When iPhone users and Android users sit together, the shortcomings of both are magnified geometrically, such as the iPhone is still not a good side slide return function.
For example, the search interface of some iPhone applications, side swipe back is not available, no matter how many times you swipe is the same, you must free up another hand, click the back button at the top of the interface.
Another example is to browse the picture interface, side swipe back can not be triggered, slide to the first picture still can not return, if it happens that this picture is larger in proportion, occupying a lot of screen space, then click on the edge of the screen to return may also be invalid, failure after many times can only exit the re-entry.
As a company known for its experience and design, Apple has not solved the problem of side-sliding returns to this day, which is more or less surprising.
On closer examination, it is often found that the reason is a historical burden that is difficult to return.
iPhone "No" return key
Why it is not easy to use, we have to go back to the original iPhone before the release, to see how this redefined phone product, how to define the interaction and key layout.
▲ The round home button has been the signature design of the iPhone for a long time
We mentioned the origin of the iPhone Home button in a previous article, and originally Jobs thought of adding a return button to the iPhone, but the designer Imran Chaudhri convinced him.
My early idea was to design a button similar to the Exposé function on your Mac, so that if you press it, you can see all the applications, and then you can open one of them by clicking on one of them, as if you had selected one of the windows in Exposé.
Keeping only one Home on the front is not only for simplicity and aesthetics, but also to reduce the complexity of interaction.
Jobs introduced the Home button at the press conference with "always take you back to the original place", and Windows' start button is like finding a lighthouse in the complex sea of functions, guiding people to use the iPhone and returning to the main interface by pressing it.
▲ Press the Home button on any interface to return to the home page
The only Home button not only makes it easier for people to remember its interactive features, but also provides a strong certainty to press it back to where it was originally.
Of course, doing so also weakens the meaning of exiting the application, and even the presence of the return key is reduced. As a product that redefines the mobile phone, one of the biggest differences between the iPhone and the feature phone is that touch and gesture interaction have become the most important human-computer interaction methods.
Although the digital keypad and the function one-to-one correspondence are convenient to remember and use, but it is not conducive to displaying content, the screen content arrangement is more flexible after the touch interaction, such as the input keyboard can be fully virtualized, open when needed, display other content when not needed, even multi-level pages can also be replaced by virtual return keys.
With a home button and excellent touch interaction, the ease of use of the early iPhone didn't have any problems.
The insistence on the one-button design can also be seen in another controversial product, the Apple mouse. For a long time, the official mouse accessories of the Mac did not provide the right button function, and the entire mouse was a button.
Therefore, many Windows users are not used to switching to macs, using the right button to press the Apple mouse button and the Ctrl key on the keyboard at the same time.
▲ For a long time, Apple's official mouse had only one button. Image courtesy of: wiki
Obviously, Apple previously believed that the right mouse button and the iPhone's return button, the same, belong to the category of flexible functions, the usage rate will not be particularly high, can be replaced by virtual keys, and increasing the physical button will only increase the complexity of interaction.
It can be said that in the 3.5-inch iPhone era, such a design is completely reasonable, until the iPhone screen is getting bigger and bigger, it is more and more difficult to control with one hand, and the virtual return button at the top is more and more one-handed.
To address this, Apple added a gesture feature to iOS 7 that we are now familiar with, the side slide back.
▲ Image from: CNET
However, replacing the keys with gestures is all right.
From keystrokes to gestures, it's more than just a replacement
After the iPhone X, Apple has fully shifted to the full screen, and the original Home button has been replaced by small horizontal bars and gestures.
In fact, compared with the small horizontal bar gesture and the side slide back, you can find out why the iPhone's return gesture is not easy to use, the gesture replacement button is not just a replacement of the function, as the most important way of human-computer interaction, it is necessary to solve a problem - discoverability.
Compared with physical keystrokes, gestures are not easy to find, especially for ordinary users, for example, there are still some iPhone users who do not know that tapping the top of the screen can return to the beginning of the content page, such as after reading a WeChat tweet, clicking on the top of the screen can quickly return to the title part.
In order to let everyone understand and learn to use gestures, Apple has made great efforts to replace the small horizontal bar design of the Home button, first of all, the small horizontal bar position belongs to the fixed area of the system, and all applications on the iPhone cannot obscure the small horizontal bar.
As a fixed display element, guide the user this is the replacement of the home button, can achieve the same function as before, while the small horizontal bar also has the highest interaction level of the system, will not be affected by other operations, slide up can be the same as the previous home button back to the desktop.
For mobile phones after the iPhone X, the activation process after opening will inevitably include a gesture teaching, which is to strengthen memory, telling people to slide the small horizontal bar to return to the main interface, and home to the original place.
Gestures, like keys, are one gesture corresponding to one function, reducing the complexity of interaction, sliding up is to return to the main interface, and sliding hover is a multi-task interface.
It is worth mentioning that in order to distinguish these two gestures, the vibration motor inside the iPhone comes into play, and when you hover, the phone vibrates slightly, telling you that this is a multitasking operation gesture. Sliding left and right sliding small horizontal bars are quick applications for switching left and right.
Image courtesy of Designing Fluid Interfaces
All gestures are animated with corresponding actions and can be retracted, indicating that this represents an action.
Looking back at the side slide back, although there are also boot tutorials and retractable operation animations, it is more dependent on the user's muscle memory of multiple operations to solve the problem that gestures are not easy to find.
More importantly, compared with the small horizontal bar, the side swipe return does not have a dedicated interaction area and does not have the highest interaction level of the system, which is easy to conflict with other interaction methods, the picture browsing scene mentioned at the beginning of the article is one of them, and some applications may also set a virtual return button in the multi-level content page without supporting the side slide back gesture, resulting in a sliding and can not return.
▲ Android side-slide back will have a corresponding arrow indication
On the other hand, the Android system is much better, Google has set a special return button from the beginning, and the side slide return as a gesture naturally replaces the return button, and is the most advanced interaction method of the system, even if the application does not set the return interaction function on the multi-level page, the side slide can also be forced to return.
The historical baggage of not having a return key has caused the consequences of today's iPhone sliding back to be difficult to use.
The big screen changes the interactive experience
After the release of the iPhone X, the well-known user experience research institute Nielsen Norman Group released a research report, putting forward a view that a larger screen can overcome the interaction problems caused by gesture operations, because the large screen can accommodate content and interactive elements, and after long-term use, people will gradually get used to it.
As it stands today, the points made in the Nielsen report are already true, and more and more applications are using a variety of visual symbols to guide users through actions.
The third-party Weibo application VVebo has been widely praised for its friendly interaction with large-screen devices, and the interaction optimized for large-screen is mainly reflected in two aspects:
1. The interactive button moves down
2. More comprehensive interactive symbols guide the user to operate
Open VVebo can find that the main interactive buttons are basically below, including notifications, homepage, search, etc., click to expand a microblog, you will find that likes, comments, forwards are also below, so that you can easily one-handed operation.
▲ The left is the VVebo homepage content interface, and the right is the expanded single Weibo content interface
At the same time, VVebo's weibo is basically to expand the interface instead of the secondary page of the original Weibo client, and the expansion interface also contains a return button and a pull-down zoom button, indicating that the user can fold weibo and return to the previous interface by sliding and sliding.
In the past two years, Apple and Android mobile phone manufacturers have also optimized the interaction design for large screens, and the web page bar of Safari on iOS 15 has also been moved to the bottom, supporting gestures similar to small horizontal bars to swipe left and right to switch windows. Google moves the settings interface down for easy clicking.
▲ Elements such as interactive buttons move down. On the left is the Safari interface, and on the right is the OnePlus settings interface
Richer interactive guidance can indeed alleviate the learning cost of gesture operation to a certain extent and the problem of not being easy to find, but for the iPhone side-slide return function, it can only be alleviated.
High-frequency returns have allowed users to form muscle memory, but different developers pay attention to the interactive experience is not the same, there will always be applications in the secondary or even multi-level pages only set the return button and do not support gesture return.
Once the side swipe does not work, you can only extend one more hand to click the back button at the top of the screen or exit the re-entry after several attempts.
Apple's original solution to the mouse without a right button was to introduce touch interaction, so that the trackpad or magic mouse can easily trigger the right button. It may also be a new interactive method that can solve the iPhone side-swipe back that is not easy to use, which is more suitable for the interaction mode of large-screen devices.