Today I made the biggest mistake of my life -- I unwittingly updated the operating system on my iPhone to ios7 and I am ready to ditch my phone and go back to my old LG. ios7 SUCKs. Here is my vent: So I am taking an opportunity to vent, but today I downloaded ios7 to my iPhone and I now want to throw my phone away. I guess the new rage in visual design is flat and the elimination of skeumorphic design (had to look this one up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph). At any rate, in terms of the new Apple GUI, I give it ten thumbs down -- the visuals are much less easy to read -- they are thin and light and do not stand out against the screen background. The green with white reverse text used to distinguish text messages that I send does not create sufficient contrast to make reading easy. In dim light situations the screen content is barely discernable. The timer function is all but indistinguishable. In terms of visual affordance, the old timer retained the visual appearance of a spinning dial -- you knew intuitively what you should do to advance or reverse numbers. Now, you are looking at numbers on a flat screen with no visual clues as to what you should do -- the visual affordance is missing. Instead of being visually intuitive, the user needs to know what to do from previous experience. I like new things -- I am not opposed to new design, but gosh darn it, it has to work as well. The phone is supposed to be a tool and I should be able to at least read what is on the screen of my phone. Apple certainly diminished functionality from this perspective. At any rate, if anyone is interested, the new design method is called flat design and personally, I think it sucks. It is supposed to be the new minimalism, but I think it lacks certain visual affordances. Elderly persons with challenged vision and people who have low light reading issues will not be able to access this new flat design aesthetic. In some regards, Apple just alienated a entire group of potential users, further enhancing the technological use gap. I am wondering what Donald Norman has to say about flat design and if it flies in the face of current HCI UX. So this is my two cents worth. I would be curious to know what anyone else has to say about this new trend in visual design (flat). For me, I am ready to put my iPhone in the trash -- I absolutely hate it right now. I am planning on calling Sprint to see what I can do to get rid of my phone.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 02:46:41 +0000
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