The primary aim in creating software is to enable users to create, consume and manipulate available information. Treating users well by creating comprehensible visual designs (system images) is just as important when they are untrained and first encountering the software, as it is when they are familiar but discovering new functionality...

The movement of modern minimalism, while stronger than ever in the design of digital interfaces, is not remotely a new phenomenon. It has endured in earnest for over a century. Though a somewhat diverse movement as a whole, its practitioners maintain the common goal of reducing everything to the abstract and conceptual world of words. As with any movement, many, if not most of its adherents simply go with the tide and follow aesthetic trends without any more than the most surface-level knowledge of their complicity.

In his latest exposé, writer and programmer Paul Ford describes a grave injustice going on today: Apple is promoting a new form of bigotry against Android users. On Apple's iOS 7 and 8 operating systems as well as OS X, text messages from Android users (and other non-iPhone users) display in a hideous neon-green gradient, unlike the obviously inoffensive blue gradient that iPhone and iMessage are displayed in.

Rules are for Losers

Reuters wins in "Best New Apps" category while breaking iOS HIG rule prohibiting the use of iOS UI elements in icons.

One often hears the claim that criticism is easy and cheap. Steve Jobs once attacked a critical blogger saying "By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"

The design community has converged on a principle of austerity in the visual design of graphical user interfaces (GUI). Leaving behind the textured, dimensional aesthetic that was previously the norm, the digital design of today is superficially minimal, with flat planes of color. It has been heralded as a simpler and more honest approach to designing interfaces...