Twitter today has unveiled a refreshed design on their various assets (Twitter on the web, Twitter for Android and Twitter for iOS), which is a bold move by the company to make their network be more appealing to its users.
“Today, with lots of feedback and ideas from you, we are refreshing our product too and making it feel lighter, faster and easier to use,” Grace Kim, Twitter’s VP of User Research and Design said on the post. “We listened closely and kept what you love. And for the things you didn’t, we took a new approach to fix and make better.”
There are several things that Twitter has changed in this update:
New typography and rounded everything up
Twitter says it has refined its typography and added bolder headlines so that you can focus on what is happening on the network.
Also quite visible is the rounded profile photos and icons all over the interface by use of circles and rounded rectangles, which is a move from their square and rectangle frames in the previous system.
Redesigned icons
The company has rolled out new icons for the various features we use on the app. The reply, retweet and like buttons now have redesigned icons which the company says it will make it easier for new people to engage with tweets. They’ve done away with the arrow reply button for a speech bubble, the like button is bigger and the retweet button is flatter. Apparently people thought that the reply button which was an arrow meant delete or go back and that warranted a change. The menu bar now has a redesigned home button, search button, notifications tab and the Direct messages tab.
New changes to iOS
Twitter for iOS will now have a visual overhaul that will make it keep up with Twitter for Android. This means that now iOS users will get a side navigation menu and fewer tabs at the bottom of the tab. iOS users will also be able to open links to articles and websites in Safari’s viewer right within the app.
Instant updates
Tweets will now update instantly with the reply, retweet and like counts so that you can see updates as they happen live. This will not be available on twitter.com or Twitter Lite.