

Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will - bond
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/06/23/feel-ux-if-apple-wont-innovate-the-user-experience-android-designers-will/

======
crazygringo
> _Making good on the trend described in mobile app designer Josh Clark’s An
> Event Apart talk, “Buttons Are a Hack,” there are almost no buttons to be
> seen at all. Everything slides, pinches and magically appears in context._

For the love of God, please don't let this start to be a thing.

I watched the video, and the phone seems like hell to use. Wait, do I swipe
down or left to call? Up or diagonal to get to my address book? Oh no, I have
to pinch. Oh crap, that just took a photo.

Buttons provide unambiguous affordance. I'll just leave this here, since it
seems like every week new designers forget about it:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance>

~~~
eddieplan9
Well said. Gestures are all good, until they become arbitrary and everywhere.
My 1yo can navigate through the apps on my iPhone because the system's
unexciting but intuitive use of buttons for the most important things: app
icons are buttons, most things interesting to her are tappable, and mostly
importantly, when something goes "wrong" - app showing ads, reaching an
unrecognized page of SpringBoard - she could always push the only big physical
button to get back and restart. Now that simplicity is another kind of
coolness that we should really shoot for.

(There are definitely arbitrary use of gestures in iOS, but they are mostly
for non-essential tasks or to provide shortcuts. You could swipe an item in a
table to reveal the delete button, but you almost always can find an "Edit"
button to achieve the same goal.)

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ryguytilidie
What an awful, misleading title.

A) Apple is innovating the user experience. The author even specifically says
that Apple is far ahead in the game, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that this
is precisely because of past innovation. B) It's not even necessarily Apple
who have to innovate. There are tons of developers writing libraries for iOS
that make UX and user experiences better. Tons of developers meaning more
developers than exist for Android. C) To claim that Android designers are
innovating is just such a weak claim. Most Android apps I see are either ports
of legit iPhone apps or really awful designs, note that I specifically mention
the design.

~~~
tysonjennings
It may have been true at one time that most Android apps were just ugly ports
of iphone apps but in my experience that is no longer the case. Devs are
taking the platform seriously and it its really coming into its own. Iphone
apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other
all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. New apps on my
Xoom tend to be exciting and original. My iPad? More of the same.

~~~
batista
> _Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of
> each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements._

Yes, if you do that you are "just mashups of each other", if you don't you are
"inconsistent".

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> _New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original. My iPad? More of the
> same._

That's just in the superficial sense --looking different etc. Not in any new
cool interaction models.

The way Cocoa Touch works though, means that when Apple will redesign the UI
elements (the "look" part), all the "generic" apps will get the new look.

In ad-hoc UI Android, not so much.

------
jpxxx
This is pointless nonsense. What's demonstrated is a special effects video of
a reworked Android home screen with a bunch of whizzy mystery-gesture
interactions - the exact same kind of interactions that takes the longest for
iOS users catch on to. (make a folder, edit homepage, notification center,
camera-from-lock screen, caps lock)

And it's shipping for a subset of a boutique phone line sometime this summer
in Japan only. Next!

------
gurkendoktor
Okay, only semi on-topic, but I'm curious. Am I the only one who finds this
interface interesting, but unbearably ugly? Mostly, the boxes around icons and
the form factor of the phone itself. I usually appreciate them all - iOS,
Android 4, QNX and the Lumia 800 - but this is hate at first sight. I can't
even explain why.

Anyone else? I feel weird, like someone who is about to give Inception a
rating of 2 on IMDb.

~~~
kenrikm
They took almost all of the iOS UX and pasted some new ugly graphics on top. I
did not see a single thing that iOS does not do. Drag to reorder, got it,
splashscreen info/camera, got it, notifications, got it, even the swipe down
from the top for notification center.

So TL;DR a leap forward for Android is two steps behind iOS?

~~~
georgemcbay
"notifications, got it, even the swipe down from the top for notification
center."

You lose quite a bit of credibility by suggesting this is something any
Android build stole from iOS.

~~~
kenrikm
Maybe I did not make it clear enough, but my point was that the title "If
Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will" does not
make sense since iOS already has the features the they are "innovating" When I
hear innovation I expect a completely new way of doing something not makeup
slathered on with a trowel.

------
carsongross
Innovate is a valueless term.

If you've got something basically right, the patience to refine it and the
maturity to leave what is correct alone is more important.

~~~
sbuk
Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à
ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.

------
radley
Designers on Android are doing wonderful stuff:

<http://mycolorscreen.com/popular/>

~~~
lucisferre
Reminds me of all the screenshots of awesome Linux desktops people post.
However, looks nice != good UX

~~~
radley
You're not looking deep enough.

~~~
radley
Arg - I was hoping you'd figure out that the designers ARE the users and
Android gives them a UX that's not permitted on iOS.

But hey, flame on.

~~~
lucisferre
Fair enough, and thats an interesting point, though I have my doubts about the
relevance of the point.

First as an overall product and market strategy for a phone that's about as
good an idea as making a mass market product designed for developers.

Second I think equating a handful of UI skinning enthusiasts as the whole of
product and experience designers is perhaps going a bit far, no? Sure I'll
admit I couldn't live without the Go launcher on my Android, but I'd still
switch back to iPhone in heartbeat because the overall experience is still
much smoother. Subjectively speaking anyways.

~~~
radley
1) Isn't Linux is a successful mass market product designed for developers?

2) Where the best designers go, so follow consumers. Apple proved that, no?

~~~
lucisferre
1) It isn't really mass market except in cases where someone has built some
half decent UX on top of it. But yes the CLI tools are an amazing UX for
developers, no developers are not a mass market

2) Again a handful of skinners (many of whom are really just sticking half
naked women on the screen) are probably not representative of the whole of
design or even the best of it.

------
10dpd
Any time I read an article that references the 41 shades of blue experiment in
a negative context, it turns me right off the rest of the article.

~~~
msellout
Yeah, it's all a question of if you have the time, resources, and most
importantly a good sample.

Testing 41 shades only sounds bad because we typically have far too many
design variables relative to the population of users. In those cases, we need
someone with a priori knowledge of good design to limit the space we explore.
When you can make billions of observations, you can start exploring
experimentally much more of the design space.

------
EternalFury
There is only 1 kind of innovation a for-profit business needs to worry about:
Making a profit.

For all those ventures, which often compare themselves to market leaders, it
is nothing more than a buzzword.

~~~
notJim
I hate that this response shows up on every article on HN. It offers no
insight whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned. Just because profit is the "only"
thing a company cares about [1] doesn't mean it's the only thing worth
discussing.

1: As if it's even true that companies only care about profit--you think Steve
Jobs was motivated more by money-making itself or by money-making as a vehicle
to advance his vision of technology?

------
amirmansour
It all seems very snazzy. Personally I would love to have this UX, but I can't
say the same for my parents. The gesture overload would make this UX unusable
for them. Guess who is gonna get called then!!

------
trentlott
It worked so well for Gnome

------
vignesh_vs_in
reminds me of <http://xkcd.com/927/>

one more ui for android :)

edit: let google choose a standard , and with any hope it will be a standard
for all android.

------
moron
That title is hilarious. Compare user experiences before iOS and after. But,
these guys made a skin so they're the innovators. OK.

And, as ever, what would this article be without the inevitable trotting out
of the old "fanboy" chestnut. If there were a "tech blogger bingo" card this
one would surely be a winner.

------
shadesandcolour
For all of the innovation that Android claims to have going for it, is this
Feel UX really the best that you can do? Honestly this is barely changed from
the default android UI. You repackaged the widgets so they're on their own
page which you could already do. You added a shortcut screen which can hold
both widgets and apps and contacts which is the same as any regular Android
screen and you put the apps on one page like the launcher. Changing the way
the lock screen looks with swiping is cool but that's not all that special.
That's a jailbreak tweak away from being an iPhone.

I've got no problem with Android but when you claim to be innovating over
another platform when you aren't, that bugs me.

~~~
tysonjennings
I don't think 'Android' is claiming anything. There was a story on here a few
days ago about the online religious battles between the various tech factions,
mobile in particular. It was kind of pathetic. When you start
anthropomorphizing an electronic gizmo, maybe its time to go outside and get
some fresh air. Just a thought.

~~~
shadesandcolour
Excuse me for not clarifying: Android users, Android developers, people
writing articles that anthropomorphize android. Certainly the little green
robot isn't claiming anything.

