“What the hell does the ‘triple bar’ do, anyway?”

It’s just a tiny example, but it illustrates a far bigger problem. Adam Becker: “So what’s the problem? It’s that this innocuous little guy is now being used for all sorts of disparate purposes, and every time it’s used for another action, it loses more and more of its meaning.” This is what happens when consistency is thrown out the door, and developers get little to no guidance from operating systems’ parent companies. Mobile applications and the web are a UX free-for-all, and as a result, established iconography and concepts are used out of context and in wildly varying ways. Just because you can code a mobile application doesn’t mean you know anything about user interface design – this lack of guidance is where both Apple and Google have failed miserably.

20 Comments

  1. 2012-06-15 8:37 am
    • 2012-06-19 1:30 pm
  2. 2012-06-15 9:18 am
    • 2012-06-15 10:47 am
      • 2012-06-15 10:58 am
    • 2012-06-15 1:32 pm
    • 2012-06-15 3:50 pm
      • 2012-06-15 5:58 pm
        • 2012-06-16 9:24 am
          • 2012-06-18 6:42 am
    • 2012-06-18 10:18 am
      • 2012-06-18 10:24 am
  3. 2012-06-15 9:30 am
    • 2012-06-18 6:43 am
  4. 2012-06-15 6:57 pm
  5. 2012-06-16 9:27 am