This is partly a rant, partly a set of suggestions, and partly an attempt to start a discussion on how to improve a basic part of the Android UI. But to skip straight to the punch line: Android phones have too many physical buttons on them, and those button don't work very well. Now let me back up and explain why.
When Apple designed the iPhone, they decided to completely do away with physical buttons. Instead, they would have a touch screen that allowed infinitely configurable UIs. Each application could have whatever buttons were appropriate for it. This was a very good idea that worked very well in practice, but they did end up making one exception: the Home button. They decided that, no matter what options an application offered at a particular time, you always needed a way to get out of it, and the only way to guarantee that was with a physical button. When Google developed Android, they decided that one button might be enough for Apple, but it wasn't enough for them. Why? Who knows? Maybe they just thought more was better. It reminds me a bit of the mid 80s. When Apple introduced the personal computer mouse, they made a big point of the fact that it only had one button. "All you need to do is point and click." But Microsoft decided that Windows mice would have two buttons, and thus would be more powerful than Macintosh mice. And then Unix system vendors of course had to make their computers even more powerful, so Unix mice all had three buttons! Of course, this didn't actually make them more powerful. It just made them a lot more confusing to use. So let's look at the four buttons found on every Android device: Home, Menu, Back, and Search. Do they really belong there? Do they do more to help or hurt the user interface? First is the Home button, the one button Apple felt was required. I agree with their judgement, and have nothing to say against it. So let's move on. Next is the Menu button. I can understand the logic behind it: lots of applications need to display menus, so it makes sense to provide a standard mechanism for bringing them up. That sounds reasonable. So what's wrong with it. Well, first there's just the fact that it's unnecessary. If an application wants to offer a menu, an on-screen button would work just as well. But much more importantly, it turns every menu into a hidden feature. There is absolutely no way to tell when a menu is available. The user needs to just happen to wonder, "Does this screen have a menu?", then try pressing the Menu button to find out. That is simply a bad user interface. What can we do about this? It's probably too late to get rid of the Menu button, but there are several ways to improve the situation. One is for developers not to rely on it. If you want to make a menu available, provide an on-screen button as an alternative to the Menu button. Another option is to establish a standard indication to tell the user when a menu is available. Perhaps this could be a standard icon somewhere on the screen, or maybe the Menu button could light up. But users really need to be told when a menu is available. They shouldn't be required to guess. Next comes the Back button. At first glance, this seems reasonable. The idea of a Back button is familiar to anyone who has used a web browser, and it works very well there. So why not here? The problem is that the Back button doesn't actually do what people expect it to. Users assume the Back button means, "Take me back to where I was before." But it doesn't. It actually means, "Pop the topmost activity off the stack of the current application." As long as you stay within one application those are equivalent, but as soon as you start switching between applications the behavior becomes frustrating and unintuitive. For example, suppose you are working with an application. Press the Home button to bring up the home screen, then press Back. You expect it to take you back to the application you were just in, but it doesn't. The behavior of the Back button really needs to be reconsidered and made more rational from a user's perspective. Finally there's the Search button which simply has no business being there. I suppose this betrays Google's biases. They're a search company, so of course they assume that searching is one of the most fundamental things anyone would ever want to do. It isn't. I would bet that 90% of Android device owners use the search function less often than other features of their devices, such as making phone calls, sending text messages, or taking photos. So why does search need its own physical button, while a standard application is fine for all the others? Answer: it doesn't. The Search button should be eliminated. Ok, those are my very opinionated opinions on the subject. I'm raising this subject because I sincerely want to help improve the Android UI, and I believe it can be improved, and the most prominent aspects of the UI are the place to start. Peter -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
