In an article for Co.Design, two of the ex-employees of Apple showered severe criticism against the company for disposing its user-friendly design principles over elegance and visual simplicity. Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini, who was a colleague of Steve Jobs and who authored Apple’s first human interface guideline, And Don Norman, Apple’s user experience architect were letting loose their fears that the company has lost the fundamental principles of good design; both ease of use and understandability.
Earlier days, Apple devices were reputed for its advancement ,which was in hand to hand with ease of use and access. “Apple is destroying the design,” the duo wrote, Gone are the days of fundamental principles of design-discoverability,feedback,recovery and so on”. The company now switched over to a new minimalistic approach which leads to confusions. This new approach introduced new font San Fransisco which Tog and Norman find tiny though the font is appealing to the eye. By sticking, on to the minimalistic way, Apple moved to single button icon or touch screen, as a result all other buttons are excluded. Norman criticizes Apple for deleting the undo button and making a lot of gesture-based menus hiding complexity. The former graphical user based interface has given way to new human interface guideline stressing on visual simplicity rather than usability.
“Apple is destroying the design”
Norman and Tog state Apple’s altercations will echo in a wide variety of industries such as infrastructure and health care. “Apple is reinforcing the old, discredited idea that the designer’s sole job is to make things beautiful, even at the expense of providing the right functions, aiding understandability, and ensuring ease of use,” they wrote.
However, the ex-employees also accuses Google Maps and Android for following Apple’s way; both the apps delivering similar flaws. Still one cannot deny Apple because it is the top smartphone company in the world,delivering fabulous devices to its users.Hence the duo, wind up by admitting that” The product is beautiful! And fun. As a result, when people have difficulties, they blame themselves. Good for Apple Bad for the customer.”
