What are some confusing design rules in iOS?

Although iOS's experience design is generally recognized to be good, most designers not only use iPhone themselves, but also use iPhone as a template for mobile design.

But after working in app design for so long, I found that some of iOS’ design specifications are not that easy to use.

First of all, although the iPhone is of good quality, its high price directly limits the number of people who buy it.

If the population coverage rate cannot be increased, user habits will certainly not be cultivated. Therefore, some interactive forms unique to iOS cannot be spread as widely as those on Android phones.

If you abandon Android users in order to cater to iPhone users when designing a product, it is equivalent to abandoning more than 90% of users, which is impossible.

PS Unless your boss only recognizes iPhones…

Another thing is that many of iOS’ design specifications are confusing. Not only are the design documents general, but the native interfaces themselves are not unified.

As a result, even if designers want to follow iOS specifications, they don’t know what to do and end up chasing after nothing.

Take another look at the design specifications of Material Design next door. They are really amazing. They have everything you need, and even the dimensions are clearly marked...

Before I knew it, I was using the iPhone prototype to build Android products.

Today I want to list a few iOS design specifications that are difficult to use even though I have been designing apps with iPhone-sized interfaces for a long time.

Title bar text button

Whether it is Material Design or iOS, it has become a common practice to put buttons in the upper right corner of the title bar.

But the difference is that Material Design advocates the use of pure icon buttons, while iOS prefers to use text buttons.

Compared to text buttons, icon buttons are definitely better looking, so in fact most apps often learn from Material Design and use icon buttons.

After comparing various combinations, I found that both icons and text are acceptable, but don't mix images and text.

And you can only put one text button. Putting two would be too crowded, after all, the number of words in the title is uncertain. But who can guarantee that a page will only need one button forever and won't increase?

So in the end, the design specifications unknowingly abandoned the text button...

Well, Material Design’s specifications are simple. Look how convenient it is:

Slide-out menu

I remember that this design was quite amazing when it first came out. But now it seems to be quite tasteless...

While it can hide the menu elegantly, it is quite limited:

• Swiping left or right on many pages will trigger the effect of returning or switching tabs, which conflicts with this menu.
• Only icons can be placed, and the text width cannot be controlled.
• This kind of menu can only hold three or four items at most, and cannot be expanded or restricted too much.
• You will find that this is not needed and that is not suitable... In the end, you will just give up this item in the design specifications.

Moreover, a large number of users have not formed the habit of operating the function at all, and they may not be able to discover the interaction after it is added.

Icon size

iOS design sizing has always been difficult to understand, especially icons.

Most design specifications, such as Material Design, generally fix icons in a square box and then draw the icon inside.

But iOS has its own way of calculating the size of icons based on the actual space occupied by the graphics. And for the sake of visual balance, it clearly stipulates the sizes of icons of different shapes.

Not only that, when placing icons on the interface, they are actually divided into regular and compact sizes.

Add to that the triple and double screens, and it turns out that a mere Tab Bar can come in so many different sizes!

So what is this Tab Bar? That’s right, it’s the very simple bottom navigation below.

If you don’t believe it, you can go to the official website: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/bars/tab-bars/

Seeing this size specification makes me feel terrible... Can anyone really design according to this specification?

My observation is that most designers, whether at home or abroad, don’t care about the weird sizes of iOS and almost all use one unified frame size.

Summarize

The above are some experiences I have summed up through personal and team work. I wonder if they are the same as yours?

If you have different opinions, welcome to discuss~

Whether you are a graduate or changing jobs, you need to practice more to prepare a good portfolio. The "Experience Design Learning Club" has planned a full year plan, providing members with a complete project training camp and various reading check-ins, and there are also several senior interaction/visual designer guests from major companies to help.