Posts Tagged: competition


27
Jun 10

Designing a ‘unique’ UI

“Interface fragmentation seems to be a somewhat desirable thing. Okay, let’s call it “interface uniqueness.” You set the look of the product to reflect (or create) a brand feel that is related to the device it lives on, but is clearly differentiated from other apps or sites available to the same device. This is valid, and we work on projects like that all the time. Right this minute I have a team working on new interfaces for a mobile web browser. But interaction has to be grounded in the common device interaction language. We’re not changing the interaction for that browser in any notable way.”

Link: Interaction fragmentation, and avoiding it (littlespringsdesign.com)


27
Jun 10

Interview with Nokia’s head of design

“Nokia has the opportunity to play on a much wider field than that of Apple: it can serve the end of the market that wants a good phone that is not too smart; can offer smartphones with all crucial functions at the lowest price on the market; but also has to play at the high-end of expensive and attractive smartphones like the iPhone. It is the high-end market where cultural leadership is defined.”

Link: The huge challenge of Nokia’s head of design and UX (experientia.com)


24
Apr 08

MEX design competition

MEX is hosting a design competition of sorts – encouraging people to showcase design ideas (or new products) for mobile. Here are some of them.

The Blind Phone concept seems to a bit of a dexterity obstacle course – I’m not sure how you could dial with a pinky finger and keep a decent grip on the device:

“The Blind Phone is aimed at filling a niche requirement for blind and partially sighted people. A phone designed from the ground up around the needs of a restricted sight person.”

blindphone.jpg

Link: BSR Blind Phone

Delta deals with the particularly North American obsession with having full keyboards on devices. It has F keys, and I’ll leave it at that:

“At the heart of a Delta II equipped mobile phone is a patented, modified QWERTY button layout that is simple, elegant, and brutally effective. The buttons are large enough to easily read and far enough apart to comfortably press, even for people with large hands. The ingenious button layout takes advantage of the user’s motor memory and PC (QWERTY) keyboard typing experience. The result is new users typing a speedy 20 to 30+ WPM in less than 5 minutes; on single-hand operation mobile phones no larger than a business card – previously this was unheard of.”

delta_ii_keypad.gif

Link: Finest Mobile Phone Keypad in the World

Motionized looks like fun:

“By using the movement of the handset to enable users to browse menus, pan and zoom within images, navigate web pages or play games, the Motionized handset introduces a breakthrough in user experience.”

Link: Motionized™ – using the phone’s camera to enable a new UI

Slide it (like SharkText, which became ShapeWriter) requires users to slide a stylus around to type faster:

“SlideIt, is an intuitive method to input text on touch screen enabled devices. Instead of tapping each letter, with SlideIt users simply point to first letter of a word and slide the stylus to the subsequent letters. Spacing is achieved by just lifting the stylus. Speeds of more than 50 words per minute are easily achievable. Consumers love the feel of writing quickly and accurately.”

slideit_demo.jpg

Link: SlideIT write words not letters