In my years of being an iOS developer and user, I’ve seen a lot of apps that try to come up with their own ways of doing navigation that don’t follow Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines. Over this time, Apple has changed their guidelines, but usually don’t adopt some of the concepts that apps have inflicted on us.
I do most of my news reading on my iPad (and sometimes on my iPhone), so I’ve taken a look at the different news apps. Some people pan Apple’s News, however it is one of the easiest to use, has consistent navigation, and has a number of hidden features that make it convenient to use. For example, you can scroll up and down using the arrow keys on an iPad Pro keyboard, scroll page by page using option and the arrow keys and navigate back from an article using command and the left arrow key.
Using News, I’m able to take care of my tech, national and world news craving. So that leaves local news. The local news apps seem to shun standard navigation. One app uses an X in the upper which seems more cutesy than useful. If you’re browsing away with an iPad on a stand, you get used to swiping to the right to go back or at worst, tapping the back arrow.
This is pretty annoying; using the same app on the iPhone is worse because it prevents one handed news browsing. You have to reach up and hit the X button. The X for close is very much a desktop metaphor.
If we take a look at another news app, they at least kept the back button in the upper left, but because they want to show other articles, you can’t swipe right to go back.
I keep asking myself if the designers and developers use these apps or have done user studies (it’s hard for me to use a lot of apps I’ve worked on because they don’t apply to me, especially enterprise apps). Just watching a user use the app gives huge insight into what can be improved. One of the best experiences I had in the last year was watching someone use one of my apps; this was an enterprise app and thing that I thought were obvious weren’t obvious to the user.
By sticking to standard design paradigms as well as the Apple Human Interface Guidelines reduces user frustration, decreases training time (especially in enterprise apps) and increase the time that people use the apps.
For me, and this has been true since the early Mac days, the most important human interface guideline is predictability based on prior use. I remember talking with Bill Atkinson about this in the HyperCard days and while he agreed with me, he made the important point that it’s a balance because in order to try new things, we have to push that comfort zone a bit. Not too far too fast, but we do have to enlarge it to accommodate new things.
But, the basic stuff like copy and paste and the clipboard should be standard… and at times no matter how many times I copy something to the clipboard, it’s not there.
Sigh.
There is definitely a balance in trying new things vs using what is predictable. However, just breaking the guidelines for no reason makes it difficult to use apps. Navigation is something that I think should only be touched with good reasons and good testing. The swipe right to go back is new in a recent OS version and I’m sure there was some push back to that, but it is now second nature to use it.