iPhone’s doors open, in or out?
By: Mehmet Gözetlik
Tags: Application, Apple, UX, iPhone, UI

Have you ever tried to open the door inward where you should have pushed outward entering a building for the first time. Even though big letters of signage tells you how to do so. This complication is in our every day lives. People fall into this trap during their entrance to work space for months. What is the instinct in those moments motivating us to act in the opposite direction?The design of the door? The motivation directing our cognitive instinct?

I get the same feeling with my experience on iPhone apps. I face contradictions that don’t match my instinctive behaviors and causing me to go in the wrong direction. Minor hesitations caused each time by contradictions and not getting in the way of using the application.

Let’s unfold your feelings with your similar experience and see if you go through same phase as I do. Now try not to touch your phone and answer upcoming questions: Where do the fresh content flow on apps such as iMessage, Instagram? Upwards on downwards? Or both? Now let’s precede with the self-experiment and decide without touching the phone and tell which direction -upwards or downwards- best matches your instinctive behavior. Now, you are free to take your phone in your hand and check your guess.

As you have all guessed the answer is “all of them”: you can find interfaces that push the fresh content on the top of the stream and there are others that leave the new content at the bottom of the stream. Oddly some apps use both situations at the same time. It is where you have to push some doors and pull others.

Which position do the apps take giving service to over million users? Let’s dive into the content sea of apps who are part of our most everyday experiences.

Apple Message lists the content at the top the feed.

Apple Messages:

This app’s home feed screen push the new content at the top.The new messages are seen at the bottom of the message screen. When you share a photograph the new ones appear below. Oppositely, when shared location or music content, the new content appears above.

Apple Photos app shows the freshly added content at the bottom.

Apple Photos:

If you want to reach photos through albums in ‘all photos’ document, the newest content appears at the very bottom. If you want to take a look at the created albums of your own, the newest photos appear at the top. If you peek at your shared documents as document’s content you will find the fresh content is below. If you look at it as an activity the fresh content is located above. While fresh content is located below on memories or contacts documents, listing screen will appear otherwise; fresh content above all.

Google Photos demonstrates the new content at the top.

Google Photos:

On contrary, the fresh photos are listed at the top on Apple’s app. Same goes for albums and sub-categories; the newest content is always seen at the top.

You will see new photos below when you add photo to Whatsapp.

WhatsApp:

App’s main listing screen always lists the new content at the top. Everything goes in opposite direction when you leave listing screen and enter messaging screen. You have to go upwards to reach for the old messages. When you share a photo, you see the photo archive as you have never seen before: in a single line. In this form of single line listing, the newest photo appears on the left. If you click on the icons of the albums, the newest photo appears at the bottom.

The new content is listed at the top of newly added photo listing on Instagram.

Instagram:

The fresh content is listed at the top of Instagram home feed. In case you want to share a photo from your Instagram album, this time the photos appear at the top differing from iMessage, WhatsApp photo apps. If you want to reach old photos you have to take the unusual path and slide downwards.

If you add multiple photos, the new photos can be listed at the bottom on VSCO.

VSCO:

App’s photo adding feature works on the same logic as Instagram meaning you find your photos at the top, facing the opposite direction. However, in case of multiple photo addition and you start selecting from the top, the new photos can be listed at the bottom. (the new photos can be listed at the bottom since the photos appear by time chronology of selection.)

Lightroom demonstrates the new content at the top.

Lightroom:

Every photo added to the app is listed by shooting date. For instance if you add a photo shot on January after adding a photo shot on March, the photo shot on January is listed before March. That causes an effort to search for the photo added lastly. And şn such listing the new photos are listed at the top. If you change default settings, you can list the photos on your preference. You can also choose the option where you can see the new content below if you ever recognize the tiny button that changes it.

Conclusion: How to design the perfect door for everyone that opens in the right direction?

This design contradiction specifically analyzed for iPhone is scattered through out our every day experiences. A quick example is that Mercedes’s wiper arm is designed on the left side while most other brands decided to put it on the right arm side. Most automobile ignition is located on the right however you can find the one on Porsche on the left side. Some automatic shift automobiles put the gear shift is next to the car seat, some are next to the wheel. Mentioning automobiles, as we all know in some countries the traffic flow is on the right hand side, on others it is on the opposite direction.

Just like the feeling instant surprise we get trying to open doors in the wrong direction, every design has a coherent logic. For example, the new content flowing downwards on the chat screen of messaging apps has direct link going back to the IRC habit.

Looking at the comparative data of mostly used apps, incoherent they are and they also disassociate from one another in many basic ground. These differences are instantaneous surprises for many pushing the door in the wrong direction. A cause for a horrible experience.

The question lays on how to design a door for everyone in the world to open the right direction every single time. Where should new content appear? On the top or at the bottom? What is the right direction that leaves no room for new cognitive learning and matches the instinctive habits? How to plan such process?

There is no doubt that that should be self-discovery, the product should communicate correctly with everyone, there must be a feedback if necessary and above all the main focus should be human experience rather than architects, designers and producers. The design should solely observe human behavior and the formula should precisely planned accordingly. The product should be part of human experience. We shouldn’t be part of it. By this holy cause, human behavior should be written in a bible of human experience guidelines accessible to everyone not depriving anyone from this source of data.

The short answer is: All Doors should be easy to open for everyone, it shouldn’t get in our way but they rather be invisible.

It’s not you. Bad doors are everywhere by 99% invisible

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English translation by — Goksenin Yildirim