Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design Friday, 7 January 2011 The new is somewhat polarizing, what with its almost entirely custom UI. I used to have a fervor for uniform consistency in Mac UI design. A perusal through the early DF archives will show that. But the HIG is dead. It died long ago. And it was Apple that killed it.
In Mac OS 9 (and prior), no one’s apps were more uniformly consistent to the HIG standards than Apple’s own. In Mac OS X, Apple began experimenting — especially in their flagship apps.
Whether this change has been for better or for worse is certainly debatable, but there can be no debate that the mores of Mac UI designers have changed. Apple sets the tone, for better or for worse. Always has, always will.
(No one but Apple could have made Brushed Metal popular.) offers a detailed and thoughtful critique of the Mac App Store titlebar/toolbar and the new Twitter for Mac — but it’s a critique from the perspective of a critic who still believes in HIG-rooted uniformity. I spent a few minutes there trying to think of a way to rewrite the preceding sentence without that but.
That but sounds dismissive, like I’m using it to say that his criticism, no matter how accurate, can be dismissed, because he still subscribes to a set of standards from a bygone era. That’s not why I used that but, though. (Or, to be honest, at least not only why.) It’s simply that when you — and if you haven’t already, you should as soon as you finish this sentence — it’s worth keeping in mind which of his criticisms fall under “this is non-standard” and which fall under “this isn’t good design”. There’s a conservative/liberal sort of fork in UI design, in the sense of traditional/non-traditional. The conservatives see non-standard custom UI elements as wrong.
Liberals see an app built using nothing other than standard system UI elements as boring, old-fashioned, stodgy. “ This is non-standard” criticisms will thus generate one of two responses. “Agreed, that’s wrong” say the conservatives. “So what?” say the liberals.
Swiftybeaver. Ui Design For Mac Reviews
“This isn’t good design” criticisms, however, if accurate, are the sort of thing most designers ought to agree with, regardless of their position on the conservative/liberal UI design spectrum. The problem is that once you see that a certain piece of UI criticism is coming from someone at a distant position from yours on the conservative/liberal design spectrum, there’s a natural tendency to close your mind and discount everything they say. To be clear, here’s the app we’re talking about: No title bar. Completely custom close/minimize/zoom buttons (which ignore your system-wide settings for color; no red/yellow/green for you). You drag the window using that black sidebar.
It’s all set in Helvetica (like iOS apps), not Lucida Grande (like Mac apps). But let’s also be clear about where the app is coming from: Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for Mac: Brichter, now a full-time employee of Twitter, is still the app’s primary developer. It’s been renamed from “Tweetie” to “Twitter”, but the version number has gone to 2.0 because what we have today is the next version of the same app. You can see it in the screenshots. Same direction, just further out there. Morgan’s complaints about the Mac App Store app and his initial remarks about Twitter are of the conservative variety: non-standard windows and UI elements are wrong.
But then there’s this: Clicking on the different tabs in the main window (tweets, lists, mentions, etc.) reveals the corresponding content with a “slide out” animation. Upon opening the application, you are presented with your timeline.
Click the “@” and your mentions slide out on top of the timeline. Click the timeline again, and you would expect perhaps for the mentions to slide back in, revealing your timeline, but instead your timeline slides out on top of your mentions. This endless sliding out creates a sensation of “stacking” UI views infinitely on top of each other, when in fact you are merely switching between six different tab views.
That’s quite astute, and pinpoints something I found mildly unsettling about the new Twitter for Mac but couldn’t put my finger on. IOS uses these sliding animations to give you a sense of place. The canonical example is Mail on the iPhone. It’s a four-column design: accounts, mailboxes, message list, message contents.
You slide left to right, visually, as you navigate between columns. You can’t see more than one column at a time, but the animations help give you a sense of where you are. It’s because of the animation that Apple could make a four-column layout with a screen that was only 320 pixels wide.
Twitter for iPhone follows this model to a T: accounts, tweets, tweet details — arranged left to right, with animation as you move between them. In today’s new Twitter for Mac, though, the sliding animations when you switch between tabs add nothing contextually.
They’re not merely harmless eye candy, either. As Morgan notes, these animations create a false sense of stacking where no stack exists. They’re technically excellent, but conceptually misleading.
That’s the sort of criticism that should register regardless of one’s position on the standard-vs.-custom UI design spectrum. As for where things are going, I think this new Twitter for Mac and the iPad-esque Mac App Store app are it. Morgan closes with a reference to yours truly: Gruber once said (and for the life of me I can’t find the quote) that the difference between the Mac OS and iOS is that you don’t need to be a designer to make a good-looking Mac app: Apple provides you the assets you need; if you adhere to common sense and the HIG, you will create a good-looking (if not unique) application. On the iOS, all the best apps have had enormous amounts of design effort invested in them. As the App Store (and OS X 10.7) blur the lines between iOS and Mac OS, I fear we may lose this distinction as well. Whether you think this is a good thing or not, there’s no use fearing it. Apple’s passion for UI uniformity went away with the six-color logo.
Change is inevitable. Individuality is the new norm. Mac UI design is only just starting to take influence from iOS UI design. What Brichter has done, I believe, is more or less — a replacement for AppKit based on Core Animation. The old Tweetie for Mac used quite a bit of animation, and it looks good. But the new Twitter for Mac uses animation far more extensively, and the animation has quite a different feel to it. It’s far more iOS-like, and that is a strong complement.
Try flipping around the app with the Shift key held down, to watch them in slow motion. They’re exquisite. The animations in Tweetie for Mac 1.2 make conceptual sense. In the sidebar, the tabs are stacked top-to-bottom: timeline, replies, DMs. As you switch between these tabs, the content views slide in not from the left or right, but from the top or bottom, corresponding to the relative positions in the sidebar of the tab you’re switching from to the one you’re switching to.
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Since they’re maintained by the platform developers, they’re generally always up-to-date and thorough. For example, Apple’s iOS UI kit includes blank screen dimensions for a range of devices, examples of the iOS keyboard, navigation elements like the ribbon at the top of the screen, the iOS toggle buttons, and more.
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One torrent-app for Mac that also has utilized the same 'look' as uTorrent is BitRocket. An app that was deeply flawed and kinda looked like Xtorrent's ugly brother. Still you can't help to see similarities between uTorrent and BitRocket UI-wise. So maybe that can be a source of inspiration? At least in some way, but BitRocket is probably a bit to 'Tiger' and a bit less 'Leopard' if you know what I mean. Oh, and the app is rather dead now, but still. Maybe someone finds something they like with it's UI: Right click and Open Image in New Tab to view bigger.
Does everything need to be available in the main window? What are people's thoughts of uT/Mac actually using the multiple window layout?? Transmission has a 'panel' for torrent properties ('Inspector' it calls it), and the default Preferences window is already implemented. There is a generic Message Log right now, but it's useless. Is there a push for more or less information available within the client? There are a number of events pushed to Console.app.
Should uT's 'Logger' tab be pushed into the Message window, or added to the familiar tabbed-view. What information should be at a glance in each of the corners? While I'm not a huge fan of the 'status bar' being relegated to the sidebar, I understand the logic for some. While I understand and appreciate all this constructive discussion about icons and colors and what I term 'eye candy' (not out of disrespect, especially given the display-oriented userbase). I must reiterate my STRONG desire to let the graphic designers in-charge do their work.
Users cannot affect the PRESENTATION of information. So please concentrate on this facet of design.
The need to have a functional 'default' is of-course warranted, but I can almost guarantee I will be skinning buttons/etc. As I expect many others will also. Due to the open nature of.app's though it will still be more involved than in Windows, it's still only a part, a smaller part IMO as I stress again, than actually having features and processes in-place in uT/Mac which will lead to everyone enjoying it more and more. @DSchau I agree with most of your points like the shadow being too hard etc, but as I said, it was done quickly and I didn't put much effort into polishing it. This was meant more to give a general idea how things could be presented.
Like how the speeds are no longer in the bottom bar etc. The reason I've used the handle for the detail panel was simply because the developers made it resizable in the app (of course there's a reason for that too.) For just watching 'General' info it's fine the way it is, but when you switch to Files or Peers, you need more space (for torrents with several files).
Which actually highlights a problem with this implementation; the Files section isn't nested, so you'll end up with a very long list of files. Pretty hard to manage, at least very tedious. It's also quite annoying to have to resize the detail panel every time you switch tab. Since the General info tab only takes up a fragment of the Files tab of a large torrent file. The reason the toolbar is so 'empty' is as I said, just personal preference. I don't use 'open' buttons, and feel they aren't important.
However, the controls for starting and stopping torrents should of course be visually connected to what they control. That's why there's nothing over the sidebar, and I guess that's why it looks a little empty. @osirisX Looks good. However the detail panel lacks a 'handle'. Not necessarily the one I used in my image, but I think some visual hint is needed. Not sure how I feel about the network lights, but at least they doesn't look so misplaced anymore. The tabs are misplaced however, that's just a big no.
Overall it looks good though. @thelittlefire I don't see anyone preventing the developers from doing their job, I don't really understand what you're trying to say. But then again, maybe I'm a bit dense. I must disagree with both mockup-proposed differences to the Downloaded/Available bars. The eye-candy mustn't overweight functionality. UT's bars are ingenious because they show availability and downloaded data not only in numbers and percentages, they show exactly which pieces are missing and what is the availability of each piece. This may not seem such an important feature to some of you, especially if you download torrents that contain only a few files, maybe just one.
But if you want to download multiple file torrents, maybe several series of a TV show, and maybe you just want a few of the series in the torrent file, this gives you the best overview of what you are actually downloading. I found it useful, at least.
Otherwise, nice efforts! PHghost I agree, the most important thing is functionality. Ive been using Azeureus, which even though it's ugly has a UI that gives much more information and control than any other mac bittorrent client.
And I would be perfectly happy to stick with it, if it weren't such a fucking resource hog. Back when the beta signup was first addded, i made a post saying the things most important to me are: 1. The ability to set the priority on individual files and only download the files I want; 2. The ability to adjust the maximum upload and download speed on a per torrent basis. A UI that gives much detailed information in as the Pc version including: a.
A file view that gives progress bars that indicate what pieces in what files have been download ( not just the percent). A peer view that shows what pieices are available from each peer in a large easy to read format (not a little square, like xtorrent or transmission), and a shows what the upload and download speed is for each peer.
A piece view that shows what blocks are being downloaded for each pieces, the speed, and peer contributing it. A transfer view that gives us the elapsed time, time remaining, download speed, download limit, upload speed, upload,limit, seeds in swarm, contected seeds, peers in swarm, contected leechers, and share ratio. If all that can be made to look good and mac-like, that would be great, but to sacrifice anything, to make it look better is unacceptable.
In our previous case study we told you the story of UI and UX design for describing the design process in detail and supporting it with the visual variants of different stages. Today we want to continue with unveiling logo design process. Task Design of a logo for the logging platform uniting the efforts of Swift and Objective-C developers, UX designers, app analytics experts, and product owners. Tools Pencil sketching, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects Process As we mentioned in the case study on UI and UX design, is a native Mac application presenting the integrated logging platform for Apple’s Swift programming language. It is aiming at developers as its basic target audience.
The product supports all the devices belonging to Apple device family. Design practice of previous projects accomplished by studio designers, such as or, proved that tight interconnection of design solutions on branding and user interface for the same product features higher level of efficiency. Both mentioned cases showed that in brand positioning and promotion, using the concept of strong corporate style and applying the elements of branding such as logo, lettering and illustrations consistently was the effective strategy. It is also important to remember that user interface of an application or a website is not just a sort of static or moving images — it is the field of active interaction. Interaction with the product via the interface enhances much higher memorability potential of brand elements as well as general stylistic concept. Following this approach for SwiftyBeaver project, user interface designer Ludmila Shevchenko and logo designer Arthur Avakyan worked in tight collaboration to get the design solutions that will effectively support each other.
Naturally, the initial stage of general concept search tried the variants of mascot. As the name of the product includes “Beaver”, in the first sketching set the designer presented variants of this animal as a key mascot. There was also a variant of the original presentation of “S” and “B” as two basic letters of the product name.
In addition, this first set included a bit more abstract version based on the set of lines featuring the movement of beaver’s tail. The variant based on lines was accepted as the basic concept practically at once.
Although the mascots can be a powerful tool of branding, this time the strategy was different. The target audience, as well as the nature of the product, is quite specific so the more abstract version of the logo could show more flexibility in its expressive potential. Founder and CEO of SwiftyBeaver was very attentive to details and open for discussions. He decided upon the variant with stripes because it made a logo meaningful as logs the app is based on like the logs of trees are stripes so it presented a strong visual metaphor.
Additionally, he liked the colored stripes of famous 70s and 80s logos so he wanted to have a logo that would look vintage and at the same time super modern. So, this direction was developed further. Moreover, this version got closer to the general visual design of the user interface for the application. As it was described in the, UI design widely used color lines as markers for categories of log entries and the chosen concept of logo provided strong connection of UI design and branding. Therefore, the next stage of the design process of elaborate and thorough work on the slightest nuances. Different versions of curves and length of the lines were tried and discussed in search of the most harmonic variant. The color palette also echoed the colors chosen for UI design and supported them with smooth gradients.
So, the user interface of the platform, landing page and logo were conjoint via colored elements. The original version of the logo was colorful, but the monochromatic version was also accomplished and tested to provide branding solutions with a high level of flexibility. Another issue to consider was the choice of font for company name lettering featured with the logo image. Several options that could work effectively with the logo and correspond with the nature and general design of the product were offered and discussed. The set of potential variants included diverse variants from strict and straight to smooth and curvy. Finally, the font was chosen to provide a good combination with the fonts of the app interface. The client chose that particular font because found it appropriately curved and perfectly matching the curves in the logo.
The approved variant of the logo image and lettering was also supplied with the design of the. It was accomplished with the help of Tubik Studio motion designer Kirill. The designer and the client took a considerable amount of time and discussion optimizing the physics of the ball to look and feel as natural as possible. And one more important task to move on with was the design of an. To prove its efficiency, designers tested it on different devices and in different sizes to ensure that it didn’t lose its recognizability or didn’t get dirty in a smaller size. Logo design for SwiftyBeaver was one more case proving that there are no unimportant details in branding. It was one more project full of elaborate sketching, thorough work on the slightest hues and gradients, numerous variants with different length, width and placement of the elements to make a catchy, harmonic and stylish logo that will represent the nature of its product.
Useful Case Studies For those, who are interested to see more practical case studies with creative flows for the logo and identity design, here is the set of them. Welcome to see designs by Tubik Studio on and Welcome to read or download our.
Summary: After asking a bunch of designers why they felt the Mac was the platform of choice in the design industry, I was able to identify several common points of feedback. The Mac has a history dating back to the 80’s where it classically performed as the better design tool. It has been known to render fonts better. It’s had a superior user experience for years. And finally, it’s consistent, well-made, and good looking. But perhaps most important of all, Mac and Windows users alike all agreed that today, there isn’t much of a difference. It’s all come down to a matter of personal preference.
We see them everywhere. Studios, universities, tech companies. Being used by visual designers, illustrators, UX designers. No matter where you go and no matter what kind of design you practice, Macs are commonly heralded as the tool of choice.
But why is that? What exactly has afforded the Mac this coveted title? I set out to find the answers to those questions by directly asking a bunch of designers why they think the Mac has been positioned as the superior tool. What I ended up with was a mix of hilarious, honest, and insightful commentary. Legacy and Tradition This was the first and most common answer that I received. It all started in the 1980’s. The race to develop a usable personal computer was under way and by 1984, Apple answered the call with the first Macintosh, which was accompanied by one of the in history.
The Macintosh sold well, users loved it’s GUI (Graphical User Interface), and companies loved it’s desktop publishing abilities. In fact, it has been suggested that through leveraging PostScript, PageMaker, and the LaserWriter, Apple were effectively responsible for creating the desktop publishing industry as a whole. By the early 1990’s, Apple had cornered the premium and consumer markets. With the release of System 7, they brought color to the user interface and introduced new networking capabilities.
It would remain as the architectural basis for the Mac OS through 2001. As Apple continued to create a more design-centric product and OS, software companies followed suit and started producing design software exclusively for Macs. In fact, Adobe products were originally only available on the Mac.
This further reinforced the necessity for designers to use Macs, especially as studios and universities continued to become “Mac only” operations. The Mac was developed for designers, the design software was developed for the Mac, and the designer was trained to design on the Mac. Font Rendering From a design perspective, the Mac has classically been better at rendering fonts.
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Whether or not that’s still an issue today is up for debate. But in the past, Microsoft and Apple took somewhat different approaches to how they chose to render fonts, and it made a pretty big impression on designers. The basic idea is that Windows renders for readability (resulting in a sharper type style), while Mac OS renders for visual appearance (resulting in style more similar to what you might see on a printed page). The Mac was also the first computer with multiple typefaces built into the OS. In more recent times, Apple has demonstrated the desire to include classic typefaces in their OS, while Microsoft has continually commissioned “knock-off” typefaces like Arial (from Helvetica) and Segoe (from Frutiger). In this respect, the designers that I spoke with felt that Apple has always seemed to respect the design community more than Microsoft.
User Experience Apple’s System 7 (released in May of 1991) was considered to be much more user friendly than Microsoft’s Windows 3.1 (released in April of 1992). It included a drastically improved user interface and functionalities, which were developed through UX processes that Apple was putting into place before most companies even knew what UX was. A famous occurrence of this was the “Pink and Blue” meeting that Apple managers held in March of 1988, shortly after the release of System 6. In this brainstorming session, ideas were written on index cards; features that seemed simple enough to implement in the short term (like adding color to the user interface) were written on blue cards, longer-term goals (like true multitasking) were written on pink cards, and “far out” ideas (like an object-oriented file system) were written on red cards. This began Apple’s high level task prioritization for System 7.
It is no surprise that these early UX practices were present in the development of a system that was respected for it’s User Experience. Personal Preference Perhaps the most universal point of feedback that I got, however, was that in today’s day and age, there are no longer any major differentiating factors between the Mac and the Windows PC.
Apple and Microsoft patrons alike were able to agree that it all really comes down to a matter of personal preference. Granted, there are some observable trends, like the fact that designers feel more at home on Macs while developers feel more at home on PCs. Many love one or the other, but can’t really articulate why. They just do. Plenty of critics have cited status, fashionability, and price point as driving factors behind the different platforms. But from a standpoint of core capabilities, they really aren’t that different.
You can design a great site on a PC just as well as you can develop a great site on a Mac. What matters now is which platform you prefer to work with.