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   Former Apple Design Gurus Criticize Apple's Current Designs

   Adam C. Engst

   Back in the days before iOS, Apple's Human Interface Guidelines,
   colloquially known among developers as 'the HIG,' were gospel. The HIG,
   created by Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini in 1978, outlined how Macintosh
   applications should look to an extent, but was more about how they
   worked, specifically, how users would interact with the apps. Notably,
   it promoted key principles that had emerged from the nascent
   human-computer interaction (HCI) community such as discoverability (no
   feature should be hidden), feedback (which makes it clear what has
   happened after you perform an action), and recovery (the capability to
   undo any action). Even more specifically, the HIG relied on the work
   done by Don Norman and his students at the University of California,
   San Diego. Norman would later go on to join Tognazzini at Apple as
   well.

   Although this resulted in many Mac applications sporting highly similar
   interfaces, there were exceptions, notably [1]Kai's Power Tools, which
   wouldn't look out of place on an iPad today. Regardless, for the most
   part, interface similarity was a good thing, since it meant that
   lessons learned in one app would carry over to others ' for instance,
   the File menu always contains common commands like New, Save, and Quit.

   Now, Norman and Tognazzini, two of the people in part responsible for
   Apple's early interface design leadership, have collaborated on [2]a
   criticism of Apple's current design trends, both as promulgated in
   Apple's current Human Interface Guidelines for [3]OS X and [4]iOS and
   as evidenced in the company's own apps. They say, 'although the
   products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has
   come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good
   design.' Published in Fast Company, their article is well worth reading
   for anyone who has struggled with interface discoverability problems
   and how aesthetics so often trump usability in today's apps. (Norman
   and Tognazzini are currently both principals, along with Jakob Nielsen,
   in the user experience firm [5]Nielsen Norman Group.)

   The article is a damning indictment, coming as it does from some of the
   leading voices in the user experience field, and frankly, it has the
   best chance of any criticism of being heard at Apple. (That said, these
   criticisms aren't new ' back in 2010, Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen
   wrote a [6]more general criticism of gestural interfaces in the ACM CHI
   magazine Interactions.) The problem is similar to that of the emperor's
   new clothes ' although many in the Apple community have pointed out
   interface problems in Apple's current software (cough iTunes cough),
   the impression one gets is that Apple's executives can't hear any
   criticism because of the continual sound of money rolling in. Alas,
   usability is no more defined by corporate profits now than it was in
   the 1990s when Microsoft dominated the computer industry.

   These interface problems aren't just a matter of academic complaint '
   in writing and editing TidBITS articles and Take Control books for
   everyday users, we constantly run across tasks in Apple apps that are
   difficult to document because they're dependent both on multiple levels
   of context and visual controls that have no names ' without an
   interface vocabulary, communication about interfaces is limited to
   pointing and monosyllabic grunts: 'Click there!' and 'Tap that!' And
   when helping less-technical friends and relatives solve problems, we're
   increasingly resorting to 'Let me fix it,' because we dread trying to
   walk someone through a series of steps over the phone.

   The main issue with this particular Fast Company article is that the
   authors don't give many specific solutions to the problems they
   identify. That would seem relatively easy with something like iTunes on
   a large-screen Mac, where desktop software conventions could be used to
   rescue the app from its interface morass. But with the gestural iOS,
   and particularly on small screen devices like the iPhone, I worry that
   some of these interface goals may be nearly impossible to achieve. For
   those looking for such advice, Tognazzini does offer more examples in
   his 2014 Web article '[7]First Principles of Interaction Design.'

   Regardless, if you're interested in the field of human-computer
   interaction, and in the usability of the interfaces we all rely on
   every day, the various articles linked here are useful food for
   thought.

References

   1. http://www.mprove.de/script/99/kai/
   2. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name
   3. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/
   4. https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/
   5. http://www.nngroup.com/
   6. http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/gestural_interfaces_a_step_backwards_in_usability_6.html
   7. http://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/

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