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iOS 7 under the microscope - design for the next 6 years

Michal Ždanský
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The chapter that was written at Apple for 6 years and that bears the handwriting of Scott Forstall, the former head of iOS development, was closed with the latest version of the operating system. Under the baton of Jony Ivo, who until last year was only in charge of industrial design, a new chapter was opened and he will surely write for at least the next five years.

The iOS 7 theme is a brand new look that says goodbye to skeuomorphism and goes for cleanliness and simplicity, even if it might not look like it at first glance. Big demands were placed on the team led by Jony Ivo to change the perception of the system as outdated and boring to modern and fresh.

From the history of iOS

When the first iPhone was released, it set a very ambitious goal - to teach ordinary users how to use a smartphone. Previous smartphones were cumbersome to operate for most less tech-savvy people, Symbian or Windows Mobile was simply not for BFU. For this purpose, Apple created the simplest possible system, which can be controlled slowly even by a small child, and thanks to this, it was able to revolutionize the phone market and help gradually eradicate stupid phones. It wasn't the big touchscreen itself, but what was happening on it.

Apple has prepared several crutches for users - a simple menu of icons on the main screen, where each icon represents one of the phone's applications/functions, and which can always be returned to with a single press of the Home button. The second crutch was a completely intuitive control supported by the now rejected skeuomorphism. When Apple removed most of the physical buttons that other phones abounded in, it had to replace them with an adequate metaphor for users to understand the interface. The bulging icons almost screamed "tap me" as well as the "realistic" looking buttons invited interaction. Metaphors to the physical objects around us appeared more and more with each new version, skeuomorphism in its absolute form only came with iOS 4. It was then that we recognized the textures on the screens of our phones, which were dominated by textiles, especially linen.

Thanks to skeuomorphism, Apple was able to turn cold technology into a warm and familiar environment that evokes home for ordinary users. The problem arose when a warm home became mandatory visits to the grandparents in a few years. What was close to us has lost its luster and year after year in the light of Android operating systems and Windows Phone has turned into a digital antique. Users clamored for skeuomorphism to be banished from iOS, and as they asked, they were granted.

The biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone

At first glance, iOS has really changed beyond recognition. Ubiquitous textures and plastic surfaces have replaced solid colors, color gradients, geometry and typography. Although the radical transition seems like a big step towards the future, it is actually a return to the roots. If iOS is strikingly reminiscent of something, it is the page of a printed magazine, where typography plays the main role. Bright colors, images, focus on content, the golden ratio, DTP operators have known all this for decades.

The basis of a good typeface is a well-chosen font. Apple bets on Helvetica Neue UltraLight. Helvetica Neue is personally one of the most popular web sans-serif fonts, so Apple bet on the safe side, moreover, Helvetica and Helvetica Neue were already used as the system font in previous versions of iOS. UltraLight, as the name suggests, is significantly thinner than regular Helvetica Neue, which is why Apple uses a so-called dynamic font that changes thickness depending on size. IN Settings > General > Accessibility > Text Size you can also set the minimum font size. The font is dynamic and colorful, it changes depending on the colors of the wallpaper, although not always quite correctly and sometimes the text is illegible.

In iOS 7, Apple decided to take a rather radical step regarding the buttons - not only did it remove the plasticity, but also canceled the border around them, so it is not possible to tell at first glance whether it is a button or not. The user should only be informed by a different color compared to the text part of the application and possibly the name. For new users, this step can be confusing. iOS 7 is obviously intended for those who already know how to use a touch smartphone. After all, the entire redesign of the system is in this spirit. Not everything has lost borders, for example the toggle menu as we can see in iOS 7 is still visibly bordered. In some cases, borderless buttons make sense from an aesthetic point of view - for example, when there are more than two in a bar.

We can see the removal of the plastic look throughout the system, starting with the lock screen. The lower part with the slider for unlocking was replaced only by the text with the arrow, moreover, it is no longer necessary to precisely catch the slider, the locked screen can be "pulled" from anywhere. Two small horizontal lines then let the user know about the control and notification center, which can be pulled down from the top and bottom edges. If you have password protection active, dragging will take you to the password entry screen.

Depth, not area

iOS 7 is often referred to as a flat design system. However, this is not entirely true. Sure, it's definitely flatter than any previous version, but it's a long way from the flatness that abounds in Windows Phone, for example. "Depth" expresses the form of the system much better. While iOS 6 created the illusion of raised surfaces and real physical materials, iOS 7 is supposed to create a sense of space in the user.

Space is a more apt metaphor for the touchscreen than it was for skeuomorphism. iOS 7 is literally layered, and Apple uses several graphics elements and animations to do so. In the front row, it is the transparency associated with blurring (Gaussian Blur), i.e. the milky glass effect. When we activate the notification or control center, the background under it seems to cover the glass. Thanks to this, we know that our content is still below the given offer. At the same time, this solves the problem of choosing an ideal background suitable for everyone. Milk glass always adapts to desktop wallpaper or open app, no preset color or texture. Especially with the release of colored phones, the move makes sense, and the iPhone 5c looks like iOS 7 was made just for it.

Another element that gives us a sense of depth is the animations. For example, when you open a folder, the screen seems to zoom in so that we can see the icons contained in it. When we open the application, we are drawn into it, when we leave it, we almost "jump" out. We can see a similar metaphor in Google Earth, for example, where we zoom in and out and the displayed content changes accordingly. This "zoom effect" is natural to humans, and its digital form makes more sense than anything else we've seen in mobile operating systems.

The so-called parallax effect works in a similar way, which uses a gyroscope and dynamically changes the wallpaper so that we feel that the icons are stuck on the glass, while the wallpaper is somewhere below them. Finally, there is the ever-present shading, thanks to which we are aware of the order of the layers, if, for example, we switch between two screens in the application. This goes hand in hand with the system's previous screen gesture, where we drag the current menu away to reveal the previous menu that seems to be underneath it.

Content at the heart of the action

All the aforementioned radical changes in the graphical interface and metaphors have one main task - not to stand in the way of the content. It's the content, whether it's images, text, or a simple list, that's at the heart of the action, and iOS continues to stop distracting with textures, which in some cases have gone too far—think Game Center, for example.

[do action=”quote”]iOS 7 represents a promising new beginning to build on, but a lot of hard work will be needed to bring it to imaginary perfection.[/do]

Apple has made iOS incredibly light, sometimes literally – for example, the shortcuts for quick tweeting or writing posts on Facebook have disappeared, and we have also lost the weather widget displaying the five-day forecast. By changing the design, iOS lost a piece of its identity - as a result of the derived texture and intuitive interface that was its (patented) trademark. One could say that Apple threw out the bathwater with the baby.

iOS 7 is not inherently revolutionary, but it dramatically improves existing things, solves some existing problems and, like every new operating system, brings new problems.

Even the master carpenter…

We're not going to lie, iOS 7 is definitely not without bugs, quite the contrary. The whole system shows that it was sewn with a hot needle and after a while we run into a lot of problems, such as sometimes inconsistent control or appearance. The gesture to return to the previous screen works in some applications and only in certain places, and for example the Game Center icon looks like it is from another OS.

After all, icons were a frequent target of criticism, for their form and inconsistency. Some apps got a rather uglier icon (Game Center, Weather, Voice Recorder), which we hoped would change during the beta versions. It did not happen.

iOS 7 on the iPad looks pretty good despite the initial skepticism, unfortunately the current iOS release contains a large number of bugs, both in the API and in general, and cause the device to crash or restart. I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 7 becomes the version of the system with the most updates, because there is definitely something to work on.

No matter how controversial the change in the graphical interface is, iOS is still a solid operating system with a rich ecosystem and now with a more modern look, which users of previous versions of iOS will have to get used to for a while, and new users will take longer to learn. Despite the first major changes, this is still the good old iOS, which has been with us for seven years and which managed to pack a lot of ballast due to new functions during its existence, and spring cleaning was needed.

Apple has a lot to improve on, iOS 7 is a promising new start to build on, but a lot of hard work will be needed to bring it to ideal perfection. It will be interesting to see what Apple brings next year with iOS 8, until then we can watch how third party developers fight with the new look.

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