There seems to be a design trend that is taking root and seems counter-intuitive to a good user experience.  I don’t know if there is an official title for it, but it basic is about taking content and making it more ‘intimate’ or ‘curated’ or ‘decompressed’.  I’m honestly not sure what the best way to describe it is, but I’ve railed on it previously in regards to the horrific new Hulu redesign that I talked about in previous posts.

Basically Hulu took a menu structure that worked, a clone of Netflix or similar content providers, and decided to ‘class it up’; if I had to guess the way they catergorized it.

Before:

After:

Sure, it looks nice with fancy big photos taking up the whole background, but getting to what you want and finding new content is frustrating and takes more effort.

Now Apple is following suit. iOS 11 is taking their tried and true app store and using the same approach.  There is a whole article on the changes here, some of them good mind you, but here’s a sample image from their article to give you an idea…

Needless to say, I’m not impressed and it means i’ll be browsing the store much less often as I feel like finding new stuff will be impossible.  It also means getting top placement is going to mean much much more to a fledging game or studio trying to get exposure.  Maybe I’m in the minority, but I hope this trend peters out.