Simplicity and Obviousness ⇥

Sebastiaan de With:

With releasing iOS 1.0, Apple set its set of standard interface paradigms for its touchscreen devices. We’re only now beginning to truly grasp the interactions of this brave new world and seeing what people can reasonably be expected to ‘figure out’ on their own accord (take pinch-to-zoom as learned gesture, for example). Clear is a great example of this: for me, it was a delight to figure it out, but one of my older family members was less than delighted by it: the lack of visible features she was so used to intimidated her.

Good points here. I think a lot of the new paradigms surface through repetition and familiarity. It’s a self-driving machine: successful interaction methods are discovered with one app, are copied, and become widely-used. Take a look at pull to refresh, for example.