Posts Tagged: controls

, , , , , , , , , , , — 1 Comment
11
Sep 08

The iPod can’t scale

Dave Gustafson pointed to a great Gizmodo post that looks at the absurd place the clickwheel iPod has gone over the years with all the functionality that slowly got added to something that originally was designed only to play music.

ipodmenunew

“To put this eyeball cacophony into perspective, the new menu system has over 60 places to click—nearly triple that of the original iPod version (and that’s not including Nike+ integration on nanos). Plus, the new system has five screens just for settings, all of which are unrelated to the main “Settings” menu. How did things become so complicated? The iPod went from doing one thing really well to doing a bunch of things pretty well. But the UI was never redesigned to accommodate the functionality…Right now Apple’s sending city traffic down a one-lane, unpaved road.”

Link: A Sad Fact: The iPod’s Clickwheel Must Die (gizmodo.com, via)

, , , , , , , , , — No Comments
10
Jun 08

Consistency within and between devices

“It’s worth repeating that you should not design your software to be consistent across devices. You should design your software to be consistent with the device it runs on. Your users are unlikely to use your software on many different handsets. When your software runs on an old Sony Ericsson phone, it should use the hardware Back key down to the left. When it runs on a Nokia Series 40 it should use the softkey back to the right.”

variousmenus_thumb

Link: Muscle memory (sender11.typepad.com)

, , , , , , , , — No Comments
20
May 08

Evolutionary History of Game Controllers

Nicholas Nova has collected some references about the history and genesis of game controllers.

lopez1

Link: Evolution of Game Controllers” (liftlab.com)