A Former Apple Designer and Co-Founder of the ‘Lux’ Camera App presents concepts of Apple’s new iOS design envisioned as ‘Living Glass’
Sebastiaan de With, co-founder of the camera app Lux and former Apple designer, published a blog post yesterday that shared his design renderings of the possible view of Apple’s next-gen iOS system, with the theme of "Living Glass,” emphasizing transparency, dynamics and depth.
Sebastiaan notes in his “Lux” blog entry that there’s only been one moment that was similar to this: the spring of 2013. On June 10th, Apple showed off what would be the greatest paradigm shift in user interface design ever: iOS 7. I remember exactly where I was and how I felt. It was a shock.
If there is indeed a big redesign happening this year, it’ll be consequential and impactful in many ways that will dwarf the iOS 7 overhaul for a multitude of reasons.
Whether Sebastiaan has any real insight into what Apple is going to actually reveal at WWDC25 is unknown. He admits that his presentation is a matter of letting his imagination run wild.
Sebastiaan frames his thinking: What would I do if I were Apple’s design team? What changes would I like to see, and what do I think is likely? Considering where technology is going, how do I think interface design should change to accommodate? Let’s take a look at what’s (or what could be) next.
New Age: Living Glass
After walking through the history of iOS design, Sebatiaan goes into his take on the New Age: Living Glass. imagine what could come next. Both by rendering some UI design of my own, and by thinking out what the philosophy of the New Age could be.
A logical next step could be extending physicality to the entirety of the interface. We do not have to go overboard in such treatments, but we can now have the interface inhabit a sense of tactile realism.
Philosophically, I’d describe this as finally having an interface that matches the beautiful material properties of its devices. All the surfaces of your devices have glass screens. This brings an interface of a matching material, giving the user a feeling of the glass itself coming alive.
Sebastiaan took some time to design and theorize what this would look like, and how it would work. For the New Design Language, it makes sense that just like on VisionOS, the material of interactivity is glass. Below are a few of his concepts.
Glass is affected by its environment. The environment being your content, its UI context, and more.
(Click on image to Enlarge)
For more on this, including additional graphics, read Sebastiaan’s full report here.