Small Surfaces » iphone

Mobile email triage

Gabriel White — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:10:34 +0000

A video about a project out of IBM’s research labs aimed to better support mobile email triage. Help is sorely needed in this area, and while this project definitely shows some research-labs rough edges, it’s got some interesting ideas for rethinking mobile email.

Link: Triage and Capture: Rethinking Mobile Email (youtube.com)

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Commodity touch devices as UI infrastructure

Gabriel White — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:24:55 +0000

Fabio Sergio writes about using standard consumer devices as infrastructure for all kinds of touch-enabled devices.

“Apple’s smaller-scale touchware has become so ubiquitous that it’s easier to consider it as a foundation, rather than as a building. I am guessing that the same will happen at a larger scale, and the iPad will soon appear as touchfrastructure wherever and whenever a portable, comfortably-sized touchscreen will be needed. I can see lots of reasons why such scenarios won’t be rare. Quite the opposite, actually.”

Link: Touchfrastructure meets the hypepad (frogdesign.com)

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Not big in Japan

Gabriel White — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:59:16 +0000

“And then there’s the matter of compartmentalization. A large portion of Japanese citizens live with only a cellphone as their computing device — not a personal computer, said Hideshi Hamaguchi, a concept creator and chief operating officer of LUNARR. And the problem with the iPhone is it depends on a computer for syncing media and running software updates via iTunes.”

Link: Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone (wired.com)

Update: Nobuyuki Hayashi argues he was misquoted in the article (thanks Bruce)

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Compulsion

Gabriel White — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:42:08 +0000

Back from a fantastic week and a bit in Mexico I’m slowly catching up on things. I liked Marek’s piece about compulsion. I don’t like the idea of ‘compulsion’ per se, but acknowledgment of the emotional elements at play is nice.

“The iPhone is a great example of how to move from capability and compulsion. There are already tens of millions of users out there equipped with Windows Mobile smartphones and high-end products from Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG. All of them are capable of accessing a wealth of additional software and services, but we know from various independent studies that iPhone users are much more likely to utilise additional non-voice services. Where other handset manufacturers provide their users with the raw capabilities, Apple offers users a compelling reason to explore new things.”

Link: Moving from mobile capabilities to mobile compulsion (mobileuserexperience.com)

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NY Times Appreciates Small Screens

Gabriel White — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:52:57 +0000

Interesting in that it’s in the Times.

“As it turns out, Mr. Jobs may well have understated the quality of the iPhone Web experience. Visiting Web sites that have been redesigned for the iPhone is often a quicker and more pleasing experience than it is on those increasingly cinema-style desktop displays, which routinely have 20-inch or larger screens. It seems counterintuitive, but small really is beautiful.”

Link: On a Small Screen, Just the Salient Stuff (nytimes.com, via)

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Staying loosely connected

Gabriel White — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:44:28 +0000

“However, the real reason in my mind that the iPhone wins is it’s ability to “stay in social touch”. The email, the SMS, the browsing experience has enabled much of the behavior that social networkers have mastered already on the laptop or desktop. It’s not about the technology, it is about how the device helps you socialize.

“So the iPhone wins because it both keeps us in the flow and keeps us loosely connected. Perhaps a little like adding a “lurking” factor…. iPhone in hand I have a better sense of what my friends and colleagues are doing.. I am more connected without actually thinking about it or working at it. As someone who’s never used a Blackberry and yet observed the “connected” behavior that creates around email (like IM) it’s been a revelation.”

Link: The Mobile Social World of Presence (henshall.com), via)

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iPhone’s breakthrough: touchscreen

Gabriel White — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:26:42 +0000

InUseful published a usability report on the iPhone.

“What is it then that makes the iPhone different? Most importantly, it has removed one level of abstraction by allowing the user to act on objects using the finger directly on the phone’s surface. The difference between this and having to press keys on a keyboard and watch the screen to see what happens is striking. Instead of having to press one key to focus on the list item representing your contact and then clicking another key to make the call, the iPhone allows you to actually click the contact right on the screen. To scroll, you pull the list itself instead of clicking a down-key, and to flip between pictures in the album, you drag them from one side to another.”

Link: Free iPhone usability report (inuseful.se)

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Updated iPhone UI guidelines

Gabriel White — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:34:44 +0000

Now that developers can legitimately create applications for the iPhone, Apple has updated it’s Human Interface Guidelines to cover a broader scope.

Officially you need to register for the iPhone developers’ center to download, but the document is also available elsewhere.

Link: iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (docstoc.com)

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Tufte on information resolution on the iPhone

Gabriel White — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:47:01 +0000

“The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information—too often leaving users with “Where am I?” puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.

To do so requires increasing the information resolution of the screen by the hardware (higher resolution screens) and by screen design (eliminating screen-hogging computer administrative debris, and distributing information adjacent in space).

...The design ideas here include high-resolution touch-screens; minimizing computer admin debris; spatial distribution of information rather than temporal stacking; complete integration of text, images, and live video; a flat non-hierarchical interface; and replacing spacious icons with tight words. The metaphor for the interface is the information. Thus the iPhone got it mostly right.”

Link: Ask E.T.: Interface design and the iPhone (edwardtufte.com, via)

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David Lynch on the iPhone

Gabriel White — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:08:49 +0000

(for those on RSS, follow the link for the video)

To some extent, I’d agree with Russell Buckley that ”..as viewing movies on phones and other devices with small screen sizes (like iPods) takes off, isn’t the challenge for the film makers to take this into account and make versions of their art that do look and sound great in the new formats?”.

Technology is often the thing that creates the conditions necessary for the creation of art (such as the moving picture itself). But also important to consider is the more ethical question: how should we communicate culture and entertain ourselves?

Link: David Lynch on the iPhone (youtube.com)

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iPhone Human Interface Guidlines

Gabriel White — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:36:33 +0000

“This document introduces you to the iPhone environment and how it shapes the user experience of iPhone content. Then, it explains how to design a superlative user interface for your web content so it displays and works well on iPhone. It does this by first examining different types of iPhone content and exploring how you can decide which type to create. It then discusses how to apply user interface design principles to iPhone content, and finally provides numerous metrics and guidelines to help you handle specific design issues.”

Link: iPhone Human Interfact Guidelines (apple.com)

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Stephen Fry on mobile design

Gabriel White — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:15:37 +0000

Stephen Fry (yes, comic actor of Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie amongst other things) has a passion for mobile devices, it seems.

“Let’s go back to houses. The sixties taught us, surely, that architectural design, commercial and domestic, is not an extra. The office you work in every day, the house you live in every day, they are more than the sum of their functions. We know that sick building syndrome is real, and we know what an insult to the human spirit were some of the monstrosities constructed in past decades. An office with strip lighting, drab carpets, vile partitions and dull furniture and fittings is unacceptable these days, as much perhaps because of the poor productivity it engenders as the assault on dignity it represents. Well, computers and SmartPhones are no less environments: to say “well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do” is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it’s got a kitchen too, and a bathroom.” … I accept that price is an issue here; if budget is a consideration then you’ll have to forgive me, I’m writing from the privileged position of being able to indulge my taste for these objects. But who can deny that design really matters? Or that good design need not be more expensive? We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms – why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives?...”

Link: Device and Desires (stephenfry.com)

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One handed or two?

Gabriel White — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:03:20 +0000

iPhone input-related articles keep rolling on in – this one from CNET is an interesting discussion on one-handed vs two-handed operation.

“The smart phones that most people are familiar with—the Nokias, BlackBerrys and Treos—only require one hand for basic operation. Obviously, typing on the QWERTY keyboards used by most of those devices is a two-handed operation, but navigating through the menu, looking up a contact, and using countless other functions only requires a single hand. “Everyone is still trying to make a one-handed product,” Rolston said. “It’s the easiest way to distinguish a truly portable device from a workstation. Handhelds are about doing something else (while using the handheld), they fit within the context of people’s active lives.””

Link: Coming to grips with the iPhone’s design (news.com.com)

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iPhone keyboard study

Gabriel White — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:46:21 +0000

This slightly unfortunately designed study compares the on-screen keyboard of the iPhone with QWERTY and Bell keypads. People with no iPhone experience were asked to use both their own hardkey-based phone and the iPhone, and the results were then compared.

“Participants made an average of 11 errors per message on the iPhone compared to an average of 3 errors per text message on their own phone. Although the error rate was alleviated somewhat by the iPhone’s self-correction feature, participants were still frustrated.”

Link: QWERTY Texters Demonstrated Drop in Efficiency When Texting on iPhone (usercentric.com)

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Did someone release a new phone?

Gabriel White — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:27:40 +0000

I find the crowd-hysteria-object-lust over such an outrageously expensive phone a bit offensive. That said, Apple’s done some nice things with this device, especially on the web browsing and messaging fronts.

Link: The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype (nytimes.com)

Link: The iPhone is Breakthrough Handheld Computer (wsj.com)

Link: Apple’s iPhone isn’t perfect, but it’s worth of the hype (usatoday.com)

Link: At Last, the iPhone (msnbc.msn.com)

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