iPhone Tab Bar Lessons

Over the last couple of years, the iPhone has greatly popularized the tab bar navigational model for mobile handsets. Apple has put together a design rationale for the tab bar in their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) along with lots and lots of other information — they do however leave some question unanswered. Having worked with interaction and graphical design for iPhone applications during the last couple of years I’ve managed to pick up some lessons the hard way, and in this post I would like to share my thoughts on a couple of do’s and don’ts.

Petter Silfver compares different tab bar designs from popular iPhone apps and gives some insight into Apple’s subtle design decisions that most of us won’t even notice, but are important to build a consistent and natural experience on iOS. Such as colors and hues in the tab bar, the ideal number of tabs, or the problems with a “More” tab that distracts users and hides important functionalities of an app that should be discovered naturally.

If you’re an iOS geek like me, a designer, or simply interested in knowing more about this particular aspect of Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, check out the post here. It’s full of details, and it’ll make you re-consider the implementation of Instagram’s Camera button.

Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?

When Apple introduced the iPad, along with it came a set of Human Interface Guidelines.

This idea is essentially doubling down on skeuomorphic realism — a derivative device containing features from an analog ancestor for purely aesthetic or emotional reasons.

But how good is that advice, generally? This is clearly a call for more than just the polished aesthetic details and refinements a designer takes pride in. This is about advancing literalist design styles and skeuomorphics on the grounds that it improves usability through a natural understanding of how an app works. Apple rightly resisted this temptation in many cases, but the Notes and Calendar apps are a different story. Apple combined analog design with modern UI patterns at the expense of affordance. My real life, analog paper doesn’t scroll. Are we now to expect its digital replication should?

A very few developers seem to understand that you don’t have to necessarily imitate real life objects to create a successful and enjoyable application. [via Beautiful Pixels]