One of Dieter Rams commandments says that good design is as little design as possible. Now replace the word “design” with “interface”. Sounds strange at first, but when you think of it, it makes a lot of sense.
What’s an ideal interface? An easy to use one, requiring minimal effort to learn to use and ensuring effective operation? Right, but all these and other definitions sidestep the real answer: ideal interface is no interface.
One of the approaches when designing a product is to think how the product would work as if it was magic. In other words how it would work if totally stripped from unnecessary interaction required by technology limitations or old paradigms. And then try to design your product as close to the magic solution as possible.
I’d also suggest another approach: start designing the interaction by thinking how the product would work with “no interface”, so the communication between the user and the system or object doesn’t require conscious reasoning.
Think of the “interface” of a knife - the communication of the object’s “features” by its shape is almost instant. As an example imagine you are designing a phone. Reduce everything to a core feature. Remove the standard interface. Now ask yourself how would a device made to communicate just with one person look like?
Tne new screenshot of iPhone OS 4.0 spotlight offering Web and Wikipedia search shows Apple is taking a step in a right direction with the iPhone Spotlight evolution.
Instead of being just a passive search function, it starts offering possible actions. If to apply this idea further to how the Spotlight works it may become a truly powerful interface to all native and 3rd party app functionality.
Ironically the button-less phones are called the “touchphones”. The buttons oppression started with flat key surface of Motorola Razr and continued with touchscreen hype. Now the sensorial experience of the button click is neglected. Current phones could learn a lot from calculators which are prefeclty optimized for fast and smooth data input.
Before customization for branded phones meant just new color scheme, wallpaper and icons. It’s becoming much much deeper. Puma phone is one the best current examples: it’s not just a Sagem device with changed icons and backgrounds. It has an original UI look and feel, a lot of sport-related apps and functionality. Not to forget the solar panel on the back used to recharge the battery.
Good times are coming for UI designers as a lot of non-mobile companies will try to enter the mobile area with a customized around their brands experience.
Fashion brands are doing that for some time time, but it’s not really interesting as it’s usually only about the logo on the device front and nothing more. The interesting trend is a UI and hardware design mix to enhance the whole experience. Like some watchmakers are trying to do in their phones, combining watch-themed interfaces and apps with integrated watch technology like moving rotors inside the device that use kinetic energy to recharge the battery.
Who’s next? Leatherman phone with digital compass and other useful apps, powerful LED flashlight and bottle opener? Duracell phone with energy saving apps that can work from any battery type from AAA to D?
Some random thoughts on Windows Phone 7. First, its tiled look resembles a bit the homescreen boxes of Symbian ^3 and magazine-like iRiver interfaces, but the real inspiration seems to come from wayfinding signs with their big clean typography.
The interface seems to be created under a graphic designer lead and not an interaction designer, as the experience revolves around graphics and not vice versa. That causes some inconsistency: some parts feature “content-as-navigation” concept like actual picture as a link to picture viewer and some feature just plain icons like Internet Explorer icon as a link to the browser. There are some visual contrast between tiles and icons, doesn’t look too consistent (same thing can be said about Symbian ^3 homescreen). With the addition of 3rd party apps there will be lots of icons, interesting how tiles vs icons will look then.
I think the goal was to out-style Apple, but it went too far. It’s like they wanted to create a new improved Twitter, but got carried away along the way and ended up with smth like 2advanced flash site.
Yesterday’s iPad presentation gave us another lesson on how to solve interaction “puzzles”.
Everyone was wondering how Apple would position the home button on a device that doesn’t have the “right” orientation. Would it be on the back? Would there be 2 buttons for symmetry?
Keyboard was the main puzzle as in landscape mode you can’t reach the center of the screen with your thumbs while holding the device. Would you split the keyboard in two and group the keys around corners like Microsoft Origami? Or maybe some other way?
Also how do you position the device on the table or on the laps? Some kind of universal kickstand?
No. With an unbeatable elegancy Apple solved all those issues by taking “there’s nothing to solve” approach.
It’s the same home button as in the iPhone. You’ll be able to find it in any orientation. Don’t over-complicate things. It’s the same keyboard. Want to type in landscape mode? Rest the device against something and type. Don’t over-complicate things. Want to place it on table in standing position? Buy an accessory. We are not going to disfigure our sleek aluminum back with some kickstand.
As I once wrote iriver does some really nice stand-out-of-the-crowd interfaces. iriver smart HD K1 interface features original circle-based icons/widgets.
With fullscreen caller id apps being really popular I wonder who'll be the first to integrate a fullscreen caller's "long portrait" as an incoming call background and tool for its creation.
Evolution of HTC interfaces is the classic example of “design itch” - the urge to add more and more to an already optimal for current tasks design, resulting in visual clutter.
