Month: October 2017

11 is the new 7: iOS designers, what is it with the motion fetish? Please stop making us motion sick

In my household, iOS 7 was sickening — literally. When it came out with its flashy parallax home screen and (IMO too often gratuitous) motion effects, my wife was one of the many people it immediately made motion-sick. After 30 years of loyally loving Apple products, my wife almost had to dump her iPhone. It was so bad that it’s the only time in my life we’ve written an email directly to the CEO of a company; we didn’t expect Tim Cook to reply, but we hope it helped raise awareness, and fortunately (likely not because of us, even slightly, but very happily), Settings > Accessibility > Reduce Motion came long just in time, and iOS was usable again.

Now iOS 11 has done it again. Just unlocking the phone is motion sickness-inducing because the lock screen now flies upward out of the way on every unlock, even if you have Settings > Accessibility > Reduce Motion enabled. (What happened to “No means no”?) And there appears to be more motion again around the lock and home screens and when just opening and switching the built-in apps, so now my wife is feeling ill again in the first 10 seconds of every phone session since she upgraded, and we’re having Android conversations again. And we don’t want Android. Really.

iOS is supposed to be the most usable phone OS, but you can’t use something if you can’t look at it.

 

Open letter to Apple designers:

We love your work because you love usability, and especially in recent years you love accessibility. Please, get back to those roots.

What is it with all the motion lately? You are known for minimalism, and that “design is how it works.” Design is not about “how it looks” eye candy — gratuitous motion is not a feature, yet it seems that in recent releases you have had a temptation to go for “cool” effects that do not improve usability. Please resist. I hope we can all agree that parallax on the home screen has insignificant effect on improving usability; I turned it off as soon as I could even though I’m not motion sickness-prone (seriously, this aspect of iOS reminds me unflatteringly of Clippy bouncing around). And yes, I realize that you likely made the iOS 11 lock screen swerve careen glide up on unlock in order to teach that “hey look! see? it lives up there just off the top of the screen” so that we remember that we can now pull it down anytime to get it back — yes, we know, we learned it once the first time, could we please now not have to live with that animation forever? Please stop with the careening screen elements. You know what Nancy Reagan would say about the animations: Just Say No.

Minimal-change proposed resolution: Please, just make all the new motion effects, including the fly-away lock screen, respect Settings > Accessibility > Reduce Motion. (Translation: “No means no.” We said No already. Please respect it.) Or give us a new way to turn it off. Please.

We want to keep using iOS, but we can’t use it if we can’t look at it. We don’t want to have to switch to Android to get a phone we can use. Don’t let Android win on usability, which is supposed to be your home turf — and don’t let Android win on accessibility, which is so important these days and which I know is important to you.

Thank you for your consideration and help.

 

If you know of a workaround that can disable these awful motion effects, please mention it in the comments. (But please don’t suggest jailbreaking, which isn’t an option for us because that would be license-violating and security-compromising.)