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More Details on Jony Ive's Flat iOS 7 Design: Heavier on Black and White
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I just get the feeling most of you bashing on the panoramic wallpaper are not understanding it. It is not just going to take a normal picture and cut it up. If you actually take a panoramic picture, though, and use if as your background it will split it up.
As far as I can tell the iPhone has taken panoramic pictures for longer than android phones so the idea that android has had panoramic wallpapers for some long period of time does not jibe with reality.
Just browsing around and I feel pretty comfortable in asserting that most of you bashing panoramic wallpaper don't actually understand what that is likely going to be and just assume it will be dumb like it was/is on android for a long period of time.
The word "panoramic" is there yet many of you seem to be befuddled by it.
The ui team at apple ****ed up big time with the way os x evolved with pointless, non functional (I emphasize this, because skeumorphism can be functional too) skeumorphism, the greying out of buttons and menus, and all sorts of dumbed down poorly thought out ui "features". The ios loans where at best gimmicks to (supposedly) attract more users to the mac platform based on their affinity to ios. None of them really worked or made os x any better though, they made it worse.
The ui team in ios also failed to move forward and evolve the os offering more functionality yet retaining its simplicity, which was and still is it's strong point.
So, from prior experience "any serious person" would at least have some reservations about how both os's are going to go forward. In addition Jony Ive might have good judgment in terms of hardware design (though not immaculate judgement, he's made a series of mistakes too, in terms of ergonomics, the first air with the pointless latch, ill though out port placement, glass surfaces without consideration for usability issues (glare), etc.) but he's not really done ui design.
What I say is, let's hope for the best. Tim Cook, Greg Federichi, and, to a lesser extent Scott Forestall pulling the shots in ui was a major cock up. Can it actually get worse? Of course it can. But I have faith that Ive not only has better judgement, but that he can also function with a more open mind and flexibility, considering his and his team's visions but also the feedback of the mac community.
Itunes 11, isn't bad at all, it's quite good actually, it's a step forward, and he had his hand on that. The fact that he quickly listened to the feedback and corrected a few of the missteps on it, is also very encouraging.
Confused by your comment. Flat design offers no clues for your eyes? Color and shape are clues if given meaning. Take road signs. They are simple and flat. Everyone around the world knows that a red octagon is "stop,"; a triangle pointing down is "yield," a red circle outline with slash means don't do whatever icon is in the center, etc., no matter what language accompanies these 2D symbols.
Governments spend trillions of money worldwide improving road safety, where a "split second," can be the difference between close call or tragedy, but the good old internationally recognized road sign design hasn't been changed since first implemented.
Yes they are, but there are more tools than color and shape that can be used, but they are verboten!
Road signs are not interactive, or virtual objects.
Flat is ok as long as there are still clues, so you know, if its clickable, touchable, draggable element right by simple glimpse on your screen.
My oppinion is that best way is somewhere in the middle, not too flat and not too rich.
Even children as young as 3 are able to operate mobile devices with little guidance. You can argue that it is partly due to ios' intuitive nature, but maybe people these days don't really need the training wheels as much?
Well, they've already reported a few of them. Car integration with maps and Siri and Flickr and Vimeo integration.
How are road signs not "interactive"? The driver must quickly and accurately recognize it and act upon it's meaning or bad things could happen. That is the literal meaning of "interactive."
Interactive doesn't necessarily mean the user has to push or swipe something -- the user could use any of the 5 senses. When two people have a conversation they are interacting, but they could be 4ft from each other and never touch. In fact, they could just give non-verbal signals. It's still interacting.
And that is the whole point of a GUI as well, to help the user communicate with the device efficiently. It's nonsense that 3D is defacto superior to 2D. It's all in the design and implementation.
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WWDC logo makes sense now. Signaling a dedicated color for stock apps.
I hope they use that nice transparent look.
The sign does not change or in any way adapt to the drivers actions, it's fully passive. The driver is interacting with the environment when he drives but road signs them selves are not interactive.
The user does not have to push or swipe, that is correct, but the object needs to be able to respond to user actions to be interactive.
I never said that 3D is superior to 2D, I said that imposing arbitrary rules that forbids the use of anything but shape and color is bad.
This could help you understand what I mean. I am not against flat design, I just preffer function and intuitive UI which just work. And you need to work harder when making flat design, since you can't help yourself with rich grafic elements etc.
http://sachagreif.com/the-flat-sink/
On the subject of flat design...
1. Any idiot can draw a few shapes in MS Paint.
2. But it takes good design to draw a few shapes, correctly place them, use meaningful colour and subtle use of shadow where applicable, all combined to create a functional and intuitive UI.
I would have faith at this point for Ive to deliver on this.
Flat design does not automatically equate to a nonfunctional UI.
1. Any idiot can draw a few shapes in MS Paint.
2. But it takes good design to draw a few shapes, correctly place them, use meaningful colour and subtle use of shadow where applicable, all combined to create a functional and intuitive UI.
I would have faith at this point for Ive to deliver on this.
Flat design does not automatically equate to a nonfunctional UI.
I'm not going to argue the point anymore. You have a layman's, not engineer or designer's, view of what "interactive" is, so it's futile. Believe what you want, but you should study up on "human factors."
Also, all design is arbitrarily set by the designer(s). There is no scientific law to design like there is to gravity. Design trends go in and go out like any other fashion.
No, I understand the link you sent. That is pure form over function. But a 2D design by default is no less functional than a 3D one. It's all about implementation. Otherwise it would be tantamount to saying something like, for example, impressionism is art but realism is not. Whether a shape is 2D or 3D has no bearing on functionality. Functionality is something an engineer or designer imputes to an otherwise "dumb" object.
Solution to flat sink problem:
Don't turn the taps / faucets on at high velocity.
This idea that flat UI design and functionality are two mutually exclusive things simply isn't true.
Don't turn the taps / faucets on at high velocity.
This idea that flat UI design and functionality are two mutually exclusive things simply isn't true.
Wow insulting, and also an obvious cop out because you never defended you point. I have studied quite a bit of both HCI and prototyping and the like.
There is a set of objectives that needs to be met depending on what you do, the design can either aid in reaching those objectives or not. Unless you are working on art, then you can do what you want.
Thats why I quoted:
Remove all affordances, and you make it harder for the user to know where to click.
Put everything on the same plane, and you make it harder to focus on a specific section of the page.
Remove all affordances, and you make it harder for the user to know where to click.
Put everything on the same plane, and you make it harder to focus on a specific section of the page.
Indeed. And consistent. That is one thing that is very important for new users in particular.
One app in particular has been bugging me for a while and that's notes. In general in every baked in iOS app the tools are set off in a bar that is uniquely colored to highlight it as a different area of interest. But not in notes, the tools are at the bottom like doodles on the page. Which to me makes no sense because they could be at the top just like other apps on the iPad version (look at Mail. it's all at the top on the ipad and split in two bars on the bottom on the iPhone). Given that the title of a note is just the first bit you wrote it's unneeded info really and could be removed to put the tools at the top etc