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HCI specialists on small screen design
The New York Times' On a Small Screen, Just the Salient Stuff is a brief overview of the virtues of simplicity in mobile design. It quotes human-computer interaction luminaries Ben Schneiderman and Donald Norman. The article and quotes are good, but it doesn't tell the full story.
Simplicity is important
I strongly support simplicity in mobile design, but done intelligently. Simplicity done right is like the iPhone's delete-contact user interaction, one that is essentially the same as the Palm's interaction. This makes sense: Palm worked hard to optimize the interaction. On both platforms, you can select a contact, which lets you view the details. You then tap Edit if you want to change something. The low-frequency Delete function is present, but down at the bottom of the Edit screen.
Why is this simplicity good? It progressively discloses information. There is simplicity at each step, but allows me to do everything I want to do.
Why else is this good? Because I can expect the same basic interaction for many other parts of the user interface, such as Calendar. Hoorah for predictability!
A foolish simplicity
When is simplicity not good? When it blocks significant numbers of users from achieving regular goals. One of my pet peeves is Google's mobile calendar. I can almost understand not editing events, but there is simply no way to delete an event. So here's the use case: while out and about, I get a phone call asking to cancel a meeting. Instead of being able to do it, I have to note down that I need to do it and wait until I get back to a full computer to do so. This, despite the fact that my devices' browsers are capable of interacting with the full calendar UI.
When else is it not good? Actually, take the iPhone's music player. If you play music, I'm sure it's fine. But it is not fine for podcast listening. The first problem is in selecting which podcast to listen to. I can't always understand the title without the "album." So I have to choose one perhaps randomly, and it starts playing before I can read more about it. That makes it "played" in iTunes, and I still can't see the full title if it is long. Possible redesigns include some customization for what is displayed, using smaller type and a two-line display of title info, and more.
When I listen to audio content, I frequently pause. Perhaps I want to interact with the people around me, perhaps one of my children needs something, or perhaps I want to simply think about what has just been said. For me, the pause function is as important as the back function in my web browsers.
With my iPod Shuffle, I simply push the button clipped to my collar. With the iPod Touch, I dig it out of a pocket, visually find the slide to unlock (if I don't, I very likely don't unlock it all the way), unlock it, navigate to the music player (eyes again), potentially navigate to the Now Playing, and then pause. I am quite likely to miss the interaction. As a result, I don't use the Touch when I'm out in the world. I wouldn't use the iPhone for playing music either.
Changing the volume is similarly harrowing. Perhaps the iPhone will change the volume based on the surrounding environment (does it??), but the Touch does not.
The content is the interface
My biggest gripe about the music player is actually the Now Playing screen. This is an example of "the content is the interface" as mentioned by Schneiderman, but done wrong. Indeed, the removal of most UI elements is what is causing the problem, and the content is buried pretty deeply in the menus. The cover art takes up most of the screen. For me, the mostly useless cover art takes up most of the screen. If I tap an area near the top of the screen, but not at it, a small control appears.
With this new control, I can see whether the podcast I'm listening to is 4 minutes long or 40. Now I can control where I am in the content. I can move backwards and forwards. I can repeat something. But the control seems to be designed for a pointing device like a mouse or stylus: my finger just can't get any sort of precision. And I have small fingers with no fingernails. So while I have an excellent idea of where "skip 30 seconds" is, I just can't do it. I have to be content with 75 seconds or whatever happens.
By the way, this is an "invisible affordance" (a phrase that is an oxymoron, as affordances are by definition perceivable): there is no design element on the screen that suggests you can do this. That means you have to find it by guessing it might be there, and trying all sorts of things. I found it by tapping randomly on the cover art, irritated that I couldn't do anything and having a hunch that there was more.
So what do we recommend?
In the past, I recommended only providing for major mobile tasks. But people's behavior is changing; some people do attempt to navigate the full web or edit a slide show on their devices. I now recommend a highly mobilized interaction that serves the majority of the needs of the majority of the target users most of the time, but providing access to less-common tasks. Like deleting a contact on the mobile.
For the web, this is actually pretty easy. Create your mobile site, as well as you can. Optimize for mobile. Then provide a link to your full web site, perhaps with a note that it is not compatible with all browsers, probably in a footer in small text. That way I can delete my calendar event, but still enjoy the rapid simple access for my primary needs.
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Great points. I agree with you about Google’s calendar. I think this same mistake has been made in several other new applications — they’re so simple that you can’t do what you want. TypePad’s new app is a good example — it’s far less functional than their iphone-optimized website. I’ve also heard this complaint about the Facebook application.
I use my iPod Touch to listen to podcasts and I completely agree with your points there too. A couple tricks I’ve discovered (and Apple *does* have a habit of hiding these things): When the ipod is asleep, double click the home button and the pause/play, forward/back and volume controls become available. If you hold the forward/back buttons they become fast-forward and rewind. It’s still very hard to navigate long songs/podcasts, though. They need a more precise control like a virtual clickwheel or something.
Comment by Kevin Arthur — July 14, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
” The low-frequency Delete function is present, but down at the bottom of the Edit screen.”
Well, one can say that probably you will delete a contact simply based on the name but you have to scroll down all the way to reach the delete button.
Comment by I. G. — July 31, 2008 @ 5:03 am