Design lovers all over the world are feeling confused and debating the flat user interface introduced in iOS7. Although change is inevitable, users find it confusing. There is a great detailed post by Jo Ippen on Medium describing frustrations with the user interactions for setting alarms in iOS7.(Here) This inspired me to write down 5 tips every iOS developer should consider while refreshing user interface.
With iOS 7 it’s a new beginning, consider it as your opportunity to correct things, Sign Up flow, Registrations, Checkout process or Button placements etc. In normal circumstances users don’t like change, but with iOS 7 they are eager and in receiving mode. Take advantage of it.
Don’t just blindly change colors and transitions. With iOS 7, Apple is not only bringing new UI but is suggesting every app should follow their guidelines.(here)
Decide what is right for your app. If you have a massive user base with die hard fans, it’s not easy to change traditional flows. Simple things like changing messaging or UI placement can hurt your app. In those situations move slowly, introduce incremental changes instead of overhauling the UI all at once. Here is a very interesting article (here) on calendar app features that creates frustrating user experiences.
I am sure your team is having healthy debates on how things should be laid out. This is the trickiest part, no mater what you finalize in any design someone on your team will always feel it’s incorrect. In such cases its better to A/B test on a small portion of your user base, observe results and then roll out the winning variation to the entire user base.
If you are performing radical changes and using this opportunity to relaunch your product with new features - consider performing staged feature roll-outs. This way, you can observe behaviors and make changes before releasing a complete update to your end users.
If you are pushing any update right now, closely monitor and analyse user behavior. Expect some drop-off and unhappy users - No matter what you do, some users are going to be upset by the changes. So don’t panic if 1 out of 100,000 user gives you negative feedback. Just wait, make sure everything else is working correctly. Look at the positive side. If you observe exponential growth in your support queue, take action immediately and have your feature-fix branch ready.
Hopefully you will find these tips helpful. Let us know your feedback. Is anything on this page unclear? Suggest edits on Github!