Back in 2011, the year smartphones started to be popular, UI that design by difference is all still in realistic style: Apple’s IOS 4, Samsung’s TouchWiz 4.0, or HTC sense 3.0 were all designed this way. However, in 2013, Apple became the first company that made a lot of changes in its UI design. During this year, Apple released its all-new design IOS 7. In IOS 7, all the icons become really flat and clean, they use geometry and simple lines to replace realistic style with complicated graphics and shadow.{1} And after IOS 7 was released, all the companies started changing their UI style to become more simple, flat, and clean. For example, in 2014, Google brought out their new style of UI with “Material Design”, this created a smoother experience and made the icon and element in UI look more simple and with more color, which fit into the digital screen.{2} Also, after this year, all the cellphone companies who use Android like changing their UI design based on ideas of Material Design. But there were still some companies that did a lot of bad optimization to their UI like Samsung and LG. However, in 2018, Samsung changed their UI from Touchwiz(and Samsung Experience) to today’s One UI. One UI is one of the biggest changes in UI Samsung ever made. The main idea of One UI is to “reduce the overload”{3} and make the visual language more simple. And this change does improve user experience on Samsung’s smartphone{4} (I am Samsung’s smartphone user for almost 8 years, so I really feel it.)
Cellphone companies used to change their UI design every one to three years. However after IOS 7 brings out more flat simple visual design, the style of mobile UI becomes much more stable. Apple didn’t make big changes to their icon design since IOS 7 was released. And Google’s new android version still follows the idea of Material Design. Even Samsung’s can bring our good experience on their UI. Which means that flat, direct, smooth, clean, and simple are the “more precisely defined parameters for visual form” that “ in order to apply design principles in measurable ways.”{5}
Bibliography
{1}Reid, Ben. “IOS 7 vs IOS 6 – Side By Side Visual Comparison [IMAGES].” Redmond Pie, 13 June 2013, www.redmondpie.com/ios-7-vs-ios-6-side-by-side-visual-comparison-images/.
{2}Brian, Matt. “Google’s New ‘Material Design’ UI Coming to Android, Chrome OS and the Web.” Engadget, 17 Feb. 2020, www.engadget.com/2014-06-25-googles-new-design-language-is-called-material-design.html.
{3}“One UI: Samsung US.” Samsung Electronics America, www.samsung.com/us/apps/one-ui/.
{4}Bohn, Dieter. “Samsung’s One UI Is the Best Software It’s Ever Put on a Smartphone.” The Verge, The Verge, 19 Feb. 2019, www.theverge.com/2019/2/19/18229339/samsung-one-ui-update-android-9-pie-galaxy-s10-plus-s10e.
{5}Blair-Early, Adream, and Mike Zender. “User Interface Design Principles for Interaction Design.” Design Issues, vol. 24, no. 3, 2008, pp. 85–107. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25224185. Accessed 16 Sept. 2020.
