Designers react to iOS 7
Yesterday's announcement of iOS 7 brought a number of responses -- many negative, some positive -- about the new look and feel of the mobile operating system. Om Malik of GigaOM decided to gauge reaction to the changes that are coming this fall by asking his Twitter friends.
The negative side of the responses seemed to come mostly from designers:
@jbrewer -- "You gotta wonder if they took their phones outside and looked at all that thin-lined icon + transparency stuff in the sunlight"
@samin -- "An interesting observation: designers who have actually done any mobile OS design work really seem to dislike iOS 7."
@mg -- "Am I alone in thinking the iOS 7 home screen icons look ugly, poorly balanced, and of an unattractive color palate (sic)?"
Tom Coates of Product Club and formerly of both BBC and Yahoo's Brickhouse was the most vocal:
At least in part because it looks so much like wireframes with placeholders for things. Bit like a webpage with Times New Roman....It's cramped in places, childish and garish in others, icons blend in with the background. And some of the design fetishes it has are as egregious if not worse than ios6 - frosted glass, fake depth, sliders with shadows. There are many good things about it too. Don't get me wrong. App switcher is nice, etc. Interaction wise it looks and feels solid.
There were those designers who like the new look, and here is a sampling of their responses:
@yocline -- "The good news: the new UX is a big improvement and the UI skin can be iterated and polished over time"
@mike_FTW -- "I love it" and later:
It's a breath of fresh air. Where was Apple going with the current crap? This opens up all manner of possibilities. I'm excited because it's new. And fresh. The Forstall crap went to its logical conclusion. Any design system that can no longer be extended is death. The new stuff is a fresh start. Eventually it'll die too. But right now I'm excited about how it can grow and be extended. It's not perfect. But, as a designer, that excites me. As a consumer? I dunno.
There's more in the GigaOM post, and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more responses from developers as they get the beta OS loaded on their devices.
