iPhone Home Screen

Chrome Home Screen

The beauty, creativity and diversity that can be designed in a contraint is evident in iOS Icons. Designers can bring something different and fresh to the icons, while in the same orderly contraint of a same sized rounded box. Even though all the icons are very different, the feel like they belong together. They just feel… right.

When you look at Google’s attempt to present their icons you see, obviously, no constraints on size or shape…and what comes across are Apps or icons that don’t feel like they belong together, they don’t feel like they are part of an ecosystem. The same is true when you look at the icons on an Android home screen. One could argue that they aren’t really part of an ecosystem, they are just links to web apps, they aren’t confined in an OS like iOS apps are. However, this is what Google is presenting to us. They present a Web App Store to get these web apps and the sole entry point to access those installed apps being the Chrome home screen.

Granted, for Apple to understand the importance of consistency and constraints in design, they have to force the developers and designers to adhere to them, with a vetting off all the apps that are submitted to the iOS app store. Google doesn’t have this vetting (as far as I know) for the Chrome Web or Android app stores.

In the end Apple understands how a user feels when they use something, I’m not sure that Google does.