The week before last, the legendary Bruce Tognazzini posted an article to his AskTog column proposing a solution to several problems he sees with the home screen. I read it, but my reaction was not the fawning idolatry I’d expected. It’s very difficult for me to say this but… his redesign is inelegant. The problems he identified are real and relevant, but I couldn’t help but react negatively to what I perceived to be an aesthetic dissonance in his solution. It doesn’t fit the playful aesthetic that is characteristic of the iPhone OS. So I’ve let the problems steep in my brain for a few days, and I think I’ve come up with a more elegant (or at least more iPhone-ish) solution.
Posts Tagged ‘Design Strategy’
The Aesthetics of Interaction: A Response to Tog’s iPhone Home Screen Redesign
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Playfulness, Usability, & Context: The Three Pillars of a Delightful User Experience
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009When I bought my first iPhone almost three months ago, I also acquired a new obsession with the role of playfulness in user experience design. Recently, a fortunate coincidence occurred that has allowed me to explore this new obsession deeply. Two iPhone developers each released new measurement unit conversion apps within a week of each other and also documented their design processes on the Web. As if that weren’t enough, both of these applications, taptaptap’s Convert and Tapbots’ Convertbot, were designed with the idea of delightful experience in mind. The two apps are very different despite all these similarities, and those differences got me thinking about the relationship between playfulness and usability in creating delightful interactions. I succumbed fully to my obsession and roped in some iPhone-using coworkers to participate in an informal comparative usability test. What I learned, led me to compelling insights about the relationship between usability and playfulness.
(more…)