Mobile Design: Less is more?

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4498693.stm' target='_blank'>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4498693.stm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Mobiles are getting increasingly powerful in terms of processing power, and graphics technology. They are also turning into storage devices in their own right. But the mobile phone industry is in danger of confusing people in its quest to pack everything into handsets. . . . "So first we had the WAP fiasco. We had phones are hot, cameras are hot, phones plus cameras are hotter, and that went nowhere. "And guess what? We're doing it all over again with iTunes. . . .What the industry should be coming up with are more innovative ways to get at these functions, thinks Mr Jenson, in ways that understand the kinds of experiences people want. It is about simplicity through design."</i><br /><br />The key to this BBC article is philosophical point that UI design is about removing usability obstacles for users and that mobile devices should have 'invisible design'. We may not yet have the perfect Pocket PC User Interface, but we've come on in leaps and bounds from where we were. We've heard about the <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34609&amp;">elegance of simplicity</a> before, but is the pace of improvements fast enough or too fast in your opinions? Do you worry about your devices incorrectly second guessing what you are trying to do? Imagine <a href="http://captology.stanford.edu/notebook/archives/notebook/archives/toothbrush_clippy.gif">Clippy</a> on the Pocket PC: "You look like you're trying to Activesync. Do you want help with that?"! :crazyeyes: I like my devices to be 'smart enough'. How about you?

[KTamas]

Hey, don't you get it? They are talking about Pa1m0ne devices :devilboy:

[surur]

They actually mention it in the article, and I've said it many times, but I think buttons are very important. The important functions need to be identified, and these should have large hardware buttons ie. a large phone button, large camera button and large music. They should also anticipate what people want to do mostly, and present these options on screen e.g. in a phone call speaker phone should always be available, as well as mute. I'm amazed people rave about the UI of e.g. Symbian phones when these obvious things are not implemented.

PPCphones have a chance of getting these things right, but they are even further behind. I hope some-one innovative replaces the built-in UI on the pocketpcphones and sorts this out.

Surur

[whydidnt]

They actually mention it in the article, and I've said it many times, but I think buttons are very important. The important functions need to be identified, and these should have large hardware buttons ie. a large phone button, large camera button and large music. They should also anticipate what people want to do mostly, and present these options on screen e.g. in a phone call speaker phone should always be available, as well as mute. I'm amazed people rave about the UI of e.g. Symbian phones when these obvious things are not implemented.

Surur
You hit the nail on the head with this comment, Surur. This is one of the the things I really like about the PDA2K - lot's of buttons. People understand buttons a lot easier than they understand menus on the screen. There's no learning curve, we've been pushing buttons to make things happen since we were toddlers.

[Kevin Daly]

While these points need to be made, let's not forget that the major issue in the WAP fiasco was that it was massively over-hyped: I remember seeing ads for WAP phones telling people they'd be able to "surf the web" on the phone, when what was on offer was not the Web but a limited and gated portion of the Internet.
The control-freak instincts of mobile operators didn't exactly help either.

[Steve Jordan]

People understand buttons a lot easier than they understand menus on the screen.

Okay, but the problem with the newest devices that do so many things is, too many functions to give everything a button. I'm all for menus, but they have to be logically ordered, so you don't go through nine steps to find the mute.

And the device has to be logically built, too. I bought an MP3 player that took a plug-in SD card as well as on-board memory. If you turn it on without an SD card, it immediately plays from the on-board. But if you install an SD card, you have to go through 4 steps in the menu to play the SD songs... and you can't shuffle the on-board and SD together. That's just wrong, and it never should have been sold like that.

Menus are fine. But put the work into making them functional first.

[Scott R]

We may not yet have the perfect Pocket PC User Interface, but we've come on in leaps and bounds from where we were. We've heard about the I've seen this stated several times, but I honestly don't know what people are talking about when they say it. The PPC has gone through several version changes and have added several new features with each release, but aside from adding support for Graffiti, I'm not sure what, if any, usability improvements have been made since the initial PPC release.

I'd love to see them totally revamp the UI and issue some new usability standards for developers to follow (chief among them possibly being getting rid of that tiny circular OK button and having developers put normal-sized OK buttons on their forms alongside the "Cancel" buttons). Unfortunately, their newest inclusion of the two soft buttons at the bottom of a portrait-mode stylus-focused PDA UI still indicate to me that they're lacking skilled UI designers (and/or they're not being listened to).

It's a shame, too, since the PPC platform is certainly quite stable now (has been for a while) and, in many respects, still more feature-rich than what the Palm OS can offer (lack of solid multitasking support is becoming a bigger and bigger hindrance as devices and apps try to stretch the limits).

[surur]

I agree. Besides some twiddling around on the startmenu and some changes in connection manager I have not seen much improvement either. They should show running programs on the start menu to make task switching easier, have a battery meter built in and always visible like a mobile phone, and should dictate more buttons to control voice recorder and media player. In general they do a very poor job in exposing the functionality of the device.

They are still obsessed with PIM apps, which is why they waste 4 buttons PIM access.

Surur

[TMann]

I agree. Besides some twiddling around on the startmenu and some changes in connection manager I have not seen much improvement either. They should show running programs on the start menu to make task switching easier, have a battery meter built in and always visible like a mobile phone, and should dictate more buttons to control voice recorder and media player. In general they do a very poor job in exposing the functionality of the device.

They are still obsessed with PIM apps, which is why they waste 4 buttons PIM access.

Surur

Apparently, many people agree with Surur since there are lot of 3rd party programs that will do all of the things mentioned in the above post. :)

My current setup has HandyLauncher set up to launch all of my main programs, HandyMenu set up to display all of the useful control panels, DoubleLauncher to allow multiple programs to be launched from the four main hardware buttons, Spb Pocket Plus to show the battery level at the top of the screen.

As much as I like my Axim, I must admit that I still find that Palm devices, such as my Treo 650, are easier to use with one hand, (ie. without using the stylus.) The Windows Mobile OS requires too much stylus input.

TMann

[surur]

At least WM5 will address the one handed usage issue. Maybe some-one at MS is listening after all... 8O

Surur

[TMann]

At least WM5 will address the one handed usage issue. Maybe some-one at MS is listening after all... 8O

Surur

One can only hope! :D

TMann