Coming up with Fine Defaults

anand posted this on 24 Mar 2013

Every now and then, I see new UI concepts suggested by designers for future iOS versions. It may include additions to lock screen or fine shortcuts in the home screen or replacement of dock for more usability.

I would say its a lot more about coming up with fine defaults. Currently in iOS, camera icon has been placed in the lock screen. So whenever you want to take picture, you can pull out the phone from your pocket and quickly snap a picture. I guess this default was placed when iPhone 4S was introduced. That is when Apple improved the camera system from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels. (May be at that time, they wanted to portray iPhone as the device having a seriously good camera system…who knows?)

Any day, if apple has to come up with a change in its iOS UI, they have to face the challenge of picking up some of the key activities that most people would want to do quickly. And it is a tough challenge. Any product has this challenge of choosing fine defaults that make it work well for most number of users.

Adding customizability is entirely different from deciding the defaults. Apple is popularly known to be deciding right things for its customers. It showed up clearly when they changed size in iPhone5. They changed the height of the screen and not the width. iPhone5’s width is same as any other previous generation iPhone. 

It is so obvious that Android takes the “customisability” route and Apple takes the “choosing the fine defaults” way. 

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