Wednesday, June 28, 2017

iOS 11 Control Center

Benjamin Mayo:

Each individual platter on the screen looks decent; some of the icons even animate in response to state changes for a nice touch of whimsy. Holistically, the layout is messy.

[…]

iOS 10 brainwashed me into thinking that one additional swipe to change page was a reasonable price to pay. I feel silly now for thinking that was acceptable. With a specific goal of access to quick actions, any Control Centre design that involves fewer intermediary interactions has to be superior.

It isn’t just about removing the need to swipe, the mental assessment of the current state of Control Centre also falls away. Your brain can rely on the button always being there. As soon as you finish swiping up, your finger can instantly start moving to the learned position of the Play/Pause button (for example).

The iOS 10 design drives me crazy. It is seemingly always on the wrong page, and with no discernible benefit over the more crowded single-page layout. The iOS 11 layout looks kind of funny but should work much better.

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I thought the iOS 10 version was a strange change when it appeared, but I love it. I almost never interact with those audio controls, so never having to see them made Control Center smaller, cleaner and more pleasant to use for me. (Frankly, the only things in Control Center I do use are (occasionally) the Airplane Mode and Wifi toggles on the top row and (daily) the apps on the bottom row—if I could get rid of everything else, I'd be very happy.) OTOH, my father somehow managed to swipe to the audio controls page and didn't know what happened, so I know that the multi-page setup had a number of drawbacks. I'll be sad to see everything crammed back on a single page in iOS 11, though.

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