Category: Usability and HCI

An often overlooked design choice for mobile platforms is the Home button. Usually this button will instantly return you to the main OS screen for most major PDAs and smart phones. For as long as I can remember the most often used icon was that of a house.

And while the HTC Touch forgoes the Home icon on the ‘main menu’ button it does include it in the OS itself.

(update!) My good friend Josh tells me that the HTC Touch’s physical button is not a home button. It’s actually a big honkin’ Enter button. As in Select/Accept/Return. Wow. Even worse that I thought.

As you can see, even very recent devices use this house as a home icon approach. I understand where the designers are coming from. Humans are comfortable with their homes being the space that is their physical center. But it doesn’t make any sense from a UI perspective. (Or in the modern world where home takes on so many different shapes and sizes, not to mention the increased time we spend away from home, but I digress.) Home is where you launch everything from? Home is escape from this program?

Now let’s take a look at what Apple has done with the iPhone and it’s little brother the iPod Touch.

The icon used to return to the main OS screen. (Call it the desktop, springboard, etc) What does it represent? At first glance it’s just a trendy rounded-cornered box. Second glance, it’s a representation of the shape of the device itself. But even that is a bit off, as the device is rectangular and the icon is visibly square.

But wait, what do all the applications look like in the moblie OSX environment?

Small rounded-cornered boxes. Just like the main physical button on the device. Simple, clear iconography.

Early in February my wife and I picked up shiny new iPod Touches. It was our V-Day/Tax Return/Finally-got-rid-of-that-old-futon-on-craigslist-for-200-bucks gift to each other. Now let me start off by letting you know that I love the device. It’s a fun toy and a decent (basic) PDA. That said however I have one huge UI question for the folks in Cupertino.

Why don’t all apps rotate to landscape mode?

You make this gorgeous widescreen device, in a world where the widescreen format is becoming the defacto standard. I can rotate my music, and Ohhhh and Ahhh over how slick coverflow is. But I can’t for my videos? Ok, so thumbnails of videos aren’t nearly as cool as cover art. I get it. But what about my Photos.

HA! You say. You can rotate photos and flick between them, zooming in with careless ease. Ok. Pick a landscape photo. Tap once to bring up the controls. Tell me, which orientation are those controls in? Why can’t I turn the damn thing sideways flick through a few pics and then go back to selected another Event/Folder without having to flip back to portrait mode?

Or better yet, there’s this great mobile email client on my iPod. Pretty spiffy yes? But I can’t turn the damn thing sideways to take advantage of the larger keypad layout. WTF. I understand each app has a separate purpose but that doesn’t give the developers carte blanch with regards to usability and UI design. Some apps have an alphabetical listing you can jump to by scrolling down the right side of the screen. Other apps do not. Tapping the top of a page in MobileSafari takes you to the top of the page, not so much in Notes & Mail.

Ok, I know now I sound like a total party pooper. You’re never going to look at your iPhone/Touch the same again, right? Right?

The most frustrating thing is I believe Apple will improve the UI over the course of the platforms life, which is great, but you know I’ll be paying for that new interface; not loading a new update via iTunes for free. 🙂

*And for Mac users has been for a few years now. I believe the last Mac sold with a 4:3 ratio monitor was either the iBook or eMac.