A Designer Shares Thoughts on How Apple Can Fix 3D Touch

An article making the rounds over the weekend is from designer , who wrote about how Apple can fix 3D Touch. She proposes that a UI indicator should be added to each 3D Touch-able element so people know exactly which elements can be 3D Touched.

I should start with the obvious. 3D Touch is broken! The user experience is far from great. Apple introduced 3D Touch and its new related interactions Peek and Pop in 2014. It’s been almost 4 years since its first introduction, yet people don’t know/use 3D Touch. Why would they? Even tech-savvy users don’t know which buttons offer 3D touch. Let alone regular users.

My solution is adding a line on bottom-right of things that can be 3D Touched. Let’s call them Force Decorators (with reference to Force Touch).

The Apple blogosphere seems to be in love with this. However, my non-designer, hyperbolic opinion is that this looks like crap. I agree that there’s a problem here, but I don’t want every single UI element to be scarred by these Force Decorators. It makes the UI look cluttered and just plain ugly. Maybe there can be another, subtle visual distinction, such as the use of shadows.

Create a Universal Music Playlist With Soundsgood

Soundsgood is a platform that lets you create a universal music playlist. You can sync your playlists across Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer, and more. You can also create an online music player and share it with people. You’ll get a Stats Dashboard so you can see how many people play songs and follow your playlists. I haven’t tried it out yet but I plan to try the service soon. The company markets it as a social player to “get more followers” but I think the cross-platform universality is far more interesting. There also appears to be an iOS app as well.

WhenWorks for the iPhone Makes Scheduling Appointments Easy

Scheduling time for meetings can be a pain, but WhenWorks for iOS makes the process easy by letting your colleagues and clients book times online. The book online through a web page, so no need for them to install an app first, you can block out times you don’t want any appointments, and everything that’s scheduled automatically shows up on your calendar. WhenWorks is from BusyMac founder John Chaffee and we’ve been really happy with the app in our pre-release testing. It’s easy to use and free for up to 5 appointments each month, or US$49.99 a year for unlimited appointments. You can download WhenWorks at Apple’s App Store.