Tech IT Easy » ipad

On Interface Design: Why Digg is the best News interface on the iPhone

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:12:18 +0000

My first post about the iPhone was on why I thought app developers should forget about “apps” for the iPhone and develop Games exclusively. It’s a touch interface and as such inferior to tactile feedback interfaces. I’m hearing rumours that the touch keyboard on the iPad actually works quite well for full-speed typing, but that’s another story.

Putting Digg in the topic title is a trick to get you to read the post. My point is that there is a logic to designing software for a certain interface and, as far as news-interfaces go, Digg is pretty good. Now that I think about it, there is a different interface that perhaps works better, and that is browsing news via pictures (more on that later).

On my PC/Mac, I use Netvibes pretty exclusively for browsing the news. I tried Google Reader and other RSS readers for a while, but linear readers don’t make sense for a waterfall of news. Twitter is perhaps a counter-example to it, but I generally don’t read more than the top-5 posts / or the last 5 posts for close friends on Twitter.

Where Netvibes has the advantage is in presenting you multiple widgets at the same time and your eyes can easily glance from one feed to the next, cherry picking the best of the crop. Do the same in Google Reader and I get the same feeling as in Twitter, only the top 5 items or so matter.

The iPhone with its 5 x 8cm screen is very different and it’s best noticed when doing something that requires a lot of screen-real estate, like working in Excel or looking at a window with a lot of info. Netvibes wouldn’t work at all in it, which is why they also developed their reader interface, which in turn is inferior to Google Reader.

But my point about iPhones and Gaming remains unchanged. The reason that gaming reigns on this platform (more so than is healthy for anyone) is because it is not a text-input device. It is a media-consumption device that has less screen-real estate than a PC (or an iPad for that matter).

Therefore, reading things in a list format makes much more sense. And, because inputting text kind of sucks (well, apart from short brain dumps), Digg is actually the best news-interface that I’ve come across. You couldn’t put a gun to my head to get me to use it on the PC, but it feels natural to “shovel” through it (via the app called “Shovel“) on this small screen. Not only because it’s a list-based interface, but because the user’s interaction with the information is limited to “digging,” while the content is pushed up by everyone.

Minimal interaction required is why Digg works on the iPhone.

Now, a second interface to consider for news is certainly to browse via pictures, which works on the AP Mobile app and the World News app (an interface for BBC news). But for text-junkies, it certainly is slower as you have to slide from item to item.

With the iPad, we are entering new territory, and I unfortunately haven’t tested it to find out how it works exactly. But what is certain is that due to the larger screen-real estate available to display information and to the relative improvement of the touch keyboard, the dynamic very much changes. This is the kind of interface where widget-news makes sense again.

And that also leads me to reiterate a point I made last time writing about the iPad. The best way to display certain apps again is the often-forgotten Dashboard interface on the Mac. Widget apps like calculator or weather already exist in Dashboard as do many other clones of iPhone apps.

I’m very curious what will be announced tomorrow at Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 event as there are many questionmarks regarding multitasking and building interfaces that use the hardware keyboard (without a mouse?). But that’s the fun of Apple and the right way to run a company: keep your audience engaged and/or enraged, day in and day out!

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Thoughts on the (iTablet) iPad – connectivity, apps, multitasking, integrating with Macs

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:54:10 +0000

The following is a draft I wrote prior to the announcement of the iPad, but which I didn’t publish because it was a series of hypotheses based on an as yet non-existing product. It’s a series of thoughts on how an interface of a touchscreen larger than an iPhone might look like. It is inspired by both my experiences with Macs and since recently with an iPod Touch. Here goes.

A couple of thoughts I had last night (written on 13.01.2010) about interfaces, the current state of development for the iPhone OS, how Apple could build a hybrid of Mac and iPhone OS, and how the company could build multi-tasking into its rumoured tablet. My thought were the following:

a. A new category: I don’t think the iTablet, if it exists, will be either a Mac or an iPhone. My super-superficial reason: it doesn’t fit in the Mac line-up depicted on the online Apple Store (see pic), but a more underlying reason is that I don’t see space for it in either a Mac-category or a Mobile phone/media player category. Which is not to say that it won’t do either well, but I think it will more fall into the class of Netbooks, though of course with the purpose of bombing those low-tech, low-innovation devices out of the water… just like Apple did with MP3 players and with Phones. Note from today: as it turns out, the iPad is depicted below the iPod, iPhone, and Mac lines, but time will tell where it will be once it’s on sale.

b. The Keyboard: I think that any 10″ screen will demand more connectivity to secondary (Apple) devices than the iPhone allows for. That means, an external keyboard and mouse, which transforms the tablet into a desktop. I have less complaints about the software-keyboard now, after working with a Touch for a while, but I still don’t see it as an alternative for longer texts, which a larger screen would warrant. Some months ago, I made a stupid mock-up of the iPhone + a keyboard (see pic), which is how I envision it looking (only better).

c. The App Store: 3 Billion Apps downloaded, Apple just reported, which also suggests a kind of lock-in. For better or worse, developers have accepted the App-store and I think it works for several reasons for both, namely more protection from pirates, more predictability for developers when developing for the black hole that is Apple, and more control by Apple, which is what Apple likes, not to mention new income streams for both. I think the App Store will continue to exist and will present new challenges when talking about a larger screen. Note from today: I don’t believe that what we will get to see in less than two months will be that what people were playing around with after the Apple keynote. iPhone apps inflated to a larger screen, come on?

d: The User Interface: I’ve written previously about Quick Look in Snow Leopard and how I also dug its slight innovation in terms of in-icon playing of media. Previously, OS X also introduced Dashboard into Tiger (I believe), whose interface, on the surface at least, resembles the iPhone. My view is that Apple will give developers the option to just keep the same resolution apps as they have offered before, though not exclusively of course. But imagine “Quick Looking” an app and still having it run inside its “Icon,” while the user does something else. For the rest, I of course think that full-screen Apps will exist, which is where Dashboard comes in, or at least a type of Dashboard. (Note: that was wrong. More below.)

e. Integration with the Mac: One of the most underused interfaces, at least on my Mac, is Dashboard, which allows people to have continuously open widgets on anything from news, to games, to radio, to system monitoring. It’s useful for those purposes, but not really something i spend more than a few minutes at a time with. Yet the first thing that came to mind when thinking of a “Tablet,” using both iPhone and Mac interface components, was Dashboard. It creates a new layer on top of a traditional desktop, allowing for user-input and information display. When I envision someone running the apps that would work on the “iTablet” also, I think of it either being that you open up a new layer on your Mac and run the very same apps on it through something like a Dashboard-like interface. Or, and the simplest solution is usually the best, through having the Tablet sync through iTunes with regular applications on the Mac.

Note from today: well, obviously this was wrong, but there have been several theories aired of having a type of Dashboard on the iPad for apps like calculator and weather, which don’t at all make sense to run in single focus on a larger screen than the iPhone.

Further thoughts from today: I do think that we will see a new OS update for both the iPhone and iPad before the release of the iPad. This will address the concerns that people have about it just being a larger iPod Touch. For the rest, to me the only downside to this device is the lack of a front-facing camera for video-calling, and some minor things. And I also think it’s the perfect “parent device!” What the Wii was to gaming, the iPad is to computing, addressing a very very blue ocean.

As previously stated, I’m still in line to get one this year, though only after trying one first.

Vincent

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My computing context and what I think about the iPad

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:31:53 +0000

OK, time to write a few words about the iPad. In true spirit of fanboyishness I started (and finished) writing this post in bed on my iPod Touch. Let me start by saying that with reservations I want the iPad. Reservations include that like you, I haven’t actually used the device, and that it doesn’t include a front facing camera which is a real shame. Flash… Pah! I really don’t care. Anyone who experienced the professional look, feel and support you get even from a €0.79 game on the Touch or iPhone isn’t going back to freeware flash (read my Farmville review as an example).

I’m not trying to provoke you by being so dismissive of flash, even though I feel a lot of people really really hate how the iPad turned out. I am only writing out of my own current and past context and reserving final judgement until it’s in my hands.

My context is several. I was born into an age when there weren’t any personal computers. As a matter of fact, Apple had only just been conceived when I was born. I grew up without computers, until I got a toy Amiga at 13, and a very buggy 1st PC at 15. It ran DOS mostly and crashed a lot in Windows 3.1. I mention this because people in my generation suffer from a curse. We were forced to learn a zillion crappy commands as teens, which made our parents and family members consider us computer geniusses and not a week goes by when I don’t get at least 1 question about a bug in a computer. Last week, I spent maybe 5 hours trying to get a Wifi card to communicate with an Internet radio, I will have to set up skype VOIP at my parents’ house this year and who knows what else.

My no. 2 reason for getting an iPad? To give it to my parents and save me future headaches (knock on wood).

My no. 1 reason is different. Last December, my MacBook was lost on a train. I’m using an older MacBook from work at the moment and digging this iPod Touch a lot. In many ways I do more on the Touch now. It has its flaws of course, and no it has nothing to do with “openness” or flash. The screen is too small and there are times (less than you would think) where I need a physical keyboard.

So picture my context. I travel a fair amount, I think the MacBook is not always neccessary but the Touch/iPhone is not always enough. The Touch meets my casual gaming needs (serious games, that’s what consoles are built for), it kind of meets my wordprocessing needs (still typing on the Touch …). So why on earth, for that price, wouldn’t I want an iPad?

Truth be told, I was considering getting a sleek MacBook Pro to replace my lost MacBook. But for years, I’ve secretely lusted after a shiny iMac as well, never being able to justify having both a laptop and a desktop. The iPad is not a standalone PC. It needs to be synced with one (every week or so). But it also gives me a chance not not restrict computing to a small 13-15″ screen and buy a “real” computer so that makes sense to me.

In my UNIQUE context, the iPad makes sense. In my less unique context regarding my parents, it makes sense. 2010 is hopefully a year of less computing headaches and more of just getting things done.

the end
Vincent

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