Touch Screen iPhone Game Controllers

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Alexis Brion

Controlling games just with a touch screen is, apparently, not an easy task. Not everybody is getting it right, it’s not only about the programming of the control, it’s also about the design. Direction and reaction speed are key issues to keep gamers playing. Here I have a few examples of touch screen iPhone game controllers.

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.

Multifunction and Single-Purpose Devices and Applications

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Alexis Brion

What’s better, multifunctionality or single-purpose? If we refer to digital gadgets and interfaces design there are several good and bad examples for both approaches.

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.

Multifunction Swiss army knife

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!

Multifunction iPhone App Design

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.

Multifunction Android Phone

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…

Multipurpose Logitech remote control

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.

Single purpose Amazon Kindle

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?

Single purpose Wikireader

The single purpose WikiReader

Telephone design for elderly people

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Alexis Brion

Designing for the elderly could be considered as a hard task. Designers are usually not elderly and knowing how a product would be perceived could be considered a not so easy task. But the results of such a task could be highly rewarding as they directly impact on somebody’s life quality. Even more, usually designing for the elderly means designing for everyone. I show here some products designed keeping in mind the needs of the elderly.

Elderly person talking on the phone

Telephones are always a problem

Elderly people seem to be perfect victims for most home telephones and cellphones. They are difficult to use and they offer a lot of functions that many don’t understand how to find. But telephones are devices with a lot of importance to people, specially during emergencies.

Some companies have been designing telephones for the elderly, for example Doro. Big buttons and limited functions make the following phone a hit for those looking for simplicity. I find the possibility of writing the names on the same phone a great improvement for the older ones.

Doro phone for the elderly.

Digital menus

Navigating through menus on a tiny screen is a problem for a lot of people. Many get lost and don’t understand how to select, scroll or go back to the beginning. Interaction designers at Emporia, like at Doro, have been having this in mind and add a memory help notebook directly on the phone. Note that the notebook is all the time facing the user (and not in the back of the headset like in many home phones).

Emporia Time phone for the elderly

Functionality over style?

Designs for the elderly tend to be ugly: huge buttons, huge letters on a huge screen and terrible colors. But designing for the elderly is designing for all and if the designer is able to produce something appealing to everybody the product could be probably sold to a larger number of people.

The Deutsche Telekom released a home telephone that was initially thought to target the elderly. Not surprisingly a lot of young families are buying the phone. It has big numbers but they still look nice, it has fast dialing buttons and a paper notebook on the charging base.

Again, less digital menus

Something that people are requesting is to have more physical buttons. The Deutsche Telekom placed the answering machine controls on the charging station to make the listening of new messages easier.

Sinus A210 phone designed for the elderly and everybody. Picture be Deutsche Telekom.

That need for adding features

This telephone is including a flashlight and a radio, each function with its own button. Design research might have been revealed that those are important features for elderly people. But they also seem to be there just because it was possible to add something else. A dedicated button for a radio, do we really need that on a cell phone? Is that going to improve the user experience?

Doro phone with radio. Picture by Doro.

Design vs Art Blog

Interaction Design and User Experience

Category Archives: Mobile

Touch Screen iPhone Game Controllers

Multifunction and Single-Purpose Devices and Applications

Telephone design for elderly people