iOS 7 and the Design Pendulum

In 2013, Apple threw out seven years of accumulated visual language almost overnight. iOS 6 had been skeuomorphic: the Contacts app looked like a leather address book, Game Center had green casino felt, Calendar had stitched leather at the top. When Jony Ive took over software design after Scott Forstall's departure, iOS 7 went flat, thin fonts, translucent layers, bright colors, no textures. Half the design world cheered. The other half predicted users would revolt. Both camps missed the real lesson, and so did the flat purists who came next.

For anyone building a product, this is a case about a design decision that was right when you made it and may be quietly wrong now that your users have learned so much more. It sharpens the question of which interface pattern you still carry from an earlier version out of habit rather than need. Why skeuomorphism was correct for 2007 and wrong for 2013, why pure flat was a correction and not a destination, and what should actually drive the call, is the part the app saves for you.