Imagine having to swipe your credit card before you can walk into a retail location. Imagine giving them your email address before picking up a catalog. That’s what Pottery Barn hopes you’ll do when you download their free iPad catalog app.
PixelMags may make a great catalog engine for iPad, or then again, they may not. I didn’t bother to create the mandatory account in order to find out.
Pottery Barn’s mistake is not in selecting a platform like PixelMags. Their mistake is requiring account creation as an entry-point for the experience. This needs to come almost last, just before a user orders something through the catalog.
Clearly business requirements trumped user requirements.
To most people I’ve encountered (outside the bay area tech scene) the iPad is a mysterious thing. The impression has been one of reluctant acceptance, as if individuals are unable to resist the accelerating march of technology. For instance, in a focus group, when asked about upgrading mobile phones I’ve heard something to the effect of “I don’t know what it does or what I could use it for but everyone’s getting them so I guess I will have to get one eventually.” And technology marches on. (and we keep our jobs).
The same thing is happening right now with the iPad. Despite the herculean efforts of Apple’s advertising, consumers are still asking “What is it for?” They cannot see it in their lives.
As an early adopter of the iPad, I believe it and other tablets will be integral parts of the mainstream computing experience but it’s difficult to explain this to consumers in casual conversations. I have explained that it is good for web browsing, games and watching videos (the same case advertisements are making) but I believe there is more to it than these basic software or feature-based use cases. The most important and valuable part of the iPad is its form. I’ll try to explain this more.
Hand selected news and ideas that stimulated discussion at Punchcut this week.
1_ More discussion of magazine apps for iPad. Tokyo web agency, iA, dissected the “designed for print, published to tablet” approach of the Wired iPad app. By contrast, the Popular Science iPad app excels because of it’s direct manipulation of content, we believe the approach is no doubt inspired by Berg’s Mag+ concept.
Not all capacitive touch screens are equal. The impact of less accurate input may demand bigger hit targets and more space between onscreen keys/buttons. We’ve noted in the past the difficulty of UI elements that butt the edges of screens, it’s interesting to see that represented in this simple test.
The test below was put together by MOTO, a San Francisco based mobile development group. It’s a very simple, but highly illustrative test to check the accuracy of capacitive touchscreens. Could be a useful method before delving into that upcoming touchscreen interface.
And lest you think Apple has the corner on touchscreen accuracy, it’s interesting to note the differences in accuracy are a function of the materials and sensors (OEM hardware), not the OS/platform itself.
Of course you’ve already read or heard about Steve Jobs “Thoughts on Flash” this morning, putting to rest any rumormongering about Apple’s intentions.
Wired’s tweet this morning captured it in a nutshell, “Steve Jobs writes about his beef with Adobe Flash. Still a little unsatisfying.”
My take can be summed up simply. The evolution of mobile computing — especially the emergence of rich and ubiquitous mobile browsing — is forcing the web to keep up.
1- Adobe asked for this kind of response. The Adobe Flash evangelists and the attendant Flash community can only take jabs at Apple for so long before Apple squelches the whining with some hard realities (and some unnecessary jabs). Adobe has let Flash rest too long on web-based video delivery to carry the Flash platform. Despite lots of pioneering in mobile and on TV, the Flash platform has struggled to stick on non-PC devices. Jobs’ point about .H264 is right on in the mobile context. Which leads to a second point… Continue Reading »
Punchcut will host AIGA San Francisco members for an evening studio tour. AIGA members will get a glimpse of Punchcut’s design process and a taste of designing for mobile and device interfaces.
Punchcut Visual Design Director, Christian Robertson co-presented these multi-screen design insights alongside Adobe XD designer, Ali Ivmark at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles. Enjoy.
A lot of Wired’s premises are spot on, regarding the trends and the emerging ways users will consume “print-centric” media on digital devices. The notion of print design as storytelling is also compelling, and one reason why print still feels manicured and curated, versus many online publishing outlets where content is merely poured into a content block. Our friends at Adobe should be congratulated for the richness of the Wired tablet UI. Like the New York Times Reader app (another of Adobe’s collaborations), it succeeds at considering content in the post-browser internet (or, if you prefer, the splinternet).
I’m sure a major consideration in this Wired/Adobe solution is the print-centric nature of magazine design. Layouts appear to be adapted from print and ported to the digital screen, which is compelling for now. Where this model succeeds is that it’s much more compelling than pouring content into a “page” rendered by a browser, and may be precisely why readers still want to engage with a publication where each story is curated and designed. Continue Reading »
Are you designing a promotion experience or a product experience?
App-vertising is emerging as a means for brands to engage with consumers through downloadable mobile apps. Marketing and advertising professionals herald the growing app trend as a more sure entrance into the elusive mobile landscape. The fragmented mobile device and mobile OS landscape confined marketing to the lowest common denominators: which meant WAP sites and SMS campaigns.
That landscape has shifted significantly and is primed for brands to connect more deeply with consumers. Four key reasons the opportunity is real:
Smart phones are capable of delivering rich applications (not just games and wallpapers);
A critical mass of mainstream consumers now have smart devices in hand;
Users have a voracious appetite for app downloads (and not just for iPhone, Android, Palm, Nokia all have app stores in play)
Brands can stand alone in app stores and are no longer constrained by carrier’s walled gardens
Yet, slow down a little before throwing your budget at an iPhone app. I’d like to offer insights on the approach that will make the difference between mobile experiences that get adopted – and therefore extend brands – versus those that provide merely a flash in the pan. Continue Reading »
A Call for more sensitivity to hierarchy, space, and scale in user interface design.
Typographers have been organizing complex sets of information for hundreds of years. In that process they rarely rely on boxes to convey hierarchy and organization. Why do interface designers feel a need to draw a box around every element in a user interface? What is it about nested boxes, even three or four levels deep, on one screen? In this article I hope to lay out some basic tools perfected by typographers, that apply to interface design.
Idlemode is the collected writings of Punchcut mobile UI designers and developers who share their perspectives on the mobile user experience. We aim to create demand for higher standards in mobile user experience and drive the innovation of mobile user interfaces.
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Idlemode
