Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So today I think we kind of wanted to, there's two sort of general but very tightly related

00:00:15 ◼   ► topics that I think we wanted to unpack.

00:00:17 ◼   ► And the first is coming from something that I've, some complicated feelings I've been

00:00:23 ◼   ► navigating recently.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And in a weird way they all relate back to the Apple Design Awards and my feelings and

00:00:29 ◼   ► sort of whether that's a good aspiration, whether that's a good motivation, whether

00:00:34 ◼   ► that is something that I want to pursue.

00:00:36 ◼   ► And then sort of related to that is something that I've been, as a result of kind of becoming

00:00:43 ◼   ► less stuck on the goal of winning a design award, I've been increasingly making more

00:00:49 ◼   ► pragmatic choices in my design, in my development.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And I think there's something to be said for that.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And so I think sort of, those are the two parts that I think would be interesting to

00:00:59 ◼   ► kind of unpack.

00:01:01 ◼   ► And I guess to start with, with the Apple Design Awards thing, it's, it is a weird,

00:01:06 ◼   ► I have a weird history with the design awards personally, like in the sense of, I remember

00:01:10 ◼   ► when I started out in this community and I, no, I didn't, I don't come from a big Apple

00:01:17 ◼   ► background.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So it's not like, I was a Windows guy before I became an iOS developer.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I mean, I got my first Mac mostly because at the time I was a Ruby on Rails developer

00:01:29 ◼   ► and TextMate was like the best text editor for writing Ruby on Rails code.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Like that was what you did.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And so if you wanted to write Ruby on Rails code, you bought a Mac.

00:01:38 ◼   ► So I bought a Mac.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Like I didn't buy it because I thought a Mac was awesome or cool.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Mostly like, and there's a little bit of that, like it was pretty, but I got into the Mac

00:01:45 ◼   ► because of something else.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And so I don't have this big pedigree with the Mac, but you know, sort of as I came into

00:01:52 ◼   ► this community and I started to try and understand what makes it tick and how it works, like

00:01:59 ◼   ► it was a time when I think Apple very strongly still had this feeling of, you know, what

00:02:06 ◼   ► sets it apart is its design and the, an elegance and a simplicity that was very strongly lauded.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And I mean, I remember going to the Apple design awards at my first WWDC and kind of

00:02:21 ◼   ► it being an encouraging, motivating, like, wow, how cool would it be to make an app one

00:02:26 ◼   ► day that aspires to that level.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And over the subsequent years, it's been interesting to charge sort of how my feelings on that

00:02:37 ◼   ► have changed where there was this period where that was my goal.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Like every time I started a new app, I sort of filtered it through this feeling of like,

00:02:45 ◼   ► how could I win an Apple design award with this app and to try and work towards that.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And what do I need to get better at to do that?

00:02:52 ◼   ► And then over the following years, that changed for a variety of reasons.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And I mean, it got to a point where I stopped going to the design award session at WWDC.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Like it stopped being something both a little bit because honestly, it was a little bit

00:03:07 ◼   ► painful to sort of go to this thing that I sort of felt like I tried to do, but realized

00:03:12 ◼   ► that I'm just not really the type of app that they're looking for.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And also just because it seemed to be less of an emphasis, less of this thing that was

00:03:25 ◼   ► quite as strongly held up in the community, or at least in my perception of the community.

00:03:29 ◼   ► I mean, to the degree that this year, it was sort of this more side event with press, which

00:03:35 ◼   ► ostensibly was to make it more visible, which maybe is true, but if it was to make it more

00:03:40 ◼   ► visible, it's kind of a crazy thing that if making it more visible means putting it not

00:03:46 ◼   ► on the main stage directly after one of the biggest sessions of WWDC, something's changed

00:03:53 ◼   ► there.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And it's a hard thing to unpack.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But either way, it's this different thing that is in some ways a relief that I can kind

00:04:02 ◼   ► of just say, "I don't think I'm ever going to win an Apple Design Award."

00:04:06 ◼   ► And that's hard for me in some ways, but at the same time, it's somewhat liberating to

00:04:11 ◼   ► just say, "I don't think that's what I...

00:04:14 ◼   ► That's not the kind of app I make."

00:04:16 ◼   ► Most of the apps that win Apple Design Awards are games, so I'm not making games.

00:04:22 ◼   ► And the ones beyond that that do win tend to be these larger team projects with massive

00:04:29 ◼   ► design resources that are not me either.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And there's usually one or maybe two more small team apps that win one.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And I always hold out hope for one day that will be me, but at the same time, I just don't

00:04:43 ◼   ► think that's the kind of app I make.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And so having it as a goal, having it as a motivation is ultimately kind of problematic.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But like I said, it's a weird thing to say out loud that I don't...

00:04:55 ◼   ► Because in the back of my head, I still want to win an Apple Design Award, and it's probably

00:05:00 ◼   ► somewhat of an irrational thing to want when really a better goal is to make a sustainable

00:05:06 ◼   ► living on the App Store, which I've been fortunate enough to do for so many years.

00:05:11 ◼   ► That should be enough, but I don't know.

00:05:13 ◼   ► It's this funny thing to always have that feels like it's just sort of hanging over

00:05:17 ◼   ► me.

00:05:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've gone through a similar transition and a similar set of feelings.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I mean, I was in the Mac community I think a little before you, but not by much, around

00:05:27 ◼   ► the same time.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And before that, I was also a Windows person.

00:05:32 ◼   ► So I came to the Mac, and I saw really what I consider to be its glory days of 2005 or

00:05:41 ◼   ► 2004 or so, really through maybe Lion.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I would really consider a really great run where there weren't a lot of downsides on

00:05:52 ◼   ► the Mac and an Apple Design and everything.

00:05:54 ◼   ► It was pretty much all unqualified successes for a pretty big run.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And I think a lot of that comes down to Steve Jobs and our desire for a design award.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I too would love to win one.

00:06:13 ◼   ► It always seemed like the highest honor that Apple could bestow upon a developer would

00:06:20 ◼   ► be a design award.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Part of why I wanted it so much was a personal incentive that I wanted recognition from Steve

00:06:28 ◼   ► Jobs in some way, even though he was never the one giving them out or anything.

00:06:32 ◼   ► But it was his company, and I kind of knew he would probably have some idea on what things

00:06:37 ◼   ► got Apple Design Awards.

00:06:39 ◼   ► It was like I felt a stronger motivation to impress Steve, because Steve was this enigma,

00:06:45 ◼   ► this character, this incredibly powerful personality.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And after he died, and now that we have a very different company with very different

00:06:55 ◼   ► leadership and very different public persona, it doesn't seem like I want current Apple's

00:07:02 ◼   ► approval as much anymore.

00:07:04 ◼   ► I don't seek it out.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's because of a Steve thing, some kind of weird father figure

00:07:08 ◼   ► thing or what, but I don't really care what Tim Cook thinks of me or my app.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I don't really care about Tim Cook.

00:07:16 ◼   ► We don't really see enough of Tim Cook or enough of his personality to care about him.

00:07:20 ◼   ► So I don't really seek that anymore, and now it seems more like I'm seeing the Apple

00:07:26 ◼   ► Design Awards now as maybe what they always were, but at least how it seems now is that

00:07:30 ◼   ► it's just like here's a marketing award that our marketing department is giving you.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And it seems, I don't want to take away from the people who win them, but it does

00:07:39 ◼   ► seem like they're not really looking at apps like ours as much anymore.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And again, and part of that, it could be other factors, I don't know, but certainly it

00:07:48 ◼   ► seems like a lot of them go to games, a lot of them go to big corporate partners, but

00:07:53 ◼   ► there are still some people like us who still do win them, but it's a very, very small

00:07:58 ◼   ► number every year.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's like probably two or three people like us who win them.

00:08:02 ◼   ► And so to be one of those two or three is just so incredibly unlikely.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And it seems like it's chosen by criteria that might be different from what you and

00:08:15 ◼   ► I would think ourselves would be like how it should be chosen.

00:08:21 ◼   ► It's so tied to marketing.

00:08:22 ◼   ► It's so tied to what are the new features that year they want to show off.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And again, maybe to some degree it always was, but maybe we're just now realizing

00:08:30 ◼   ► that.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:32 ◼   ► But I have basically also given up on trying to win one.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And for a while I didn't think I had a chance just because my design skills were not good

00:08:41 ◼   ► enough.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But in recent years I thought I had a better chance than I did before.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And in recent years I started caring more and maybe hoping a little bit more and certainly

00:08:49 ◼   ► making design decisions in order to try to win Apple design awards or in order to try

00:08:54 ◼   ► to appeal to Apple on those kind of marketing recognition levels and maybe to lead into

00:09:00 ◼   ► an App Store feature or whatever else.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But basically designing to impress Apple over some choices that would be better for usability

00:09:11 ◼   ► or discoverability or things like that.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of the core thing of what we want to talk about today is making

00:09:19 ◼   ► those decisions of designing for Apple or even I would even broaden it to say designing

00:09:24 ◼   ► for what is currently trendy in app design, in visual design or interactive design versus

00:09:33 ◼   ► what is actually usable for people and what makes your app actually better in practice.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And when design is in a good place, there are times when those things are mostly or

00:09:45 ◼   ► entirely overlapping.

00:09:47 ◼   ► There are times when the design world values things that are practical.

00:09:50 ◼   ► But design is a fad, it goes in phases and there are times when that's not the case.

00:09:55 ◼   ► There are times when what is currently in fashion is very much not usable.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And obviously in recent, in the last five, ten years we can point to this cycle happening

00:10:06 ◼   ► with Apple and it goes back and forth.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And so when or in what circumstances we should choose functionality over appealing visual

00:10:18 ◼   ► design, I think depends a lot on what are we trying to accomplish, who are we trying

00:10:22 ◼   ► to impress.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And I think what I'm saying here and I think what you might be saying too is like in the

00:10:27 ◼   ► past we have been trying to impress Apple quite a lot on these visual design levels

00:10:32 ◼   ► and now I'm more willing to make the other decision and to say you know what, this is

00:10:39 ◼   ► how things are done, this is the current trend, this is what Apple is trying to promote, etc.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But I don't agree with this part of it and this part of it is causing problems for my

00:10:48 ◼   ► app or for my design and so I'm going to choose not to do that.

00:10:52 ◼   ► I feel like too there's also an element for me of, I maybe, and it's interesting what

00:10:57 ◼   ► you're saying about the role that Steve Jobs plays in sort of the ethos of this because

00:11:03 ◼   ► I think in some ways I agree with the, there was a time when I feel like I had a more concise

00:11:10 ◼   ► and crystallized view of what an Apple app should look like.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Like there was a feel and an elegance to it or whatever, that there's like, I knew what

00:11:23 ◼   ► that looked like.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And in some ways I do think I kind of had a bit of a filter for that was, it's like

00:11:31 ◼   ► what's an app that I wouldn't feel embarrassed showing to Steve Jobs?

00:11:35 ◼   ► There was a specificity to that that I think was useful that I think is not something that

00:11:42 ◼   ► I have anymore.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Like I don't really know what a best app would look like and I don't think the, like the

00:11:51 ◼   ► system apps used to be a good place to go and look for that and I think they're very,

00:11:55 ◼   ► much more varied and in some ways they don't seem to necessarily hold themselves to the

00:12:01 ◼   ► same standard that I used to imagine that all Apple apps needed to.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And so I think that's a trickier thing too where like as I'm trying to make these choices

00:12:12 ◼   ► in my own apps, like I used to kind of, often I would find a point where it's like I could

00:12:18 ◼   ► do the easy thing or I could do the Apple thing maybe.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Like these are sort of in my mind that was the filter that I placed a lot of choices

00:12:27 ◼   ► through.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Like do I want to do this the easy way or do I want to do this the Apple way?

00:12:30 ◼   ► And I feel like the perception I have now is that I don't know what the Apple way is

00:12:37 ◼   ► to the same degree.

00:12:38 ◼   ► That I don't know what that, like it's so unspecific now that it's much harder for me

00:12:44 ◼   ► to do something, to make that choice and to not just want to do the easy thing or to,

00:12:50 ◼   ► you know, rather than the easy thing and the Apple thing, be the easy thing or the usable

00:12:54 ◼   ► thing or focus on like other metrics that are a bit more, I'm much more able to wrap

00:12:59 ◼   ► my hands around.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And even in a weird way this makes me think of just like how big of a document the human

00:13:05 ◼   ► interface guidelines are now.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Like when we started being iOS developers, like you could read the human interface guidelines

00:13:13 ◼   ► and like in an hour probably.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I don't think that's the case anymore.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And especially like now you'd need to do, there's the watch one, there's an iPhone one,

00:13:22 ◼   ► you know, like there's multiple of these things that exist and they're just becoming much

00:13:26 ◼   ► more sprawling because apps are much more sprawling.

00:13:30 ◼   ► In so many different ways.

00:13:31 ◼   ► They have so many, you have extensions, which is awesome, but now you have all these other

00:13:34 ◼   ► areas of your app that you would need to take into account.

00:13:38 ◼   ► There's this explosion of complexity that I think makes it so hard to have this very

00:13:45 ◼   ► concise view.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And that makes it hard then to have something like that be the goal and to instead find

00:13:52 ◼   ► these other things where there's easier or either it's an easier thing to build, which

00:13:59 ◼   ► has benefits to it, or you can start to say like, well, what is the most obvious solution

00:14:05 ◼   ► to this problem?

00:14:07 ◼   ► What is going to make my user, it may not be visually beautiful, but it might be easier

00:14:14 ◼   ► and more obvious because certainly one of the things that we had in the past, I feel

00:14:20 ◼   ► like there was this beautiful, it's hard to describe in words maybe, but I can imagine

00:14:26 ◼   ► an XY graph where you have this usability versus elegance of design.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And as elegance of design goes up, usability starts to go down and starts to go down and

00:14:40 ◼   ► starts to go down until you hit this magical, super elegant point where suddenly it jumps

00:14:46 ◼   ► right back up and suddenly it becomes amazingly usable because it's so elegant and it's so

00:14:52 ◼   ► beautiful.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And you imagine, in some ways that's my goal, was to build things that you hit this point

00:14:59 ◼   ► where it's just so elegant it becomes effortless.

00:15:02 ◼   ► In a weird way, the thing that comes to mind is slide to unlock on an iPhone where there's

00:15:06 ◼   ► so many complicated ways that you could imagine doing that and they found this super elegant

00:15:12 ◼   ► way to do it that is so incredibly usable and so obvious and it had this beautiful polish

00:15:18 ◼   ► on it where anybody who looked at an iPhone knew how to unlock it.

00:15:24 ◼   ► It had this beautiful shimmer going across it.

00:15:27 ◼   ► There was something about it that made it, it crossed this elegance threshold where it

00:15:30 ◼   ► became super, super usable.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Whereas you could imagine the completely inelegant approach would just be like a button on the

00:15:38 ◼   ► screen that you push, which is probably just as usable.

00:15:41 ◼   ► They just have a big button that says "unlock," but it wouldn't have quite that elegance.

00:15:45 ◼   ► And so that kind of a progression, maybe I'm just not in my mind, I don't know if it's

00:15:51 ◼   ► worth it anymore or I don't know even what that looks like to chase after in quite the

00:15:56 ◼   ► same way.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it's kind of, you know, one of the challenges if you're trying to make high

00:16:01 ◼   ► quality apps for Windows is that Windows has really never, and honestly this could be out

00:16:08 ◼   ► of date now because my Windows knowledge is 10 years old, but one of the problems back

00:16:11 ◼   ► in the day at least was that Microsoft did not really set a strong cohesive design example

00:16:18 ◼   ► themselves.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Like you were saying a few minutes ago how back in those days it was easier to tell like

00:16:23 ◼   ► this is an Apple app, this is what an Apple app looks like.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Well, Microsoft never really had that cohesive example design or the main design language

00:16:33 ◼   ► they used.

00:16:34 ◼   ► It was always kind of all over the place.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And that reflected in Windows apps where Windows apps would also be kind of all over the place

00:16:39 ◼   ► because Microsoft was not setting a strong example.

00:16:44 ◼   ► And I think right now we're at that point with Apple where Apple is no longer setting

00:16:48 ◼   ► a strong coherent example of what great app design is, partly because of different fads

00:16:54 ◼   ► of design coming in, you know, like everything now looks like Apple Music which I think is

00:16:58 ◼   ► a bad design actually.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And part of that is also just, as you said, like everything is, there's so much more now,

00:17:05 ◼   ► there's so many more devices, so many more types of apps, so many more extension points

00:17:09 ◼   ► and places where UI happens and the interactions are more complex, now we have drag and drop

00:17:13 ◼   ► and like there's so many different, it's such a massive world now.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And also Apple is moving in design directions that are a little bit questionable that Apple

00:17:24 ◼   ► is no longer setting a clear example.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And so we are more on our own with deciding what is good design and what isn't.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And how we prioritize usability versus design is much more in our hands now than our own

00:17:39 ◼   ► I think it used to be.

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00:18:25 ◼   ► So one thing that I will say is somewhat liberating out of this and I think this is a good place

00:18:28 ◼   ► to turn our discussion to is I've enjoyed recently being slightly freed from this feeling

00:18:35 ◼   ► of, in a weird way, guilt about not making super Apple app choices or whatever.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And instead, like I said, I love being focusing entirely on usability or obviousness, like

00:18:48 ◼   ► trying to make things work in as clean and as straightforward a way as possible, which

00:18:54 ◼   ► is in some ways, seems like a come down.

00:19:00 ◼   ► I'm not building apps with quite the same, there's a different goal, but in practical

00:19:06 ◼   ► use, it has been quite interesting to instead make apps that are super usable and have that

00:19:12 ◼   ► be my goal, that be my focus.

00:19:14 ◼   ► That if I was going to win, I'm going to win an app usability award.

00:19:17 ◼   ► That's the filter that I'm applying.

00:19:20 ◼   ► It isn't so much about what would make the app beautiful or what would make the app have

00:19:25 ◼   ► this super, super elegance or be really flashy.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Instead, it's like, no, I just want it to be really obvious.

00:19:32 ◼   ► In so many of my designs now, they're just super straightforward.

00:19:37 ◼   ► You're trying to make it as clean and obvious as can be, which in a weird way, I think,

00:19:42 ◼   ► can sometimes be somewhat refreshing now.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I feel like there was a period with the iOS 7 redesign and rescan where a lot of things

00:19:51 ◼   ► became less clear.

00:19:54 ◼   ► And I'm starting to, maybe this is the pendulum swinging back for myself, but it's like,

00:20:00 ◼   ► now all my buttons tend to have round recs around them again, as a simple example.

00:20:09 ◼   ► This sense of like, oh, you put a tint color on text and that lets people know it's a

00:20:13 ◼   ► button.

00:20:14 ◼   ► It's like, you know what also really works well to let people know it's a button?

00:20:18 ◼   ► Putting it in a circle or putting it in a round rec because everybody knows what that

00:20:23 ◼   ► means.

00:20:24 ◼   ► And if you see something that's in a round rec in an app, that's a button.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And so that's what I do now.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And those types of choices, which I don't think in my mind, that's not like I'm

00:20:38 ◼   ► going against the human interface guidelines in doing that.

00:20:40 ◼   ► That's not what an iOS 11 app should probably look like.

00:20:44 ◼   ► But at the same time, I think it works.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I think it's more usable.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And I'm increasingly okay with that as the tradeoff that I'm making.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And ultimately that's better for business.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Even if it will cost you certain opinions with an apple, we haven't been getting those

00:21:03 ◼   ► anyway.

00:21:04 ◼   ► What we have been getting is opinions and experiences from our users.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And our users, they want things and need things to be usable.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And if things are not usable enough, we will hear about it and it will cause problems for

00:21:16 ◼   ► us.

00:21:17 ◼   ► So that is what we need to really optimize for here.

00:21:20 ◼   ► And another thing to consider is the apple human interface guidelines and design, just

00:21:27 ◼   ► general design trends and things, we are in a shifting, changing environment here.

00:21:32 ◼   ► The computers, they started out for nerds, then they became more for everybody, and now

00:21:38 ◼   ► they're really, really for everybody.

00:21:41 ◼   ► We went from desktops to phones to phones and tablets.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Some people now only have tablets or phones, many people only have phones.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And now, even within the phone world, we are going from small screens to now much bigger

00:21:58 ◼   ► screens, now to screens where, like it used to be assumed that you could easily reach

00:22:02 ◼   ► every part of your screen.

00:22:03 ◼   ► That is no longer the case and hasn't been the case for a little while now.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And it's now getting even more extreme.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And we used to have screens that were about three by two, then they went 16 by nine, and

00:22:15 ◼   ► now they're going whatever the heck the aspect ratio is of the iPhone 10.

00:22:18 ◼   ► What is it, two to one maybe?

00:22:20 ◼   ► It's something like that.

00:22:21 ◼   ► So--

00:22:22 ◼   ► - It's very, very, very, very tall.

00:22:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very tall.

00:22:25 ◼   ► And so, like now we have these like, we're going back to the candy bar form factor again.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And so, throughout all these changes, Apple does update their design guidelines, and the

00:22:38 ◼   ► industry does find new ways to do things, but it lags behind the pace of the hardware

00:22:42 ◼   ► a lot of the time.

00:22:45 ◼   ► All these guidelines and documents, these are all changing, living, evolving things.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And sometimes, they haven't caught up to the reality of today.

00:22:54 ◼   ► So when the iPhone 10 launches next week, and when we're all finally able to buy one

00:22:58 ◼   ► in three years, we're gonna have this situation where we've been designing apps one way for

00:23:04 ◼   ► a while.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Even Apple has.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And even Apple, you know, the design guidelines Apple has laid out for the iPhone 10 are pretty

00:23:11 ◼   ► minimal.

00:23:12 ◼   ► They basically say, "Please don't hide the notch."

00:23:13 ◼   ► Like, that's about all the guidance we have.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Now we have a phone where what you can reach is very different than before.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And things you might accidentally hit are very different than before.

00:23:26 ◼   ► How you need to browse and lay things out is different.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Because of the design of the home indicator, we now have a very strong incentive to use

00:23:33 ◼   ► bottom toolbars and tab bars in pretty much every screen if possible, because it looks

00:23:38 ◼   ► really weird if you don't have one.

00:23:40 ◼   ► There's all sorts of these changes now, and I feel like we have to take a lot of this

00:23:45 ◼   ► into our own hands now and make decisions for what we find to actually be usable on

00:23:49 ◼   ► this device, because it's so different, even if it goes against what Apple has officially

00:23:54 ◼   ► said in their design guidelines.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Because their design guidelines might not have caught up yet.

00:23:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and we just need to explore and find out what that is, like, for ourselves.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Because we have to feel comfortable, I think, with whatever, even if Apple did give a guideline,

00:24:12 ◼   ► it's like, we have to feel comfortable with whatever we end up with.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And what I'm really curious with the iPhone X about, as a good concrete example, is clearly,

00:24:21 ◼   ► even with the naming of it, this is what Apple is sort of saying is the future of the phone.

00:24:27 ◼   ► We've gone through this period where there was a big phone and a little phone, and the

00:24:33 ◼   ► vast majority of my users were running the iPhone 6 or 7 sized screen.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And the plus was there, but I was able to treat it more as a second-class citizen.

00:24:48 ◼   ► It was not the main experience of my app, and so I didn't optimize for it in quite the

00:24:52 ◼   ► same way.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I needed a design that worked comfortably on a plus or on an SE, but worked best on

00:25:01 ◼   ► a 6 or a 7.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And whereas now, I think, who knows what will happen next year if we'll end up with a 10s

00:25:09 ◼   ► plus or who knows what, if there'll be a big version with this form factor.

00:25:13 ◼   ► But even if there is, they're clearly trying to drive the world to where this will become

00:25:18 ◼   ► the default.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And apps are almost certainly going to have to change as a result, that I'm going to need

00:25:25 ◼   ► to put controls in a different place and reoptimize things, because reaching the top of the phone

00:25:32 ◼   ► is this next level of it's going to be more awkward to do.

00:25:36 ◼   ► I'm going to need to make gestures are becoming a much more of a trickier thing, I think,

00:25:43 ◼   ► to do as a developer, because Swipe Up was already taken over by Control Center, and

00:25:52 ◼   ► we had Swipe Down for Notification Center.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Now we have three of those.

00:25:56 ◼   ► There's Swipe Left for Notification Center, Swipe Down for the right for Control Center,

00:26:01 ◼   ► Swipe Up from the bottom to switch apps, or Swipe Sideways along the bottom to switch

00:26:07 ◼   ► in between apps.

00:26:09 ◼   ► In general, a lot of basically anything other than a mid-screen edge swipe to go back in

00:26:14 ◼   ► a navigation bar, a navigation stack, is basically probably not a good idea now.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And we have to change a lot of, if gestures were something that you were doing before

00:26:24 ◼   ► because it felt elegant and kind of cool, it's probably not going to work out so well

00:26:29 ◼   ► these days.

00:26:30 ◼   ► But I'm facing a huge problem with that myself.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And in fact, for instance, one example of what I'm doing now is, since the beginning

00:26:38 ◼   ► of the iPhone, it's been kind of convention.

00:26:40 ◼   ► I don't know if The Hig actually said anything about this, but it's been convention that

00:26:45 ◼   ► if you were presenting some kind of temporary window for your app, some kind of detail pane

00:26:52 ◼   ► or settings screen or something like that, the convention has been to present it as a

00:26:55 ◼   ► full screen view controller that comes up from the bottom.

00:26:58 ◼   ► It slides it from the bottom and you dismiss it by a done button in the top bar in one

00:27:04 ◼   ► of the top corners.

00:27:05 ◼   ► And I had these all over Overcast.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I had them for settings, downloads, ad podcasts, stuff like that.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And on the iPad, they become the form sheets and everything, those kind of things.

00:27:13 ◼   ► In the build I'm playing with right now privately, I have all of those for the most part, so

00:27:19 ◼   ► most of those as navigation pushes.

00:27:22 ◼   ► So they just slide in from the right like every other screen.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And you dismiss them by swiping in from the left or hitting the back button in the corner.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And the main reason why is because it is really not a good idea to put the dismiss button

00:27:35 ◼   ► of anything now in the top corners of a phone that most people probably can't reach most

00:27:39 ◼   ► of the time.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So I want that edge swipe gesture to always work and always be the thing that people think

00:27:46 ◼   ► to do.

00:27:47 ◼   ► And the only way that happens is to have everything be a navigation stack.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And not everybody even knows the back gesture, but I figure at least I'll give them the

00:27:54 ◼   ► best chance of knowing it by using the standard one, you know?

00:27:57 ◼   ► And having everything slide in from the side instead of having things slide in from the

00:28:00 ◼   ► bottom.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And I still have my now playing screen coming from the bottom, which is a design problem,

00:28:04 ◼   ► but I haven't solved that one yet.

00:28:06 ◼   ► But this is one example of like, this has been a decade of precedent that was set, but

00:28:12 ◼   ► now I'm going against it because I think it actually makes it more usable with today's

00:28:15 ◼   ► new phones.

00:28:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I love too, like with the gesture that you're setting up, it's like it is so

00:28:22 ◼   ► natural and comfortable for a user to, like, they're so, I mean, every, like, say almost

00:28:29 ◼   ► every app that exists has that concept of like, of the navigation push.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And then you know how to get out.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Like, there's nothing un-obvious or clever about it.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Like any user who's used an iPhone for any amount of time is gonna know how to navigate

00:28:45 ◼   ► that.

00:28:46 ◼   ► And like that obviousness is just such a wonderful thing.

00:28:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's gonna look weird for people who are used to things sliding up from the

00:28:52 ◼   ► bottom for these kind of like modal pains.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And it feels a little bit weird at first, but like, I've been using it for about a day

00:28:58 ◼   ► like this and I think it's actually the right choice.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I think it actually feels, it looks a little bit odd at first, but it feels a lot better

00:29:05 ◼   ► and it flows a lot better and it's more usable.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And so I think kind of the theme of this episode is like, I should probably do that because

00:29:11 ◼   ► more usable is more important right now to me.

00:29:14 ◼   ► - Exactly, like I think the best, like the tagline for the episode is it's like, don't

00:29:18 ◼   ► worry about how it looks, worry about how it feels.

00:29:21 ◼   ► And that's probably a better place to end up.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:27 ◼   ► - Bye.

00:29:27 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]