Your Love For iOS 5 Can Be Explained By Biology
August 22, 2011
With iOS 5 (and Lion), Apple has made a big move towards making everything "rounded" in its interfaces. Buttons, and switches have all more rounded corners and you won't only notice that in Apple's products; rounded corners are becoming an industry standard.
If you've never heard this story, the legend has it that during the design of the Macintosh, Steve Jobs enthusiastically asked an engineer that had just figured out a way to draw circles on the Mac to make squares with rounded corners. The engineer claimed there was no way to do it, and that there was no need for it anyway. Steve, however, objected and took the engineer on a walk around Cupertino to prove to him that rounded corners are actually everywhere, and can be found in nature. Convinced, the engineer went back home, and made it happen by the next afternoon. That's how rounded corners came to life on computers.
Yet, there is more to this than Steve's eccentricity. As explained by UX movevement, rounded corners are actually easier to process for our eyes and brain:
Some experts say that rectangles with rounded corners are easier on the eyes than a rectangle with sharp edges because they take less cognitive effort to visually process. The fovea is fastest at processing circles. Processing edges involve more “neuronal image tools” in the brain [1]. Thus, rectangles with rounded corners are easier process because they look closer to a circle than a regular rectangle.There is more to it too, like that we're brought up to trust rounded things as potentially safer, and that it's easier to follow curved lines. Either way, the takeaway is that you know now why it is that you'll love iOS 5. [via Gizmodo]
