Why games are a major source for inspiration :)
The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.
and I have always an excuse to my wife :)
I wish it was not a chaotic week around here to write more on the subject and to explain some of my “aggressive” ideas on the subject, but the reading of this document was a quite good moment for me:
http://sender11.typepad.com/sender11/2008/10/design-of-the-s.html.
It explains not the design of the UI/Ux but goes into the organizational changes that were made to accomplish a more “UCD” or I would say a Design by Genius project in record time.
A lot of things needs to be done in the phone, but some of the main rules for any Ux team are there:
a. Leadership definition
b. Team proximity
b. Consistency through code not wireframes, More software / Design less documents
c. Independence and backup from higher management : to protect the product from feature owners.
Marcelo Eduardo - “We are not the Users” from Jamie Bennett on Vimeo.
Real thanks and Kudos to Jamie Bennett for the recording, editing and massive work of doing that for all the talks at the Maemo summit 2008 in Berlin.
It’s always funny to watch yourself, and specially funny for me as I am able to see / hear all my mistakes in gestures and spoken language.
I really need to study English for real :) self taught english has clear limits, specially if you don’t live in a English language based country.
Raster is probably the kind o developer that is an invaluable partner to a Designer. (I had the luck to work with another one like that: Barbieri). He not only seems to respect a lot the designer’s work (as he also does a lot of work on that field) but he seems to be one of the Developers with the best understanding of the Designer’s drawbacks for today’s UI designing and development tasks while still maintaing the things simple for the developer on the other side.
Just a quick glance on his latest news, makes me happy to know that he’s doing something that would make my life way easier. Such a shame that my paid work is not QT based. Both a quite good solutions, but after Canola, Carman and others I became a fan of Edje and Raster work .
http://www.rasterman.com/index.php?page=News
Don’t forget to download the videos and check out a little piece of his work :)
The post also points to what I have been twittering : Operators moving towards own phones. While most of people think of it as a natural movement to increase profits I think how the market will adapt to the Service-Device possible scenário coming with this movements.
The video again says it all. The boards changing and moving slowly, the completely useless stack mode (the grid mode is indeed useful if fast enough) and the ridiculos windows menu on top left on the main screen must be making Apple heads laugh a lot.
Why? The question is Why to release something clearly behind it’s time. I know there must be Share Holders pressure, market pressure but releasing phones with shallow, slow, or I would simply say “desperate” UI is not the solution. The solution is to focus on consistency not on let’s do something to match the iPhone. Companies shouldn’t try to be an iPhone. They are not Apple, and they have way more than one phone/OS to build / maintain thus the complexity and needs are way higher than at Apple. Also most of this companies are not Design oriented, but instead Developer oriented.
I think the designers will take the blame for something that is clearly not their fault (time to market, pressure, hardware design etc) but it has been a hall of shame, that the slightly better one still HTC. They released the lame touchFlo, but now they are improving really fast the experience. I think the only problem to them is Window Mobile. If they manage to bring the same ui on top of Android, then I think they will for sure gain enormous speed on developing really great experiences.
Nokia 5800
It is not about putting touch and transitions. It’s about the whole package. It should be consistent, responsive, integrated and with visual clues to whatever you’re doing.
If you take time to look at the videos :
http://gizmodo.com/5058503/nokia-releases-5800-xpressmusic-tube-full-video-tour
What will strike you in the first seconds are several minor things that unfortunately ruin most of the experience, even the whole device / software looking quite solid:
a. Lack of responsiveness : 2 presses? Press and nothing happens for more than 1 second? Touch to zoom and it takes half a second?
b. Still carrying the past on it’s shoulder: Focus when there’s no focus? Ok, if you want to mix hardware controls with touch controls you can focus on another features but not on the list.
c. What is that pick? I am a guitar player, but to kill the stylus by putting a pick that is funny :) The portrait qwerty, the full qwerty the T9 and recognition are hitting that spot : Let’s try to please everyone. At least for me, IMHO this is where things get really ugly. Trying to please everyone is one of the most dangerous decision a design team can make.
d. Build on top of legacy: Ok you need to maintain S60 compatibility, but come on, s60 was not made for touch. Even with series90 the touch was not planned for fingers. Legacy is the worst nightmare of all.
e. the icons. Oh, the icons. The GUI icons for Camera, Video player and so on are really bad. I hope this are not the ones in the final package, but that looks so amateur :/ What is that recording light?
f. Transitions where is not needed, missing when needed : From one screen to the other a simple fade, but the selected item title slides up and decreases size to fit the former title space’s. Complicated.
g. Keyboard flying around? Consistency at least in the input method is key. The keyboard is supposed to be in the same place always, but if you look when adding a feed to your favorite friend, the keyboard goes to the middle of screen, with buttons bellow. Not good.
So, there’s a lot of things going on in the video, but they are there. At least Nokia didn’t trying to make the videos be something the device is not. The real deal seems to be there, and you know what you’re getting.
I will for sure try to use one soon, and post here if my impressions based on the video are right, and see if I can at least detail in really fine-grain level some of this small things, somebody can be reading and can be helpful!
We like to do UI for thumbs, but this is way too cool for school :) Nice work by the Panasonic guys. I specially like the thumbs on the screen. It’s sort of an cartoon-rendered-augmented-not-so-reality and it rocks :)
I need to visit some Asian technology event really soon :)
