News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

June 6, 2007

iphone

Can touch this: iPhone is the next generation of UI design

Posted Jun. 6, ’07, 8:45 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | iPhone

iPhone UIIt’s been a while since we fawned over John Siracusa, mainly because it’s a while since he’s written anything at all. But earlier this week, El Siracusa—Siracusy? Johnny ‘Cusa? We need a better nickname for him—tossed off another insightful post, this time about the iPhone and interface design.

The iPhone is not just a new platform, it’s an entirely new set of rules for interface design. That is what struck me the most once the actual iPhone demos started. There are no windows, no close/minimize/zoom widgets, no checkboxes, no radio buttons, no scroll bars, no nothing.
Dear god; it’s true. Or, in the words of Mr. Spock, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”

Siracusa’s piece is well worth the read, but if I may be so bold, I’ll add a few thoughts to it, from the perspective of an end-user rather than a developer.

That the iPhone uses its own interface, discarding the tropes to which we’ve become so accustomed in the past twenty years, is little surprise. Controls like scrollbars, windows, radio buttons, etc. are modeled to a certain extent on real world widgets (we all know how to push buttons), but abstracted in such a way so that they are optimizied for a mouse cursor, not for the human hand. There’s much more precision in the contact of cursor to button—you’re aligning a few pixels over other pixels.

Not so in the case of your hand. Even the most slender fingers are unwieldy when compared to a cursor, or a stylus. Anyone who’s ever tried to use their fingers as a replacement for a stylus knows what I’m talking about. Trying to use a scrollbar with the tip of your finger is an exercise in frustration. And why bother when you can just flick it as you might flip through a rolodex or spin a lazy susan?

John’s right though: even Apple’s likely to have some missteps in this brave new world of user interface design. But from what we’ve seen, it looks like they’re on the money so far.


2 Comments

Jack said:

John Gruber wrote a piece that I think is related to what you are saying. It is his opinion, and now mine, that the real reason Apple is not going to let third party developers in on the iPhone at first is that they don't want any ports of mac apps on the thing. They want the apps to be completely iphonish, if I may coin a word. As an analogy, he writes that there was no reason the original mac couldn't have had a command line "terminal" like the current mac os, but they didn't want anyone to default to that old way of thinking. They wanted a computer that was GUI all the way. I think Apple wants the iphone apps to be iphonish all the way. Once they show how its done by example, maybe next year they will have an sdk that makes it easy to make iphonish apps. But I don't think they want ports that will screw up the experience, know what I'm sayin'?
Gruber's post is here and is insightful in my opinion, and a nice read along with your post here: http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wherefore_art_thou_iphone_sdk

June 6, 2007 9:00 AM
Ward Author Profile Page said:

The iPhone interface is so slick that it makes the desktop version of OS X look dated. I hope that Leopard gets some interface upgrades to bring it up to par with the iPhone.

June 7, 2007 8:34 AM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: