iOS Concept Designs

Here is yet another iOS 7 concept video. I want to talk about it a little bit, so give it a watch (mute your speakers first).

Here’s the thing: iOS doesn’t need a lot of what this designer is showing off. Quick access to bluetooth settings and airplane mode? No one needs quick access to airplane mode. Widgets? Please. Double-tapping home screen icons is a terribad idea.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a well-done video and the designer presents some intriguing ideas, but I can’t help but feel like they didn’t think a lot of these things through past the “oh this would look cool” phase.

For example, has the designer thought about what double-tapping home screen icons would imply, technologically? The OS would need to pause after every single-tap to make sure you aren’t about to double-tap, delaying every app launch by a half second and slowing down the apparent responsiveness of the OS. Is that worth having widgets?

Several of the tap targets I noticed throughout the video look far too small. Controls should have a size of at least 44x44 points to provide a visual affordance to the user that they can be tapped.

Design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Think about how your design is going to fit within the technological ecosystem that it’ll live in.

Don’t get me wrong – iOS is not perfect. It has a lot of room to grow and is even being surpassed in some ways by other mobile operating systems. But don’t go out and grab every feature from every OS you care to riff off – mobile and desktop – and call it a good concept video. Let’s be sensible about what we’re asking for from Apple, because who knows – we might end up with it.


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