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Under the Radar

103: Usability-First Design

 

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]