Edward Tufte is reknowned for his books and articles on interface meets design meets data presentation. (search his site for the article PowerPoint and businesses)
Anyways, he just put up a posting on what the iPhone does right, and a few things he thinks could have been done better.
(make sure to check out the video link in the article for an actual demo)
And speaking of interface, with the new moveable home page icons, here's my latest first page setup:
After going through several iterations, I've finally moved my frequently used icons to the upper-right hand corner. This provides quick access for my right-hand thumb.
2 comments:
His term "administrative debris" is just brilliant.
How did you do the screenshot? Just digital camera, or some hackery for a "true" screenshot?
I've been playing with my re-organization of the screen quite a bit too, using the backdrop of jury duty to accurately simulate my most heavy use cases. My two biggest annoyances:
1. Much like in your setup, I need both a "Google" and a "Google Reader" (though I renamed mine "Goog Reader" so the name would fit) since the iPhone specific homepage for Google resets itself if you use the back button after reading a full article from G-Reader, whereas G-Reader proper correctly backs you up to where you left off from in your reading list.
2. SMS/Email continue to trip me up. When the icons weren't movable I would always inadvertently hit email when I wanted SMS as I've been trained to think an envelope icon on a phone means text messaging. As soon as the custom home screen came to be I swapped their positions, but I still automatically gravitate towards the envelope when I want to text. Thinking it was muscle memory I've shifted them around some, but I still can't shake it. I'm almost at the point where I want to segregate the two functions onto separate pages, but since they are both used with nearly equal frequency I can't convince my inner logic that it's a feasible solution.
Any thoughts?
I'll stay out here in the cold street, with my fingers up against the glass, staring at the warm glow of all my friends that have iPhones...
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