Unicorns

I can hardly write a message on my iPhone without adding a 🐯 or 🎩 or other emoji at the end. I even use these as a kind of code — there’s a specific emoji I send to Sheila when I’m leaving work, for instance.

Most of my emoji come from the Frequently Used section — most often in the very left-most column, next to the screen edge. I rarely go hunting. What I want is right there.

This worked great until I installed iOS 13.

After I installed iOS 13, the left-most section changed — it became something to do with Memoji. My frequently-used emoji ended up just slightly to the right of the middle of the screen.

This was a pain for me, and I wanted to get it back to how it was, where the Memoji stuff would be gone and my most-used emoji column would be flush-left again.

I looked around in Settings and didn’t find anything for this — so I figured that if I delete my Memoji, then that section would go away, since I don’t have a Memoji anymore.

Wrong!

The section persisted, only now with funny unicorns.

The Solution Was Eventually Found

I finally realized that if I tap the little monochrome clock icon at the bottom of the screen, then I’ll get it back to how I like it.

The thing is: that icon was already selected, so it didn’t occur to me to tap it, until finally I did out of desperation.

And I realize now that if I tap it again, it shows Memoji. Tap it again, and they hide. All while the button still shows as selected (and presumably non-tappable). It’s… odd.

The Amazing Modern World

Our computers, devices, and software are amazing these days. It feels as if the very laws of physics have changed since I was a kid — that’s how marvelous all of this is. I love it, and I love writing apps and writing about apps.

I’m not picking on Apple with this thing about the emoji keyboard. Apple’s been the greatest of the prime drivers of all these marvels. My point was to pick an example that most of the people reading this would know.

These marvels are so great that billions of people are using them. The diversity of this population can’t be overstated — iPhones, for instance, aren’t just for the young, able, and tech-obsessed.

All of us in tech know this, but we don’t always go far enough in displaying the care that all of these people deserve. When we ship a bug, or even just an inscrutable bit of user interface, how many people are we frustrating? How much of other people’s time are we wasting?

I’m not saying don’t ever change your app’s UI. Make improvements. Definitely.

But always keep in mind that your app is probably only one of dozens that any given person might use. Most people don’t read your change notes. But they’ll notice if something they relied on, that was easy and useful, is now, suddenly, not.

It may even be that they could get it back to the way they liked it. But will they figure it out? And how much time will they all have spent on it? How much frustration?

Because our apps go to so many people, we should start thinking the same way other professions do: we have a real obligation to the public, not just to our bottom line. We should, at least, do no harm.