

A Design Critique of the iPhone - kingsley_20
http://kingsley2.com/post/4158120477/iphone-ui-critique

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kingsley_20
I'd welcome some feedback. I haven't seen a real considered critique of the
iPhone's user experience, so I decided to pool some long-dormant thoughts into
a short essay.

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joebadmo
I think you made some great points, esp. re contacts as non-first-class
entities. Another obvious one (that maybe you avoided on purpose) is the
notification system.

I thought it was interesting that you didn't compare it to any of the other
platforms. For example, you could have talked about Android's contact widgets,
which are placeable on the home screen and, when pushed, give you a modal
dialogue with options for phone, text, email, etc. Did you avoid talking about
other platforms on purpose or have you just not had access?

I didn't quite understand your last point about the slide to unlock. You
didn't indicate what exactly you don't like about it, and didn't provide a
better a solution or a even a direction toward one. Also, I'm not sure about
the similarities to the Win95 start button. Is it just the location on the
screen (bottom left)? Is it a visual similarity thing? Maybe this is just
something I missed because I'm not in your intended target audience ("design
community")?

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LordBodak
I think the author is referring to the "slide to unlock" explanation, with a
reference to the infamous Win95 "Click here to Begin" that used to appear
above the start button.

I don't necessarily agree that it's a horrible design decision, but it is very
unlike Apple to invent a control that needs on-screen instructions instead of
just being intuitive.

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kingsley_20
It's not horrible, but we should expect better, especially from Apple, and
there's no harm in setting the bar high for Google and MS as well.

