I am not talking about myself personally. Users like my mom, who have trouble navigating AirBnb, are going to have trouble remembering 8 different swipe actions, even if they go through a tutorial. A designer needs to anticipate users skipping tutorials or just forgetting them. A tutorial is not an alternative to usable design.

You’re now conflating usability with discoverability which are very different things.

Many very usable actions are left to intuition and discovered as such or by on-boarding.

Pinch to zoom is a classic example.

The swipe to dismiss gesture is very usable once it’s discovered. iOS does a very good job at training people that actions from the edge of their device do things. It’s fundamental to the design of the OS and has been so since day one.

I also feel like comparing navigating an app with its own unique idiosyncrasies that you do so sporadically to navigating an OS daily are very different orders of magnitude on developing muscle memory.

Anyway I think you’re arguing very different aspect of UX design

"Can I use this device" and "Can I figure out how to use this device" are not nearly as different as you're making them out to be.

So there is an onboarding process that is skippable, and it would appear that either most people either do, or at least click-through. While the onboarding doesn’t show every gesture and shortcut, it does show how to “figure out how to use this device”.

And herein lies the problem, and it’s not exclusive to iOS. No matter how much hand holding there is, if the user doesn’t engage, then it’s a lost cause. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Discoverability is as much about trying something that you know works elsewhere as it is showing direct affordances.

> It’s fundamental to the design of the OS and has been so since day one.

Swipes, and especially swipes from behind the edge were definitely not "fundamental" in the first version of iOS. I don't even recall them being fundamental in the first iPad.

I’ve been using iOS devices for years and getting what I want when I swipe down is a constant roll of the dice. Did I do it in the ambiguous zone for the control center or did I do it where I’ll get recent notifications? Oh wait if I’m on my phone instead of my tablet I need to swipe up for the control center. Why it needs to be different on the tablets I’ve never really known, it used to be from the bottom and it was really nice for it to be consistent. Maddening.

What are you talking about? iPad uses the same activation area as iPhone. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210974

It is consistent.

Phones with home buttons have the control centre in the same place it always was, at the bottom. Only the newer notch-style phones have it on the top-right.

I have always thought this was weird, but for what it’s worth, it works the same way on the tablets (if it has a home button, swipe from the bottom, otherwise, swipe from the top right).

Nope. The iPad Air 2 I’m typing this on has a home button but makes me swipe from the top right for the control panel. And yes it is fairly up to date, it’s on 15.6.1.

It’ll probably change in a few years again. Except it won’t for some devices.

what!??!!??! Well there goes that theory.

They actually denied this when the X was released. It make total sense in the context of not having a hardware button. It reduces false triggers.

It is not. My iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6s are both running 15.6.1. I have to swipe down for the control center on the tablet, and up for the phone.

Some are saying they see a pattern of “if it has a home button you swipe up, otherwise down” but both of these iThings have a home button.

> Did you perhaps skip the on-boarding process?

I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Japan, when you buy a phone in a mobile carrier shop, they set it up for you, which means any on-boarding that exists on the phone OS is skipped entirely.

iOS setup is personalized so your carrier shouldn’t be setting up anything for you. E.g when you startup you need to setup your faceid and other personal info, that a carrier can’t setup. The most a carrier can do is pre-configure the phone with a specific activation.

If they’re skipping that for users then they’re breaking the entire flow for transferring data , setting up payment and authentication etc…

Now that you mention it, faceid had to be setup... I don't remember how that happened, though.

"Good design is often invisible, if you skip the on-boarding process" -- Dieter Rams