

Matias Duarte on the philosophy of Ice Cream Sandwich - turing
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/18/exclusive-matias-duarte-ice-cream-sandwich-galaxy-nexus/

======
dporan
What an engagingly written interview with a thoughtful designer. Two points
stand out:

1\. Unlike Apple, which apparently eschews formal user research, Google relied
on "ethnographic research" to shape Android 4.0.

2\. In between Apple's hyper-realistic UI and Microsoft's Spartan aesthetic,
Google is trying to find a middle ground in Android 4.0 that facilitates new
approaches and new experiences.

From the screenshots alone, it's hard to tell what it actually will be like to
use Android 4.0. But it's great to see that Google is thinking so deeply about
user experience.

~~~
saturdaysaint
It's quite a stretch to call Apple's UI "hyper-realistic". The core interface
and main apps (safari, mail, phone, messages, camera) mostly consist of non-
textured gradients. There's a hint of glass on the lockscreen and a fabric
texture used at the "edges" of the UI (in the notification center and
multitasking tray) and that's about it. If anything, it looks like they're
aping Apple with the icon animations, text selection, abandoning their menu
buttons and attention to system fonts.

~~~
ricefield
i wouldnt claim that apple's UI is hyper realistic, but there are parts of its
design which are intended to be realistic. sometimes good, sometime bad. a few
examples:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7.a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7.ars/5) <http://pttrns.com/woodenshelfs>
[http://pttrns.com/profiles#/detail/5e8603b7b0c551b85fcade3d1...](http://pttrns.com/profiles#/detail/5e8603b7b0c551b85fcade3d104e3065)
[http://pttrns.com/calculators#/detail/697d4e1cf6b7561bffcbbf...](http://pttrns.com/calculators#/detail/697d4e1cf6b7561bffcbbf8bbf4851a5)
[http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/4f83d8375a7f0a8a079dac5dd1...](http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/4f83d8375a7f0a8a079dac5dd12cce62)
[http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/6b5f0e73657ddaca447f84f73c...](http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/6b5f0e73657ddaca447f84f73c4ed9bf)

~~~
saturdaysaint
Well, you're lumping a lot of things under the term "UI".

As a rule, Apple minimizes these kinds of things in the _core interface_ and
often moves quickly to reduce them as new features become common knowledge.
For example, the "dock" in the original iPhone looked like a speaker grill -
it was probably a useful convention to denote to people that had never used
OSX that it was a special section at the bottom of the phone/screen. Now it's
a glassy reflective surface that subtly denotes the dock area and nicely
borders the screen (much more subtly than the ICS dock, IMO). The scrollbars
in OSX were once colorful and rounded, but steadily and gradually became
flatter, grayer, and then basically invisible. I wouldn't be surprised if the
now prevalent "fabric" pattern sees a similar fate.

Apple tends to make the metaphors glaringly obvious and keep them around in a
certain class of very simple apps (the compass and calculator fall under
this). It's funny that Duarte mentioned wood because Apple nerds have been
arguing about the wood trim in Garageband (a spinoff from the sleek, German
designed Logic app) since it launched. For power users, these things are a
stupid distraction, but for the %90 of the population that is boggled by the
idea of using a completely new class of software, they denote that this is
fun, easy-to-use software. Google, who've made plenty of great products that
have gone relatively unused, could probably learn a few things here.

There's a certain logic to the anti-skeutomorph thing, but it gets weird when
it leads to dismissing Apple offhandedly. Mastery of these metaphors is a good
part of the reason Apple are where they are today. It's amazing how consistent
these textures, gestures and animations are across three platforms (and how
smoothly they reached this point) while the other platforms are having
identity crises.

I should add that I'm enormously tempted to get the Galaxy Nexus, so please
take this as pro-Apple, not anti-Google.

------
chubs
I heard rumours that google was doing 2 things in particular to deal with the
version fragmentation issue for developer's sake:

* Enforcing a minimum hardware level, eg opengl es2 acceleration (eg no more cheap&slow androids that do the brand no favours) * Making it so that software updates cannot by stymied by hardware makers and carriers any more, so that as soon as google makes a new version, anyone can update to it without needing to root their device.

Are these true does anyone know?

~~~
yesimahuman
I wish more than anything they would try to stop manufacturer customization. I
recently learned that the "dialer" app on my Motorola Atrix is not the default
Android one, which might explain some of its really _odd_ behaviors that just
drive me insane. The home screen, even the _browser_ is modified (at least the
icon).

~~~
sp332
I like my non-default keyboard (I use Swype) and the HTC Sense phone dialer is
much nicer than the default. And custom launchers can be pretty cool.

~~~
ajross
There's a difference between allowing customization by the user (good) and by
the manufacturer/carrier (bad). Users will pick apps they like, by definition.
Vendors will pick apps just to be different. That's sort of OK if the choice
is really better (e.g. bundling Swype on my Epic). But they get it wrong more
often than not.

Example: samsung wrote their own camera app. For reasons that are clear only
to them, it refuses to work (literally, it pops up a message box and exits) if
the battery charge is less than 15%. I'm sure they thought they were
"conserving" battery (because clearly they know better than me how I want to
spend my battery energy). But of course the real effect is that this is a $250
phone that _won't take pictures in the evening_. And this is routine in the
market, Samsung is hardly the only offender. That's the disaster Google is
hoping to avoid.

------
joebadmo
Sounds like Duarte is bringing much needed focus on user experience.

I thought Honeycomb was garish and the futuristicity forced. This tones it
down quite a bit, but also moves away from Apple's kitschy skeuomorphism. I
like it.

I also really like the new typeface.

------
Steko
Everything Matias said today about iOS is true but the bottom line is he's
been on the job for a year, ICS was his baby and yet from what I gather it
still stutters like Porky Pig in a helicopter.

Optimize your fonts and visual style all day long but at the end of the day
the magic of the OS is dispelled if the OS doesn't respond to input properly.
Jellybean I guess...

~~~
bookwormAT
Not sure about ICS, but Gingerbread on the Galaxy S2 is completely stutter-
free. It took a while for Android to achieve this: I used 10 Android
(company-)devices in the last 12 month, and even the Nexus S with Gingerbread
would sometimes show some lag when scrolling through large lists. It was
otherwise a very responsive device, and the lag is hardly noticeable unless
you directly compare it with an iphone or an Galaxy S2. But there was some
lag.

The Galaxy S2 is perfectly smooth. I guess it's the combination of the
multithreaded garbage collector that came with 2.3, the dual core processor,
and a very fine Android implementation from Samsung that solved the problem.

I also think that Android does benefit a lot from every MB additional RAM,
because it gives both the application scheduler and the garbage collector more
room to manage app lifecycles.

------
beza1e1
"it doesn’t matter how great a product you have and how revolutionary the
product is… distribution and marketshare are the things that matter"

That's an interesting point of view.

~~~
nextparadigms
And he should know. He built what was arguably the most beautiful and elegant
OS until now (WebOS), and he got to watch it crumble.

------
revorad
Imagine how good Andoid could be if Google just built one phone. Just one
frickin phone with incredible people like Duarte working on it.

All wood behind one arrow.

Yeah, it's not their general strategy. They are a software company
commoditising hardware etc etc. But cannibalising that strategy could really
make Android as great a product as Google Search.

Imagine.

~~~
Aissen
So you don't think that's what the Galaxy Nexus is about ? Or all the Nexus
line for that matter ?

~~~
revorad
I mean no other Android phones. Because people like Duarte and others who
actually care about making a great product will bust their asses off to do it,
and then Samsung and HTC will come along and spray their crapware all over it.

~~~
generalk
What?

You get the effect you want already, there's been a number of "official Google
phones": the G1, the Nexus One, the Nexus S, and soon the Galaxy Nexus. These
are Google-only, no-crapware phones, designed to showcase the newest Android
offerings in the best light.

With iOS, there's only the one blessed option. You get one new phone a year.
If it's a feature-bump like the 3GS or 4S, then that's what you get.

With Android, you not only get the Google-branded Official Phones, but you
also get an entire ecosystem of devices to suit any taste. Want a hardware
keyboard? You got it. 4.5-inch screens too big for you? Not a problem, plenty
of options.

~~~
gujk
Plenty of problems. Apps never look quite right, because there are too many
different resolutions, and maybe or maybe not have this or that button. With
engineering resources split over so many products and conpanies, you don't get
the best designers and the best hardware people working together on the same
device. With all these "enhancements" from the OEMs, upgrading the foundation
is more expensive to port and takes longer.

------
binarray2000
...still no unified Gmail inbox. “It’s harder than you think,” he tells me.

Can someone explain why? I'm not a mobile developer.

~~~
adestefan
It's probably more of a Gmail issue than a mobile issue.

------
dave1619
Android and iOS are looking more and more similar as time goes on. Android
copies iOS... iOS copies Android. Sometimes Android is ahead with features,
sometimes iOS. Eventually both OS's will reach a point of maturity with
relatively equal features but with a distinct look and personality.

~~~
ugh
What? It seems pretty obvious to me that they are all moving in slightly
different directions.

(Android digs being cluttered and confusing, Apple digs being kitschy and
fake. And I’m not happy about the direction each OS is going.)

------
AmazingBytecode
I was expecting an article about actual ice cream sandwiches. I'm not
disappointed per se, just a little surprised.

~~~
LiveTheDream
Android versions are named after dessert items in alphabetical order (C -
Cupcake, D - Donut, ..., I - Ice Cream Sandwich)[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history>

