Focused and purposeful

To keep text meaningful in One UI, we make sure every bit of text helps users make a choice, take an action, or understand what's happening. If text isn't meeting one of these goals, we leave it out.

Make a choice

Any time the user taps the screen they make a choice. They choose which song to play, whether to delete a file, or even what app to open.

So many choices can get overwhelming, especially if users need to make multiple choices on a screen with no clear hierarchy. For that reason, One UI tries to limit users to one choice and one task at a time. That lets users stay focused and accomplish tasks more easily, even if it adds a few more steps.

In addition, when presenting a choice, we only tell users the information they need to make the choice. We try not to distract them with long explanations or additional options they can't complete from the current page.

Take an action

In One UI, we try to give users an action instead of a dead end. If the users don't have any items on a page, then add a big bright button to help them fill it. If there's really nothing that the user can do on the page, then we at least try to provide an obvious path back to somewhere where users can do something useful.

Of course, when writing the escape hatch from an empty screen, we try to make the action clear so users understand what will happen.

Understand what's happening

Settings can often feel very technical to users. So, for One UI, we try to explain the choices we offer and how they relate to the user. If the choice is technical, break it down to the benefits and tradeoffs that the user needs to consider.

This can involve digging deep and really examining the value of every setting we add.

Explain the tradeoffs so users can understand why they may want to turn a setting off. / Only explain the benefits.