The future of iOS design?

Editor's note: The iOS 7, which is being advertised by the industry, will be unveiled at the 2013WWDC conference next month, when more design concepts on iOS 7 will be announced. And recent media coverage of Apple's new chief designer Ive Jony Ive will abandon the design of the pseudo object in iOS 7, with predictions of flat design, which means that iOS 7 will have a dramatic change. Let's take a look at Tim Green, the author of this article.

"Completely flat", "like Android", "Microsoft-style"! ...

Rumors of Apple's "flat" user-interface style have been growing, so I decided to share some of the dynamics with you, not the so-called "insider gossip", but from some of the iOS apps that are now ranked earlier.

The icon shown above is the most popular, best-known, or highly acclaimed app on the iOS platform-without textures and special luster. Yes, we can see the flattening trend from the icon design including Spotify, Path, and Everonote, but most of the icon takes other forms of processing, such as Facebook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Flipboard, although they are still designed with a "top glow" effect, can be found in subtle gradients and curve designs to enhance perspective and icing on the stereo.

In my opinion, these all suggest that iOS's design style is moving in a certain direction. What I'm saying is not that "flat design" itself, nor, of course, the Metro UI is as strong as guidance, but rather a more sophisticated visual indicator system that better directs people to think about the ideas behind these icons while clicking on them. Why do you say that? Because, now is no longer the 2007, people for a variety of media tools and the use of the process is very understanding, do not need gorgeous hands-on instructions, just a simple symbol and color can let everyone understand what this is the app, simplifying human-computer interaction. At present, Google and Facebook have introduced this design wave to the iOS application platform, and further to the more beautiful, elegant design improvements.

In addition, it is increasingly common to use a "card-style" design layout (cards pattern), usually in neutral or gray background. This differs from the iOS standard for background switch display content. Personally, Pinterest has begun to move in this direction, but most applications use it as a way of presenting concise content. (pictured above, mailbox, Gmail, etc.)

Another less common way is a vertical stack of cards that you can see in the design of Evernote and Google Chrome. Different screen hierarchies are arranged on the y-axis, which is interesting but not very good experience. So I don't think there will be more applications using such a design as a navigation tool.

Another trend is to remove the button box from the application, leaving only the icon that can be clicked. Perhaps this is seen as a parody of Android, but the idea that a button box is needed to make the click icon fit into the background is somewhat outdated. This has gradually become popular among developers, and I don't think Apple will make a lot of buttons in the existing unique style, at least not so clearly.

I recently found that many applications have started to be redesigned, such as Facebook and iOS native music players, which have removed the back button (the arrow-shaped button says "back") and replaced it with a simple arrow icon. From this we can see that in the user's operation, we can use more icon as a visual cue, rather than using text guidance. This trend can also be seen in current UI images, and they can guide users through the next click.

Having said so much, I decided to choose the icon of "Messages" as an example to redesign it. I think there are three things that will make a noticeable improvement in iOS design: shiny, striped and gorgeous colors. Combining the points I mentioned before, I made a simple change, pulled the label text down a bit and boldly changed it to a 26-pixel Helvetica Neue Font, making it more legible, smoother and more readable. At the same time, in terms of tone, I think the current popular softer tone is not Apple's style, so color processing will still be more bright, but at least do some dimming processing.

the original author: Tim Green


Source: The future of IOS designs?


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