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| 15 June 2009 |
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It's when old interface logic are still used despite disappearance of the factors behind that logic. Pros: familiarity, user expectations. Cons: limitations to innovate in some cases.
QWERTY layout was designed as an effort to reduce the frequency of mechanical typewriter typebar clashes. It's still the main keyboard layout. Today if you were to design a simple text entry screen keyboard for a device used in portrait mode, would you stick to the "wide" QWERTY layout like that crammed one on Nokia 5800 or design a completely new one?
Calculator keypad is "inverted" to the phone dialpad. It seems no one knows why calculator keypad is using the opposite layout. No calculator manufacturer can provide a meaningful answer on that. Today the phone style keypad became default for ATM UI's and other keypad interfaces.
Snooze time is 9 minutes, because back then the engineers didn't have the flexibility when they added snooze gear to mechanical alarm clocks in the 1950s. The goal was to have a snooze time around 10 min, but the gear could provide only 9 min. Today even the digital clocks have a 9 min snooze. |
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| Posted at 05:45 AM | Comments (1) |
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| 27 May 2009 |
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Now when the touch interfaces are starting to appear on mid-range and even low-end phones the interface challenge is how to provide similar navigation freedom to non-touch UI’s stuck in 5-way joystick navigation. The problem is that the joystick is used to navigate between elements of the active window/panel, but how would you easily move between panels without compromising the 5-way “freedom”?
One of the possible solutions is “flat” UI with additional controls for moving between interface panels. Directional buttons will provide quick switching between different views and joystick/d-pad would be used for navigation within the window.
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| Posted at 07:56 AM | Comments (1) |
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| 6 May 2009 |
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One of the company to watch for inspirational interfaces is korean iriver. They did a nice job on their D-click UI , followed by interesting interface decisions on SPINN. Now the new P7 has the desktop that follows the “Content is the navigation” idea. I’d like to see what they’ll do with the iriver phone.
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| Posted at 01:23 AM | Comments (0) |
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| 2 April 2009 |
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Leaked screenshots of Samsung Alias2 show another take on “real-world” interface like Microsoft Bob (or Magic Cap as mentioned in the comment to previous post). Touch interfaces with their direct manipulation paradigm seem to revive this real-world UI concept. The big advantage everyone is after is that the users should be able to quickly transfer their skills from interacting with real-world objects to virtual ones.
Strangely it seems same mistakes are made that lead to Microsoft Bob flop: taking the “real world” approach too literally. Virtual world becomes subject to the limitations of the real world and it becomes impossible to augment the interface beyond the behavior of the real world objects, otherwise the metaphor is ruined.
If you have a “room” metaphor with all applications displayed as real-world objects what happens when you install a new one? How would you fit a lot of status messages in this metaphor? Questions like these would arise creating such interfaces. Ideally real-word UI should borrow the familiar aspect of real world objects, but not also their limitations, feel more like augmented reality then just a virtual copy. Then maybe you won’t need a dog character to guide you through the interface.
(Alias2 desktop image from phoneArena.com) |
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| Posted at 08:36 AM | Comments (0) |
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| 24 March 2009 |
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Acer took a Microsoft Bob approach for the upcoming WinMo-powered smartphones UI. A virtual desk is divided into three screens, user can move between them. Each screen shows different objects on the desk that are shortcuts to the device functionality: contact cards holder takes you to contacts list, photo frame to photo gallery etc. The weather and time of day you see in the window reflect the real-world ones. Not a bad idea, but again the “physical world” implementation is too straightforward.
(Images from Mobile-Review.com) |
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| Posted at 02:39 AM | Comments (2) |
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| 27 November 2008 |
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For almost half a year I'm working for ustwo - a very talented design team, focusing on the innovative mobile experience. Site only features some fun side gigs like games and content for now, but the really interesting projects already implemented and upcoming ones are under NDA. Game-changing things are coming to mobile phones, hope will be able so show some of them in the future.
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| Posted at 02:51 AM | Comments (0) |
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| 25 November 2008 |
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Apple is slowly doing it's correction work on iPhone interface. In latest firmware the click on the Home button takes you to the main Home screen from any Home screen. Strange it wasn't there from the start. It's still strange that you can't lock the screen by pressing the Home button on the main screen. It's still more of the "back" button even if you call it "Home".
And even better call it some "universal" button and let answer the call/end the call by clicking on it. Remember old 3110, 3210, 3310 Nokias "navi" key?
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| Posted at 04:04 AM | Comments (0) |
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| 2 September 2008 |
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Lately I see the evolution of the phone as the evolution of the screen size and resolution. Trying to browse websites/multimedia on tiny screen reminds me of astronauts underwater trainings where they have to perform simple tasks like tightening the screw in awkward rigid diving suits. Up to now most of the phones still borrow design from old Texas Instrument’s pocket calculator: small screen at the top, numeric keypad at the bottom. The screen was one of the main factor of phone transformation from a pocket dialer to a multimedia device. And the screen will determine the future of the device (flexible, projection etc).
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| Posted at 03:25 AM | Comments (1) |
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