I'm not sure what you all think of Control Center on iOS 10, but I'm personally very surprised to see it has such bad U.I in the latest beta.
I think it's a huge mistake to move different controls over different panes to make it 'less cluttered', and at the same time don't allow users to customize a panel used so often.
What does 'cleaner U.I' mean when it affects the user experience?
Suddenly, when brightness is wrong or music is too loud I can't rely on muscle memory anymore (swipe up, adjust, swipe down). Nope, since iOS 10 I could be in one of three panes and have to navigate to it first.
The whole core idea about Control Panel is to super quickly change settings or access commonly used tools, regardless of which context I'm in.
First of all let's take this screenshot:
https://postimg.org/image/6frudh5o9/
Starting at the top, the use of color is misplaced. I'm glad Apple is getting some color back in their operating system (I hope they'll do the same with the Finder's navigation bar) but in this case a toggle button doesn't really benefit from having different colors. Its toggled state is what counts and this should be consistent throughout the 5 icons. Why is the lock icon red? Is it a warning? No it's just the lock rotation being 'locked'. Why is airplane mode orange? Or 'do not disturb' in a slightly different blue tone? These things matter.
(The respective colors in Settings *do* make sense to me. The purpose there is to quickly identify the appropriate icon in a huge list of items)
The fact that I'm still not able to press-and-hold the Bluetooth or Wifi buttons to change Wifi network or Bluetooth devices SUCKS. Still, I have to dive into the Settings menu all the time. And mind you, I have to do this a lot of times. It's so easy to do, yet Apple doesn't allow me.
Next is the brightness slider. I'm not sure about you but when I quickly open the control panel and want to adjust the slider, there's a change I make a mistake and by not properly touching the horizontal slider. In iOS10 I now keep accidentely dragging the entire pane instead of dragging the slider. As if these two are 'fighting' since both the front element is responding to my horizontal input as well as the entire background.
In iOS9 for some reason the slider was more responsive (or at least the perception of it). I think it's a stupid design on Apple's end. It reminds me of embedded Google Maps views in websites, where you accidentally start dragging the map instead of the webpage itself. The latter is harder to fix, the former is just lame design.
Moving on to AirPlay and Airdrop. There is no reason why these buttons couldn't be smaller buttons as well, but I don't think they're necessarily bad either.
But then! Night shift!
What a horrible, horrible waste of space for something that is so rarely interacted with. Which U.I designer came up with THAT? This could have been merged witch the Airdrop/Airplay row.
Something that I'm using much more often is the 'battery saving' setting. The ability to turn battery saving mode on/off is something I'd love to have, yet Apple doesn't want or allow me to.
https://postimg.org/image/h3vlcbfnd/
The second pane... total abuse of valuable space. Just look at it. It's as if is it's a placeholder screen, unfinished
Granted, it's certainly nice to be able to click the application that is claiming the audio, but it could have been solved with a mere clickable audio icon left of the slider.
The play/pause/reverse/buttons just drown in space.
Another horizontal slider that fights with the parent pane's horizontal dragging.
Great to be able to select a different audio output but I'm not so sure why this should be an accordion menu folding out, versus the interaction design used on the home screen (3D touch to open a folding menu that closes on release, in this case selecting the audio outputs)
These two panes could have been consolidated to one, without sacrificing interaction. Perhaps the one panel would have been larger (height), but so what? There's room for it! Maybe the 5s would be in trouble but there are ways to fallback gracefully in U.I.
At least I would have liked the ability to design my own control panel and stick with just one pane.
Apple's sometimes idiotic focus on aesthetics and minimalism ruin basic interaction. Control Center is one example of that.
-------
Ps The above looks even WORSE on iPad. With so much screen estate, there is no reason why there are multiple panes at all.
In the attempt to try to solve an issue (too cluttered? Not enough controls?) they've created one (the need to scroll multiple panes, odd prioritization/spacing for elements).
I think it's a huge mistake to move different controls over different panes to make it 'less cluttered', and at the same time don't allow users to customize a panel used so often.
What does 'cleaner U.I' mean when it affects the user experience?
Suddenly, when brightness is wrong or music is too loud I can't rely on muscle memory anymore (swipe up, adjust, swipe down). Nope, since iOS 10 I could be in one of three panes and have to navigate to it first.
The whole core idea about Control Panel is to super quickly change settings or access commonly used tools, regardless of which context I'm in.
First of all let's take this screenshot:
https://postimg.org/image/6frudh5o9/
Starting at the top, the use of color is misplaced. I'm glad Apple is getting some color back in their operating system (I hope they'll do the same with the Finder's navigation bar) but in this case a toggle button doesn't really benefit from having different colors. Its toggled state is what counts and this should be consistent throughout the 5 icons. Why is the lock icon red? Is it a warning? No it's just the lock rotation being 'locked'. Why is airplane mode orange? Or 'do not disturb' in a slightly different blue tone? These things matter.
(The respective colors in Settings *do* make sense to me. The purpose there is to quickly identify the appropriate icon in a huge list of items)
The fact that I'm still not able to press-and-hold the Bluetooth or Wifi buttons to change Wifi network or Bluetooth devices SUCKS. Still, I have to dive into the Settings menu all the time. And mind you, I have to do this a lot of times. It's so easy to do, yet Apple doesn't allow me.
Next is the brightness slider. I'm not sure about you but when I quickly open the control panel and want to adjust the slider, there's a change I make a mistake and by not properly touching the horizontal slider. In iOS10 I now keep accidentely dragging the entire pane instead of dragging the slider. As if these two are 'fighting' since both the front element is responding to my horizontal input as well as the entire background.
In iOS9 for some reason the slider was more responsive (or at least the perception of it). I think it's a stupid design on Apple's end. It reminds me of embedded Google Maps views in websites, where you accidentally start dragging the map instead of the webpage itself. The latter is harder to fix, the former is just lame design.
Moving on to AirPlay and Airdrop. There is no reason why these buttons couldn't be smaller buttons as well, but I don't think they're necessarily bad either.
But then! Night shift!
What a horrible, horrible waste of space for something that is so rarely interacted with. Which U.I designer came up with THAT? This could have been merged witch the Airdrop/Airplay row.
Something that I'm using much more often is the 'battery saving' setting. The ability to turn battery saving mode on/off is something I'd love to have, yet Apple doesn't want or allow me to.
https://postimg.org/image/h3vlcbfnd/
The second pane... total abuse of valuable space. Just look at it. It's as if is it's a placeholder screen, unfinished
Granted, it's certainly nice to be able to click the application that is claiming the audio, but it could have been solved with a mere clickable audio icon left of the slider.
The play/pause/reverse/buttons just drown in space.
Another horizontal slider that fights with the parent pane's horizontal dragging.
Great to be able to select a different audio output but I'm not so sure why this should be an accordion menu folding out, versus the interaction design used on the home screen (3D touch to open a folding menu that closes on release, in this case selecting the audio outputs)
These two panes could have been consolidated to one, without sacrificing interaction. Perhaps the one panel would have been larger (height), but so what? There's room for it! Maybe the 5s would be in trouble but there are ways to fallback gracefully in U.I.
At least I would have liked the ability to design my own control panel and stick with just one pane.
Apple's sometimes idiotic focus on aesthetics and minimalism ruin basic interaction. Control Center is one example of that.
-------
Ps The above looks even WORSE on iPad. With so much screen estate, there is no reason why there are multiple panes at all.
In the attempt to try to solve an issue (too cluttered? Not enough controls?) they've created one (the need to scroll multiple panes, odd prioritization/spacing for elements).
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