiped up from the bottom).
I am sure app designers are going to have some fun with this.
For one, I’d love to see a Quran Reader app that separates the tashkeel from the words themselves.
I am not sure if this parallax effect is a sign that Apple might be hinting to 3D display – but I think they would need to work on their battery life there.
Last point, I’d like to add is Apple has taken the opportunity in its iOS 7 guidelines to remind designers of certain things such as avoiding splash-screens and other views that interfere with the purpose of their app.
Reading such guidelines (link to download) can help you draw a picture of how future apps will be designed – after all a big part of the operating systems are the apps running on them.
