EA got it right with The Simpsons Arcade interface. The design has a blue joystick that looks like a ball. The good thing is that this touchscreen joystick works perfectly without raising the finger from the screen, just moving it a little bit is enough to control Homer.

On the contrary, this Pacman version got an unhappy design solution. The touchscreen reacts slower than a real button, for this reason raising the finger should be avoided. This virtual joypad forces the user to raise the finger the whole time. As a result, moving the Pacman is slow and difficult.

Dig Dug, such a fun game… Unfortunately, it also got a touchscreen joypad that works very slowly. Most of the fun is gone.

The Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone has another virtual joystick. Probably, designers were focused on making the game look good; and it does look good. The joystick behaves almost like a real one; with it the user has to move the finger too far from the origin (central point) making the movements too slow. Unfortunately, controlling this game is a nightmare.

In my opinion, the reason iPhone games should not be designed to make the user raise the finger from the on-screen joystick is that it is difficult to hold the device. The iPhone is a great device but it lacks the ergonomic features of a real joystick. Maybe that’s why Marware released an [expensive] iPhone game grip.

Is there a limit for multifunctionality? The following imaginary design illustrates the problem of multi-function devices and applications: the solution reaches a point where a big amount of features offered block the access to them and makes the whole product unusable or difficult to understand.

An overwhelmed Swiss knife

Multifunctionality could be also a problem in graphical interfaces. In the following picture there is a screenshot of the FStream applicaton for Apple iPhone, an application to listen online radios and other sound streams. This app used to have only 3 visible options at the bottom:  Play, Favorites and More. Now it is already showing the option “Record”, which, I assume it is only useful for limited amount of radio listeners. Ohh… it’s so easy to add just one more feature!

FStream App for iPhone

Google Android phones (and iPhones) are a good example of multi-purpose devices. Thanks to their good interface design users are able to manage a huge range of different tasks: music, pictures, work, maps and more. Still, they are victims of their own success; multitasking people could feel the need for more than one phone: users can do several things with them, but not at the same time.

Picture from Google Mobile Blog

Logitech Harmony Remote is a device that remotely controls 225000 different devices, including televisions, DVD players, radios and video games. A real do-it-all device. Unfortunately the interface description on the Logitech website is very vague but if the interface is well done it could eventually be a good product for geeks. But they are not going to sell it to my mother…

The Harmony Remote controls 225000 devices

“Reading is an important activity and deserves a purpose-built device”, said Jeff Bezos to the New York Times. He might be partially right, probably many users don’t want to see more features on the Amazon Kindle. Many think the audio book feature is already redundant (why would you need it if you have a great pocket size iPod?). On the other side, Bezos’ statement might just lack of sincerity; maybe he is not putting more features just because the device is limited by a low resolution, black and white, slow, not touchy screen.

The single purpose Amazon Kindle

Few devices can be more purpose-specific than the WikiReader. Many laughed at it when it was announced, now it’s a top seller. Simple interface design makes it a king in the only thing it does: accessing Wikipedia information without complications. Maybe someone using an iPhone won’t need it but what about children?

The single purpose WikiReader

Google Voice interface. Image from funkyspacemonkey.com

It’s difficult to imagine a keypad interface clearer than the one of Google Voice for iPhone. Everything is in the right place, there are no possibilities for confusion.

The Android interface. Picture by xda-developers.com

The Android keypad is not bad, but I’m a little bit skeptical about the lack of separation among the number columns and about the fact that buttons don’t look like buttons. Still, I think it might work pretty well most of the time.

Windows Mobile keypad interface. Picture by extremeppc.com

The Windows Mobile keypad interface could be a little bit confusing, I don’t like the fact that numbers are located on the right side of the buttons (instead of being in the center). Some people, specially the ones with big fingers, might accidentally press on the wrong button if they try to tap on the number and not in the center of the button. This configuration could also be a little bit disturbing for the users’ eye, humans tend naturally to look for symmetric signs and this buttons lack of that harmony.

Door keypad in Starbucks. Picture by Alexis Brion.

The last example is coming from the physical, real, world, not from a software interface. This is the keypad to unlock the toilet door at the Starbucks located in the Düsseldorf central station. I was sitting close to it and I couldn’t help watching the clients fail several times when trying to enter the code. Numbers are not located on the buttons, they are below them. Users were confusing labels: which is the number 5 button?

We spent some time in a huge shop touching cameras and observing other people doing the same. That gave us a first insight on the different perceptions about these devices but, of course, a shop is not the “natural” environment where people take pictures, so the context was not totally taken into account.

At last, we did interview people about cameras and we observed them taking pictures and touching the things. The conclusion: there is room for improvement on digital camera designs.

Here there are some comments and pictures of different compact cameras.

Rollei

It is easy to see the symbols on buttons, the contrast is good but having several functions working on one button could be confusing. From Rollei, we liked the way it navigates through pictures (unfortunately I can not show you that).

Having less buttons could make the camera look simple, but this graphic interface show us that this is not always true.

Here we noticed that it is very difficult to see the labels on buttons, the contrast is very bad.

Kodak

One function for each button could be a good approach. I like the knob to turn the camera on and off, it’s impossible to confuse it with the shooting button.

The “Share” button might have good functionality, but honestly I don’t know what it does. What we discovered interviewing elderly people is that this group avoids pressing on buttons they don’t know what they are for.

Casio

This one has some buttons on the top that are almost impossible to see while taking pictures. “BS” seems to be something only Casio uses, we don’t know the meaning.

Painted buttons have great contrast! Unfortunately, it is very difficult to see what’s written on the other ones.

It seems that Casio likes wheels. Unfortunately, these wheels do not behave like real wheels.

Sony

There are some contrast issues here (on the buttons), but the most impressive things are the wheels. The one on the top is a real wheel the user can turn, the one on the bottom can not be turned.

These two models (above, below) got a touch screen. This is a risky approach, success depends mostly on how well the graphic interface is designed. For the one below, graving it properly could be quite complicated.  This model got lots of functionality, buttons and wheels!

Nikon

Flash position is good here, it’s difficult to place the finger on it.

The wheel could be an issue here and the buttons on top of the camera could not be seen when needed.

Some of the buttons in this camera seem to be part of this brand’s lexicon.

Panasonic

Painted buttons look great but the other ones have very bad contrast, I can imagine this being a big issue using the camera outdoors and even more for the elderly.

I wonder if labels like “AF/AE” are understandable to everybody. Should we carry the manual with us?

Canon

On many Canon cameras the wheel looks and works like a wheel, main function of it is to navigate through saved pictures. I like it a lot. Interesting design, but using buttons that don’t really look like buttons could be dangerous.

This model goes in the right direction. The wheel is great. Unfortunately the graphic interface is not that simple.

We noticed that symbols on this model are difficult to understand for many people, specially the ones on the top wheel.

Credits: some comments and thoughts on cameras were developed with help of Nora Gonzalez Dwyer.

Today with the web, the conditions have changed. We have technologies that enable new ways to store, collect and share large amount of data as well as the social web that generate tons of real time data, which implies a great mass of dynamic data to deal with. This means we don’t have the same control of the outcome as we had before when we worked with a limit static set of data.

With these new conditions it seems like the designer has shifted role from proving a point to create tools that makes it easy for people to discover and find their own stories. The tools are more about letting them navigate through and understand rich and varied flows of information, using their behavior as navigation. Instead of being a passive observer the user can participate in the exploration.

Here are some intriguing data visualization tools that put the user in the driver’s seat:

Stamen design, a small design and technology studio in San Francisco, work a lot with real time data and infographics. They created Trulia Snapshot that helps you localize homes for sale, and explore different variables like if it’s cheap, expensive, newest on the market, and longest on the market.

They also created Oakland Crimespotting, an interactive map of crimes in Oakland that helps people to sort and understand crime in cities. With this tool you can navigate hour by hour and over time.

Together with Small Batch Inc.  Jeffrey Veen has a few data visualization projects going on, one of them is Wikirank, a tool for exploring new trends on Wikipedia, discovering comparisons between topics and sharing them with the world. He also gave an inspiring talk on the subject at Web 2.0 Expo.

The New York Times creates some really interesting data visualizations; I especially like Casualties of war where you can investigate casualties during war in Iraq through times. The New York Times also let the mass audience participate in their Visualization lab , creating information graphs of all sorts.

Getty images got a whole stack of discovery tools to explore photos. One of the latest is moodstream that enable the possibility to sort pictures by mood.

This one is not new but I really like the visualization of Lee Byron’s histogram What have I been listening to? that shows music listening history with data aggregated from Last.fm. With inspiration from his work Andrew Godwin created a graph generator where you can generate your music from Last.fm, and compare with friends.

For more inspiration check out Visual complexity, a gallery with a variety of different visualization methods.

This approach, where designers let people use their own minds to draw their own conclusions isn’t new. But with these new conditions it becomes more essential to control the flood of information that people meet every day by putting them in the driver’s seat manipulating data in their own way, telling their own stories.

About the article’s writer: Johanna Olander works as an interaction designer and visual designer at the National Library of Sweden/LIBRIS division. She mostly works with LIBRIS the Swedish Union Catalogue, but also with other library related applications.

Kodak cameras are not silly apparatuses

The sudden appearance of digital cameras made Kodak lost big amounts of money, from one day to the other a network of services around the picture development business was gone. So Kodak started thinking outside the camera again but this time in the digital world: they developed Easyshare, a software bundled to cameras that makes photo printing, storing and sharing easy. Easyshare is actually not just another software, it is the revival of that old good Kodak service. I find important the fact that Kodak is now the number one digital camera brand. 

The Kindle should be the new iPod

Let’s say it, the first Amazon Kindle was, judged from the physical point of view, a poorly designed device. So why it was such a success? Amazon did to Sony what also Apple did to Sony; they practically stole the market through the offering of something that is more than just a device; Amazon and Apple designed whole service ecosystems around the Kindle and iPod. Of course, Apple designed beautiful iPods and Amazon had to redesigned the way the Kindle hardware looked in order to make it more appealing and usable, but the new concept here is that physical design, software interface and service design are all very important.

Nokia makes the best cell phones

Any doubt about the previous statement? Well, technically, it is true. I still remember using my Nokia smartphone and being able to connect everywhere and getting a fantastic speaking quality; physically, Nokia telephones are great. But Nokia was in the past not able to successfully design a proper ecosystem around those smartphones, I still remember how complicated loading music or installing applications on the phone was… Oh, and I won’t forget that time when I did an update of the phone’s OS and all my information was deleted.

Connecting to the environment could add glamor to a brand: Fiat

Fiat’s eco:Drive connects cars to computers offering customers the possibility of checking how they drive and offering customized advice on how to drive more efficiently to reduce emissions and save money. Plug the car to the computer to get extra services.

The connected patient

A highly probable success will be the connection of medical devices to systems outside the devices themselves. An example is the asthma inhaler designed by Cambridge Consultants that connects to an online personal health care application to send relevant health information to monitor progress and to make it available to the care specialist. A traditional "lonely" device like an inhaler is now connected to a bigger system to provide a better user experience.

Conclusion

At Design vs Art we believe that in the future devices will be even more connected, not only to the Internet but they should also start talking among them. In order to offer a better user experience and a better service, devices should start connecting and talking to the bigger system they belong to.

The Apple Push Notification service provides a way of alerting about new information, even when the user is not running the application. Alerts come in three flavors: it could be a numbered badge to be displayed on the application’s icon, it could also be a sound or it could be a text alert.

Looking at the feature from the user experience point of view, in my opinion, the numbered badges are great, sound alerts are just "OK" but text alerts are wrong. Text alerts will be highly distracting and might remind to disturbing message alerts found on Windows systems, like this one:

Alerts are a great opportunity for developers and companies, specially for the ones developing IM services or critical applications that need users’ attention. On the other hand, I can imagine that a lot of these people could be tempted to abuse of the feature; ESPN, for example, announced that they would be sending 50 million notifications each month.

Apple has been creating fantastic user interfaces and I can not believe they didn’t think about the implications of allowing this kind of disturbing messages on a device like the iPhone. We have to wait a few months to see how text Push Notifications will be implemented, maybe not allowing them by default could help.

The Problem to Solve

Our agency is based in Munich, a city with a huge public transport network that takes people everywhere. The problem is that as the travelers get more options the network becomes more complex. Then, is very difficult for people to plan a journey without a computer with access to the online route planning system.

There are several services to check this information through a mobile phone but none takes advantage of the latest technology, like GPS.

The Solution

In the following video you can see a fast introduction to our design.

We have been asking users of public transportation about the places they usually go. The answer was that most of them are regularly going to the same places, like work, gym and favorite cafeterias or bars.

So we decided to design an interface as simple as possible that makes the journey planning really fast, wherever the user is but going to those "standard" places. We decided to design our first solution for the iPhone as we realized that tapping on the destination would be the fastest way to do it. 

The Interface

The fromhere interface is clean, it loads fast and eliminates any distraction other applications could have. For us, designing an interface that is fast and easy to use was our main goal. 

The Technology

Thanks to GPS the telephone knows where the user is located. The application then connects to the server to translate coordinates to a real address, such as "Duesseldorfer Strasse 11, Munich".

In the next step the application requests the journey plan between departure and destination to the servers.

Contact Us

Please contact us if you need farther details about the application.

The official fromhere product information website is here: http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere 

Creative Commons

You can use the contents of this article and video under Creative Commons Attributions License 3.0. Just link to http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere

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?