I think perhaps that the iPhone borrows from a number of computer-
centric and '1st generation iPod'-centric design patterns, and those
patterns can give you a leg up on learning it. The concept of a drill-
down (and down the hierarchy existing somewhere to the right) is an
iPod pattern. The idea that the google map acts the way it does
( scroll around by moving your hand the way a drag was on the mouse
was, as well as the fact that push-pins show mini-windows) is from the
computing pattern. The notion of a list where you click on a line to
select an item, or that you can see how far down a scroll on a
document is via the scroll-bar on the right side (although on the
iPhone OS, you only see that bar while scrolling and the 'thumb' is
more of an indicator than something to drag with) is from all desktop
OSs back to the first ones at Xerox PARC).
Some of the patterns seem to fall flat, though. I really dislike the
way the iPhone's Safari browser (and other apps) let you interact with
a dropdown (or as Mac-centric literature used to call it, a pop-up)
menu. It seems way too big and clumsy, and I keep wondering if there
might have been a slightly more elegant way to handle it (maybe there
isn't; I haven't given it a ton of thought).
Up till now, you didn't expect these sorts of patterns to show up on a
handheld device. However, does this make it easier to learn? Perhaps
not, especially if you don't carry those expectations and learnings
forward. However, it does mean that you can try to do more complicated
things. I'm continually amazed at how complex some of the interactions
we expect an iPhone to be doing. Taking a picture and posting it to a
web site, and maybe twittering to others to have a look at it with the
URL of the picture...Copying some text from a web page and pasting it
to a note...Mapping a destination and saving that pushpin location for
retrieval later...These are all pretty complicated multi-step tasks,
no matter what thing you are trying to do accomplish them with.
That said, there's something to be said for certain things (like
calling 911) should be dead easy. The lack of tactile feedback for
phone calls (among other things) has always been a problem, and in
this use case, it shows how a new user could benefit from some kind of
mechanism for handling this situation. There might be an opportunity
for a 3rd party, but here I think it's more a matter of Apple perhaps
reexamining that issue, and either making a special 'Panic Button'
feature using the physical buttons (and an 'Are You Sure' mechanism
that keeps you from hitting this function too easily by accident).
Maybe a way of holding two buttons and saying 'Help' into the phone
might do it, now that the newer phones have voice-dialing capabilities.
(Btw, Joan, glad to hear that you are OK, but that sounded pretty
scary!)
--
David Drucker
[email protected]
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