The unfinished feeling in iOS 11 mostly comes from UI and animation. UI elements in iOS are quite inconsistent, mixing a variety of UI elements, which might look quite similar but introduce a disconnected feeling for UX. The inconsistency of those elements majorly stems from those UI element updated in iOS 11, such as Large Title and new Search Bar. In my opinion, those newly introduced elements, which might be unfamiliar and new even to Apple engineers, have caused many inconsistent UI experience in iOS 11.
Many of you will look at this and consider it a bunch of whiny nonsense, but the problem with Apple being lax on details is that it turns into a case of monkey see, monkey do. Third party developers will become lax as well, leading to an overall degradation of UI quality and consistency. This is the last thing iOS, which has never exactly been a visually consistent operating system to begin with, needs.
People go nuts because the ports on the bottom of a Samsung phone – which you effectively never look at – aren’t aligned, yet, ever since iOS 7, Apple has basically been winging its iOS UI design and polish.
Something about grading on a curve.
Not whiny imho, they’re mostly valid complaints.
I haven’t even updated to iOS 11 yet (will wait till at least 11.0.2), but a lot of the screenshots I’ve seen exhibit the same inconsistencies stated by the author. I’ll probably find a lot worse after updating. The Control Center in particular looks like some bad widget job you’d get from those aesthetically inept Android skinners on XDA during the Holo-everything era. Ick!!
This isn’t anything new on iOS though. I remember issues with fonts overlapping in the early iOS 10 release and rather scrunchy animations in iOS 9. Let’s not even talk about iOS 8.
With regards to third-party devs, actually, in my experience with the the third-party apps I use (mostly paid apps), the devs tend to do a better job than Apple with regards to many of these. They can’t get away from the stuff Apple mandates or the stuff that uses one of their Core engines/frameworks, but they tend to pay more attention to spacing and margins at least.
The screenshot in that article that really grates me is the one of the iPhone X. Just look at the difference in padding/margin above and below the search bar. WTF?!
Edited 2017-09-21 13:15 UTC
I’d rather say it’s different qa politics that led to this. This has also plagued other coorporations as well.
Not sure if they will ever improve this since most mobile users have no clue on what proper UI is.. And how could they when no other option was made available. It’s not like we can turn back the time and show everyone how things used to be because they aren’t anymore..
Edited 2017-09-21 16:07 UTC
Checking a UI for consitency is a horrible, time consuming and boring job. Been there, done that and I missed some minor point. No one noticed or at least complained. So the next release we did less checking. Still no complaints.
Now we have IOS and people go over everything with a microscope. How times have changed eh?
Welcome to the youtube generation, where every YT channel needs to at least generate 50 videos for every new iOS release, regardless of content….
Why do some people keep being so enamored with the delusion that things in the past were better?
It’s basically one of cognitive biases…
.. but there are so many to choose from! 😉
What current os is consistent? Can anyone name a major graphical environment still in wide-spread use which has consistency? I know I can’t think of one.
Or, perhaps better yet:
Ask the average tech inclined person about their favorite Graphical Environment ( mobile or not, don’t think it matters) and ask them if its consistent.
How many would say yes?
How many of those who say now would actually be able to pin point specific differences?
I’d like to argue that Android, gnome and kde are pretty consistent, but really what I mean is: I don’t notice any issues. Now, for the apps I develop, do I know the dirty truth about misaligned pixels and inconsistent behaviors? Absolutely. I could list them off in my sleep.
I’m not sure what that means for my attention to detail, but I’d like to believe that its because I’m liberal in what I accept from others, but strict in the behaviors from myself.
I remember all the arguments that Gnome and KDE weren’t consistent in their UI from the Windows users. I always laughed at them and pointed them toward Windows and Office. Two products made by the same company, but neither of which ever appeared to fit with each other at all.
At least Gnome applications are consistent within Gnome and KDE applications within KDE.
The most noticeable things in a UI is when the Cancel/Okay buttons are reversed. That drives me nuts! A few pixels misaligned here and there can be spotted, but when you keep canceling things when you don’t want to, it starts to make you rather angry….
Windows is still terrible, you have so many different installers which do this very thing.
OS X 10.4 had like 4 inter woven themes among its major apps, and I don’t think they even implemented uniform design until 10.6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
I’ve used macs as my home PCs since the Intel switch, but I can’t find any evidence they are better or worse then any other os vendor. I just happen to be willing to put up with them more then I am Microsoft.
Apple has never been consistent, has always deviated from adequately labeled “best practices” (not strict requirements), and has always changed things up every couple of years.
This IS ridiculous whining and it doesn’t really matter. Buggy rotation animations matter. Uncentered log in screens matter. Things that move around in an ugly way matter. These things are scene as buggy and slow. Inconsistent UI does not matter, because no one cares.
In fact if UX was always consistent in computer interfaces we’d all still be using command lines.
Give me a break.
Edited 2017-09-21 23:29 UTC
And third parties will produce horrid UX because they suck at UX or just don’t have the budget to do it right, or jus don’t care, which is most of them. They aren’t going to just copy crappy design, although if more developers did that, their UXs would be better. Most don’t bother to even think about it. Nothing will change, and it’s hard to believe it will for those of us who actually build software.
It’s kind of a crapshoot. You either have engineers who couldn’t design a UI to save their lives and just muddle through something that is semi-usable. Then you have the design freaks who argue about pixels and anti-aliasing and alignment of dialog boxes.
The perfect UX would be somewhere in the middle… no one has gotten there yet…
The new trend of making everything flat is far worse though. Check the Note 8’s UI. In the Settings you have a little toggle that goes blue when it’s on, or white when it’s off… BUT if there is a little light line there, you can click on the TEXT portion for more options… This is a terrible UI.
Also, I absolutely hate the term UX… User Experience is a completely inane term created by designers and marketers (of which they should stay out of any sort of UI).
Not quite sure if it’s along the same lines but I work for a company that makes technical instruments and the control &analysis software contain various “hidden buttons” where one has to right-click in areas of blank or monotone background to bring up hidden menus
(in the name if a simpler cleaner interface)
No mouse-over pops-ups or visual clue at all…..
Most desktop/mobile OSii aren’t quite this level of bad. but sometimes approaching.
If the UI/UX design isn’t blatantly and arcanely technical(ly competent)……At least make any and all elements (easily) discoverable
(I say)
It took over 50 years for the qwerty keyboard to become the standard for type writers. It took just as long for handles to be removed from doors intended to be pushed. Yet we still, even 50 years later, see doors with handles that say “push” on them. A label indicates an incorrect affordance, and despite the ancient nature of that knowledge, people still can’t get it right. But what’s the point in complaining about it. Just choose the right options for YOUR projects.
Complaining about inconsistent UI from the outside is a fruitless journey. This does not imply that it’s fruitless to write the design guidelines though. But just as quickly as these are written by folks at Apple and Google/Android (maybe MS, Samsung, etc.), those rules SHOULD be broken. That’s innovation.
I completely agree about flat UI though. The trend is actually pretty old at this point. I wonder if it’ll change.
Edited 2017-09-22 16:22 UTC
I upgraded to iOS 11 on my 6s plus, and wish I hadn’t. The phone feels about 10 percent slower, and I had a hard crash, forcing me to turn the phone off and back on again. This never happened to me in previous versions.
I guess I should have waited for iOS 11.1…
Interesting. My 6S Plus has done exactly the opposite and seems to be more responsive. I haven’t had any hard crashes either, but then again I haven’t seen an iOS hard crash on this particular phone since I bought it two years ago. Mind you, I’ve seen plenty of iOS hard crashes, just not on this phone; it’s one of the many reasons I don’t feel the need to upgrade yet.
That slowness is the downside of constant OS updates (particularly with iOS) that folks like Thom don’t want to acknowledge.
My iPhone 5S actually seems faster than it was previously. Each OS update seems to speed this thing up.
I don’t feel it became slower on SE, but it is definitely became faster and more stable on A7-based iPad Air.
Hey, remember when there were human interface guidelines that people followed? Remember all that research into human computer interaction that got thrown away when touch screen mobile devices became popular?
Grumble.
I updated on my iPhone 6s and iPad Mini 4, then spent some time with specific settings. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but for me, the ecosystem is still the best choice for all of the ways I use and integrate my devices.
And Isn´t it Ironic?… that the guy in the article that is sooo nuts about the side ports alignment provides us with such a ‘delightful’ HD image of is fugly manicure… Talk about specks and logs…