Design vs Art Blog

Everybody loves the iPhone. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this device is the beginning of a huge mobile information revolution. Others, including Apple it self, tried before to make the mobile experience nice, but this is the first device allowing us to make so many things in such a short time. 

I was using other smart phones before and none was bringing all that information on my palm in such a pleasant and fast way. The good thing about the iPhone is that this device is not only better than other smart phones, it is much better than other old time experiences. For example, going to the library, using an atlas or a dictionary and checking emails on a desktop computer (yes, that’s old style already!)

Using an iPhone is a pleasant experience but also, and very important, a fast one. Here some examples of things that now we do faster with an iPhone:

8 Seconds to find "Kuala Terengganu" on the map (bye-bye Atlas!)

3 Seconds to have a look at my calendar (and it is synchronize!)

4 Seconds to check my emails (and I don’t have to go to my computer!)

3 Seconds to call a contact stored in my favorites list (I hate to use the land line now!)

2 Seconds to check the weather forecast.

7 Seconds to translate a word from German into English.

28 Seconds to take a photo and mail it to a friend (nothing compare to this before).

16 Seconds to buy the last Björk album and start listening to it! (imposible to imagine this a few years ago).

9 Seconds to start reading the history of Italy on Wikipedia.

18 Seconds to find a list of nearby restaurants, with AroundMe app (totally imposible in the past, do you remember the Yellow Pages?)

19 Seconds to start listening my favorite Brazilian radio (selecting from a list of many others).

1 Second to listing to my digital music.  

All these work because of a great interface that makes the whole user experience just fantastic. What do you do faster with it? Or maybe with another mobile device?  

Popularity: 24% [?]

Long web forms could be scary for users and they could encourage clients to fly away from your site. Although that, it is difficult to make them shorter, specially if you need all that information you are requesting.

Mapoot is a real estate listings website with focused on Germany. Designing the property posting web form, we had the problem that the whole thing was too long. We tested with a few users and it was amazing to see the reaction of the people, all making gestures like "pufffff" and "wow, this is going to take time". 

Then we decided to split the form into 4 steps:

It’s important to label steps properly, so users could get an idea of what’s coming next. Splitting the long form was a great improvement in the website design: although the process of placing a new property in Mapoot was as long as before, users were not complaining!

Popularity: 33% [?]