This is a fascinating breakdown of Google and Apple’s design conventions and a wonderful analysis of why certain decisions were made in the respective design teams. (Kind of old article, I know, but I only just read it today).

It’s worth reading the entire thing but I found the bit on designing first party apps particularly intersting. Mostly because I’ve never experineced it myself (and I look to first parties constantly for UI design guidance).

When you’re a first party app developer, there’s no saying “do as I say, not as I do”. If you create some crazy interaction for an app, it will be seen as Officially Sanctioned By Your Company Forever And Ever Amen. Other people will imitate anything you do. So you have to be extremely careful about the example you’re setting. And trust me, this makes your designs a lot more boring than when you’re in a small 3rd party startup.

What I love about this particular series of breakdowns is that they truly lack judgement. There’s no winner. There’s no competition. It’s all about learning. And I learned a lot. More of this!

This is not a contest, it’s a detailed design lesson.