On 1/14/2012 3:54 AM, JonasW wrote:
1. It draws your attention from the center of attention (the icons and widgets) to the background. I remember when I first saw this feature, I didn't know of the background was really moving or I'm too tired. I swiped several times looking at the edges of the background. A GUI that takes your center of attention to something unimportant and lets you waste time with trying what happens is a very good design for a game, but a very bad design for a GUI (to cite J. Raskin).
I'm sorry, but if it's so subtle that you had to do it several times before you were sure that it was even happening, then that is strong support for the concept that it's not getting in the way of usability.
And I haven't read Raskin, but I disagree strongly with the concept that a phone UI should be all business and no fun. The Nexus One ships with a live wallpaper that animates and reacts you touch it. It's fun. And you can disable it if you want.
I've seen arguments that UIs shouldn't produce sounds that add no real information, but that sound can enhance the experience if done well -- and I would argue that the parallax scrolling adds or reinforces information in a similar way.
The scrolling background is SO minor that I'd be surprised if even 1% of users objected to it to the degree you describe. Maybe 0.1%. Maybe less than that -- you're a sample of 1 person so far, out of dozens of reviews I've read about Android, as well as dozens of people I've spoken with, and I've not seen the complaint elsewhere. And below a threshold you would be cluttering the interface to add features just to please that small number of users.
And as it stands you CAN change it, because you swap in an alternate launcher. This strikes me as the absolutely correct way to handle the situation of the user who demands extreme control over the exact behavior of the UI -- allow them to customize it, but don't build all of the options into the main release, because if you do that you're hurting more people than you help.
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