Consistently Inconsistent
Apple was one of the first companies, if not the first, to develop a set of rules about how developers should design the graphical user interface of their software applications. In their current incarnation, the Human Interface Guidelines still remain true to the original blend of fundamental insights gained from usability research on the one hand, and Mac OS-specific graphics and layout guidelines on the other. Lately, though, Apple has been accused of not following their own design principles. The recent release of iTunes, unfortunately, is further proof that that is actually the case.
Let’s see which more obvious changes in UI design iTunes 5 has brought with it.
Sharp Bend Ahead
One of the first things you’ll notice after launching iTunes 5 for the first time are the sharp corners of the main window. If you look closely, they don’t actually look rounded, but appear as though they were hacked off, especially when contrasted to the original rounded Metal windows:
If the sharp corners aren’t the first thing you noticed, then it must be the Not-Really-Brushed-Brushed-Metal look of the window. Most of the vertical borders have gone completely, and what has been left of the once-Brushed-Metal window now features a gray gradient. While the gradient in iTunes looks a bit like the one in other apps featuring the combined titlebar/toolbar looks introduced with OS X 10.4 Tiger like Mail.app or the Preferences, iTunes’s is considerably darker. Have a look at the toolbars in the following image; also notice the differences in selection color and even the folder icons.
To complement the new color scheme and the more squarish window outline, the push buttons in that window were redesigned as well (iPhoto 5 above, iTunes 5 below):
What’s more, the whole Equalizer window is all gradient now:
Most of these changes appear to be purely cosmetic at first sight and, to be honest, I do like iTunes 5’s new looks better than the overly heavy Brushed Metal. Still, the changes introduce additional inconsistency into your average Mac OS X installation. And that’s bad news for programmers and users alike.
Coders Ain’t Graphics Artists
In response to drunkenbatman’s take on the UI changes in iTunes 5, Marko Karppinen nicely sums up what Apple’s frequent UI design modifications mean to smaller third-party developers:
Apple now ships applications with almost a dozen completely different human interface styles. And these styles tend to be exactly what the contemporary Mac customers expect: cooler, glitzier and trendier than the standard Aqua fare.
You see, when developing a Mac OS X application, designing the user interface is basically a drag-n-drop affair: you choose the UI elements from palettes, lay them out into a window, and hook them up to your code. With the overall choice of widgets in Apple’s development environment Xcode, there is hardly any need for someone developing a run-of-the-mill app to build any custom widgets.
However, now that users have come to expect the cool, shiny looks found in most of Apple’s own software — see the Dashboard widgets that ship with OS X Tiger for some more extreme examples — it may not do to just provide great functionality in an app. It must also look at least as cool as what Apple brings out to qualify. But functionality is what coders want to care about; not custom looks. As Marko says:
Indeed, most of the small Mac developers don’t have the resources to design and implement whole new looks and widget sets the way Apple does. Instead, we’re forced to play catchup.
Some of the earlier UI additions like the Brushed Metal look eventually did find their way into Xcode’s widget palettes, but with considerable delay. The proper way to add new looks, IMHO, would be to consolidate the changes first — so that there aren’t different implementations of a certain widget between, say, an iLife app and Mail –, deploy the changes in a major release of OS X, and offer the required widgets in Xcode straight away. Sure, that’s a naïve idea, but “proper”/”ideal” and “naïve” usually go together, anyway…
Be Easy on the User’s Eyes
When UI design becomes a problem for programmers, it will certainly also become a problem for users.
Consistency is one of the key characteristics of good UI design: a specific UI element should show the same behavior and provide the same functionality where-ever it’s being used — on a platform, mind you; not just within an app –, and vice versa. A “superb” example for breaking this rule is the PDF button in the lower left of the standard print dialog: it looks like a push button, so it should behave like one. Instead, it brings up a pop-up menu. If it does bring up a pop-up menu, though, why doesn’t it look like a pop-up menu? Bad, Apple, bad!
The message that Apple sends (again) with iTunes 5 is that programmers shouldn’t worry about the Human Interface Guidelines. In other words: everything goes. Can you imagine what “The Macintosh Desktop Experience” would be like if every developer comes up with their own looks — and behavior — for buttons, menus, windows, etc. in their apps?
When OS X was introduced, Apple added the Graphite Appearance because graphics designers were complaining that the UI was too colorful and interfered with their actual color work, courtesy of the Close/Minimize/Zoom traffic light in every window, and the strong blue hue used all over the place. If third-party developers do adopt the “everything goes” approach, that should provide enough eye-candy chaos on your screen that Graphite Appearance will be the least of your worries…
Every Rule Has Its (Creative) Exception
This musing wouldn’t be complete without pointing out that there is, after all, a class of software applications where breaking the rules of the overall user experience of a computer platform is not only OK, but makes a lot of sense: high-end creative apps like Logic or Shake.
When you use these kinds of software, you’re highly likely to spend your entire working day within one of these apps. Contrast that with using, say, the integration features of iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto to create a slideshow movie, where you’d be constantly switching between these three. Therefore, custom widgets in Logic, etc., are not much of a problem, as long as they’re being used consistently within that application. What’s more, a lot of these creative applications mimic the behavior of hardware machines that had a complex user interface already.
Take, for example, a mixing console: the design and layout of a channel strip with its controls for volume, panorama, EQ, effect buses, etc. has been proven for decades, so it makes sense to build a software user interface that follows the same ideas and concepts, so that someone switching from hardware to software, or back, can build on the knowledge in using a mixing console that they already have. Due to the very size of that mixer console and the sheer number of controls, using smaller, custom widgets helps put more widgets into a smaller space, and may also help group them in a more logical way. Finally, there are some control elements that simply scream for a custom approach, like the ball-in-dish panning controller for surround mixes.
Consistency Is Good.
High-end creative software is the exception to the rule, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that GarageBand also sports its very own look-and-feel, considering that the programmers who built GarageBand are the ones who have been working on Logic long before Apple acquired what was once known as Emagic.
Authors of software, however, that is just part of the set of tools that you use daily — like your web browser, email app, and, yes, iTunes — should consider user interface consistency as a value in its own right. Yup, eye candy’s nice; but there’s more to a great UI than good looks. Let’s hope that the Apple engineers re-discover that concept, too.
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