How to design for iOS 15. Everything you need to know from Apple’s WWDC21.

Hello UX designers and enthusiasts!

This week, Apple held its WWDC21 developer conference. Although this event was held online by Apple due to Covid, huge implications for the future of UX design were hinted at.

At a glance, with the appearance of Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, iOS15 alongside tons of information is revealed. From updates to iPad OS, Mac OS, Watch OS, and TV OS to fun new UI/UX redesigns like the weather app. iCloud is also now officially upgraded to the iCloud + brand, with a greater emphasis on user privacy.

So to help you as a designer digest the most useful information, and takeaway principles to implement in your next case study or project, you’ve come to the right place!

In this article, I will digest the future design philosophies of Apple from the WWDC 2021 conference for you. In my opinion, Apple’s design philosophy in 2021 can be shaped by these three key principles: sharing, unity, and privacy.

For this article, I want to take a deep dive with you into the first principle, Sharing, since many upcoming designers choose to create case studies or projects with social media functions. Therefore in my opinion as a UX designer understanding how the principle of sharing has evolved with iOS 15 is one of the most important areas.

Let’s take a deep dive into sharing.

Design to Share

IOS 15: is all about sharing, and interconnectivity which relates to the other two principles of unity and privacy.

As a designer working on any iOS product or case study, it is not only important for you to be aware that Apple is now clearly pushing a design philosophy of “Everything can be shared”, but you also need to understand concrete features Apple has created to enable sharing.

Below are 3 new additions from iOS 15 that I believe capture the design philopshy of sharing.

1. Share “the moment”

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest updates in iOS 15. Instead of sending a friend a funny meme or photo through text messaging, now you can share your entire photo album with others. These extreme “sharing” features are seen throughout different apps. For example “Facetime” a telecommuting tool now more popular than ever in a post-pandemic world now has link sharing, similar to Zoom. In addition, Facetime now has upgraded audio effects, front-facing camera portrait mode, noise reduction mode, a share screen-ish function to watch movies or listen to music together, the improvements are endless.

As a UX designer, these updates could directly impact how your next iOS case study is structured. Think about how your product is reimagining telecommunication and social connectivity. How does it aim to use existing features native to iOS 15 to eliminate distance? Does your product reinvent the concept of physical distance altogether? Having these questions in the back of your head will make sure your design choices are up to date in 2021.

2. Share your “Focus Mode”

Sharing goes beyond those examples, with the introduction of different “focus modes”. In iOS 15 there are now four modes you can choose from to share with others your “current status”.

For example, once you set a mode (similar to the previous do not disturb, such as meeting, resting, driving), people sending you messages will be able to see your current “mode”. By passively sharing with others if you are driving, in a meeting, or maybe just taking a nap, socializing should become more efficient and effective.

A lot of my “design friends” all loved this idea. I believe this feature is a great addition and expansion of the previous “driving” or “do not disturb” options. In the future with more “smart” and machine learning implementations, your iPhone could even automatically detect what mode you are in. I am excited to see how functional this will actually be to iOS users.

3. Share for “convenience”

Think of this as the “original concept of Apple pay on steroids”.

In 2021 instead of just your credit card, you can add tickets, car keys, transportation card, hotel card, ID card, driver’s license, and other functions all to your iPhone. The goal here for Apple is straightforward, the more you rely on an “all in one” iPhone that becomes your everything, the harder it will be to ever be replaced.

Although the function of “Apple pay” has always been lacking widespread support in my opinion, with this new push of “adding everything shareable” in your wallet into your iPhone, we will see if new opportunities of design emerge.

What else?

Those are three areas of how iOS 15 will change its user's world of sharing and interconnectivity. Of course, as I mentioned above, sharing is only one of the three principles alongside unity and privacy shaping Apple's new design philosophy in 2021. To keep this article short and digestible, here are two simple examples of unity and privacy.

Unity

A quick example of unity can be seen through how the new MacOS introduces Universal Control, which allows users to easily switch between Macs and iPads to drag and drop files using the same keyboard, mouse, and trackpad. AirPlay can now display movies, games, and other content from iPhones and iPads on Mac devices, and act as their speaker. There are too many different OS updates to dive into here, but those are some examples of what I mean by unity.

As a designer, instead of thinking and designing for each product separately, think of them as one unified product or a group of IoT devices.

Privacy

Finally, for privacy, everyone familiar with the Facebook vs Apple debate recently shouldn't be surprised.

Apple now introduces a few more privacy protection mechanisms. For example, a new email protection feature hides the user’s IP address and prevents senders from knowing if an email has been opened. Safari can also now hide your IP address, preventing pixel-level tracking.

Apple understands that privacy issues are more important today than ever before(user data is also worth a lot of money). Keeping in mind how your product might use or protect user data can be a highlight in your next case study.

Exciting time to design

Wooohooo, you basically just watched the WWDC21 developer conference with me.

Well, sort of. There is a lot more information that I cant cover or summarize for you here today, you can watch the full stream here on youtube. Feel free to let me know if you agree with my takeaways from Apple’s WWDC21 conference or not.

Overall, I am really excited about iOS 15, and the future of Apple devices. There is a lot of new, small and fun interactions like this new 3D rendering of the maps app to geek out about another day.

For now, feel free to follow me for future articles and advice. Please comment and ask me any other questions.

My name is Leon, I’m a huge design nerd, let’s connect on LinkedIn.