iOS 11 design rant

iOS 11 suffers from a design crisis. That may sound hyperbolic, but it’s indeed true. You have two different design paradigms fighting against each other, awkwardly commingling at times, and the ignoring each other at other times, and neither one succeeding at its own purposes.

To understand where this design crisis came from, it’s important to go back into the past and explore how iOS got to this point. In June 2013, at the WWDC (Worldwide Developers’ Conference), Apple unveiled iOS 7. The new OS represented a huge departure from Apple’s previous designs, which were heavily skeuomorphic, meaning that they took their design cues from analogs of objects in the real world, so that the Notes app looked like a yellow-papered notepad, the Podcasts app looked like a tape reel, etc. iOS 7 ditched these designs and adopted a flat, minimalist design.

iOS 7 was released in September 2013, and iOS 8, released the following year, largely maintained the iOS 7 design while bringing several refinements to the table along with added functionality.

Seven months after the release of iOS 8, in April 2015, Apple unveiled the Apple Watch, its first wearable, which had long been awaited by many. Due to the small face of the watch, the standard user interface of iOS couldn’t run, and as a result, Apple came up with an interface that, though based on iOS, had a different design to take advantage of the limited amount of screen space the watch had. This new design relied on cards, which delivered snippets of information, as well as an emphasis on bolder fonts to try and make texts more readable on the small screen.

By that point though, iOS 9 was mostly done, and iOS 9 was released in September 2015, bringing further refinements to the design of iOS 7 and 8.

Before long, however, rumors began swirling of redesigns for the Music and News apps, and these rumors came true in iOS 10. These redesigned apps, with their use of white space and bold text, were more similar to watchOS apps. The “card” metaphor of watchOS was also extended to iOS as the Control Center, Notifications Center, and Spotlight adopted the metaphor. iMessage also received bolder text and added functionality, but wasn’t fundamentally redesigned.

However, many apps still retained their 7-9 designs. iOS 11 attempted to make these iOS 7-9 mesh a bit better with the redesigned apps, but didn’t really work well.

This brings us to where we’re at today, a messy, inconsistent UI where two different designs, at loggerheads with each other, prevail.

On the one hand, you have the design of iOS 7-9, as can be seen in apps like Safari, Apple’s iWork suite, and several other Apple apps like Apple Store and Apple Support, FaceTime, Find iPhone, and several others.
On the other hand, you have the new design ushered in by iOS 10, which emphasizes white space, bold text, and adopts a card-based UI, that was inspired by watchOS, as can be seen on apps like Music, Podcasts, News, Tips, and a couple other apps.

And then in the middle you have apps like Mail, Calendar, Messages, Notes, and Photos, among others, for example, where the fundamental design of the apps themselves are based on the iOS 7-9 design, with some elements of the iOS 10/11 design shoehorned in an attempt to try and make them look less jarring, such as bold typography and thicker buttons.

In each of these apps, you have different designs, neither of which really work well in conjunction with each other.

Along with that, even system elements can’t seem to agree on a design. On the one hand, you have elements like the Control Center, the Notifications Center, the Multitasking UI, and Spotlight that follow the new “card” design, but proceed through setup, and you’re thrust back into the iOS 7-9 design. The volume HUD has been redesigned in the video player on Safari to no longer obstruct the viewer’s line of sight while watching a movie, but the main HUD still remains the same design that it has had since 7.

Multiple design inconsistencies are produced. For example, in iOS 11, the App Store has been redesigned to fit the new aesthetic. It has a card-based UI with bold text and lots of whitespace, but the iTunes and iBooks stores have not been given a similar redesign, resulting in two different designs—one inherited from the iOS 7-9 era and the new design. In the iTunes and iBooks stores, cosmetic changes have been minimal, with the biggest change being that the bottom switcher buttons are larger, much like on the TV app. That small element does have the new UI, but the rest of the apps look identical to their old selves. Basically, for the iTunes and iBook stores, the Photos app, the Clock app, and several others, if you were to replace their buttons at the bottom with iOS 7-9 style ones and remove the bolded text, you’d be hard-pressed to tell any kind of difference between iOS 11 and iOS 9.
The worst offenders, however, are those apps where iOS 11 interface elements have been shoehorned with little care or thought, such as what can be seen on the Mail, Notes, Photos, Calendar, and Settings apps. In each of these apps, large bold text can be found stating the name of the app, with a search button below it, and in each of these, those bolded names go away as the user scrolls down. However, these bolded texts do not fit within the design of the apps. The apps come off imbalanced as one part has to be thicker than another, and it’s obvious that the bolded text doesn’t work for those apps. It doesn’t work for the simple reason that the bolded text is merely being shoehorned into the app. These apps largely keep the iOS 7-9 design, and as a result, the iOS 10-11 design elements look incredibly out of place on them. In an attempt to try and make these iOS 7-9 styled apps less jarring within the new design, Apple inadvertently made them even more jarring, as the obviousness of the shoehorned elements are readily apparent.

This lack of design consistency would be excusable from pretty much any other company. Not saying that lack of design consistency is a good thing, but most other companies would get a pass on such design inconsistencies. Apple, however, have always prided themselves on having consistent designs throughout their operating systems, and this mishmash of styles found in iOS 11 does no one any favors. It degrades the quality of the operating system by removing any semblance of consistency, and it makes Apple’s designs look terrible as a result.

My recommendation for Apple: redesign iOS again. Apple took a big risk redesigning iOS in iOS 7, and the gamble, though not without its hiccups, managed to pay off. However, the current designs in 10 and 11 seem to be applying band-aids atop a design that is being pricked due to constant changes. As much as taking off a bandage can hurt, it’s time for Apple to remove its bandage. Redesigning iOS won’t be easy, but Apple needs to decide on a design aesthetic and apply it once and for all.

Either go back to the 7-9 style, or fully embrace the 10-11 style, instead of having this weird mishmash, Apple. Embrace whichever UI you choose, and make iOS’s design have the consistency that it had from iOS 7 to 9. This mishmash is awful, and not at all what I, and many others, have come to expect from Apple. Make iOS’s design consistent, and make us all proud.