Apple minimalist design examples: Over the weekend I finally got around to upgrading my iPhone 3G to the new iPhone operating system -- iOS 4, specifically iOS 4.01. I expected the iOS 4 to be slower than the iPhone 3.x operating system I was running, but to my pleasant surprise, it actually seems faster.
Another real surprise was the format of the iOS "unified inbox" in the iPhone Mail application. I knew there was a unified inbox in iOS 4, so that wasn't a surprise, but how they implemented it is a surprise. Specifically, the surprise is that when you look at your iOS 4 unified inbox, there's no indicator to show what mailbox each message is in.
For instance, I currently have two email accounts, a Yahoo account and a Gmail account, but when I look in my unified inbox, there's no indicator to show that a given message came into my Yahoo account or my Gmail account. That seemed weird, I thought, can you really get away without showing where each message came from?
Apple minimalist design - The iPhone iOS 4 unified inbox layout
Pardon my bad formatting -- I don't feel like creating a graphic here today -- but in the iOS unified inbox summary view I expected to see a layout like this:
Gmail, *, Message Subject, Date/Time Yahoo, -, Message Subject, Date/Time
(Where the '*' or '-' would actually be a small image to show whether a message was new, or had already been read.)
But, to my surprise, what I saw instead was this:
*, Message Subject, Date/Time -, Message Subject, Date/Time
with no indicator of which mailbox the message was in.
The Apple design minimalism approach
I suspect this is another example of the Apple design minimalism approach. I'll guess that the design process worked like this:
- The original designer either showed the mailbox in their design or not. Tight on space, I'll guess they left it out;
- There was a group discussion about whether it should be included;
- Someone with the minimalist design mindset said "Leave it out until it's proven that it's needed";
- During testing people realized they didn't need it, so it was left out.
Personally, I love the minimalist approach: If you're not sure if something is needed, leave it out until it's proven that it's needed.
The anti-minimalism approach
As a means of contrast, here's how 98% of my former customers worked:
Customer: "Al, you left out the Gmail and Yahoo Mail column in the unified inbox."
Me: "I thought about that, and I don't think it's needed. I made some sketches ..."
Customer: "Yes it is needed. We can't possibly go into testing without it! In fact, there are some other columns I want to add here ..."
Scouts honor, I've worked with hundreds of customers, and that's how 98% of them think -- more is better, and in fact, more is necessary.
Whether you're a consultant or a regular employee, it takes a strong designer to fight back here and say, "Please, I'm the designer, and you're the business person. Let me do what I do, I think I'm right here."
Apple minimalist design - Summary
I'll try to keep digging up more examples of Apple minimalist design, but if you have an iPhone, take a few minutes to look at their unified inbox, and imagine the discussions they went through about the columns that needed to be seen there.
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