He made his point. Apple’s design has turned into a performance piece for other designers at the cost of UX. That’s a substantive loss for the end user.
I gave two examples of Apple’s recent designs in my first comment: one looks great but is bad, IMO, and one is great. I’m just saying that there are too many of the first category in the last few years. Does that make it more clear?
It didn’t need clarification. I vehemently disagree with your assertion that treatment of the stairwell boils down to poor UX. Let’s flip your opinion on its head; why compromise a space with heavy ballustrading when the technology and materials exist to hide them in plain sight? The stairs are immediately obvious when you approach them. Isn't that the very idea of good UX?
Not in how I see design. Design should be obvious and easy to use. Assume I would design an app so perfect and beautiful that a settings icon would ruin its look, so I would hide it under a swipe. That’s not good design. Dieter Rams’ “good design is unobtrusive” is about that. So is the famous Steve Jobs quote: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Ok. Let’s take those quotes in context. First Rams - my hero at design school. Any kind of balustrading in the space would be obtrusive. It literally gets in the way of the space the designer is trying to create. The space performs the function of an entrance to a hidden theatre. It’s primary goal is to evoke feelings of excitement and awe. To paraphrase Jobs, it’s supposed to be magical.
Next the Jobs quote. It’s also not just how it works! In fact, I disagree with that quote. Design isn't about any of the those in reality, it’s about solving problems. This is a quote that gets banded about a lot and one that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the design process. The end goal may be how it works, looks and feels. Good design is an elegant solution. Balustrading in the space is inelegant.
The Principle from Rams 10 principals that I’d apply is the one about honesty as hiding the stairs and balustrading could be considered dishonest - however that’s tenuous.
> It’s primary goal is to evoke feelings of excitement and awe.
lame design-school whackery. The only thing that should be giving me feelings of excitement and awe is how well the space functions. Not your tacky visual tricks.
All iOS updates fall into one of these categories:
1. New bugs are introduced
2. The text messaging app has some new feature or widget I'll never use adding a button to misclick or taking up more vertical space, and I need to figure out how to hide it
3. Some stock app has been completely redesigned for no discernible reason whatsoever, and the new design is more visually appealing but renders some or all of the app completely unusable or broken in some way
4. A new stock app has been introduced that does nothing and doesn't matter at all, and can't be removed
I can't think of a single part of any recent update to iOS that wasn't one of those 4 things.
The most recent victim of #3 is the Podcasts app. What could be simpler than this? I want to search for podcasts, maintain a list of my favorites, and then view a list of their episodes starting with the most recent.
Apparently this is no longer possible.
There's a list called "Listen Now" that's showing me episodes from weeks ago. Who the fuck knows how that list is populated, and what I'm seeing is outdated, so moving on and never looking at that list again.
Then in "Library" there's a list of "Shows." When I click on a show it shows me "My Episodes", which doesn't show me the most recent episodes, so moving on and never looking at that again. Also, what exactly is "My Episode" supposed to mean? What exactly is "mine" about an episode of a podcast?? Does this imply all the other 7 lists of podcast episodes contain episodes that aren't mine? So then whose are they?
Also in "Library" there's a list just called "Episodes." This also doesn't show me the most recent episodes as far as I can tell, and certain podcasts are missing entirely. Moving on and never looking at that again.
Below that is "Recently Updated" shows, which is identical to "Shows" except ordered by update recency. Most every podcast is constantly being updated, so this is functionally a random scramble of the Shows list. Completely pointless, moving on and never looking at that again.
All in all, there are literally 8 separate lists of podcasts and podcast episodes (outside of browse and search), and every single one of them is completely useless except Library > Shows > [Show] > (Scroll all the way to the bottom) > Available Episodes, and it's the single most deeply buried list out of all of the lists.
For the life of me I cannot understand why they're going to such great lengths to improve upon and bury a simple reverse chronological feed of episodes. You can't improve it, you don't need to improve it, nobody asked you to improve it, it's FINE. JUST SHOW ME THE EPISODE THAT HAPPENED THE MOST RECENTLY ok I'm done.
I never understood why Apple made a podcast app, there were several really good ones in the store already matching a number of different tastes. Creating their own took away from the overall environment rather than adding to it.