The Truth About Intuitiveness (Apple iPhone)

[adamz]

In my introduction to the Truth about Intuitiveness (http://discuss.pocketnow.com/showthread.php?threadid=22769), I covered some general concepts about what makes something easy to use or easy to learn or both. Today, let’s look at one mobile device in particular.

Apple's iPhone is one recent product that's praised for being intuitive and easy to use, but is that just more of the reality distortion field that Apple is so famous for? If you weren’t paying attention to any of the hype, commercials or news articles about the iPhone and looked at it for the first time, how easy would it really be?

Look at that one button on the front; it's not labeled in English or any kind of recognizable manner. None of the other buttons on the side have any kind of indication of what they might do. And what about scrolling? There’s no indication in the lists of what is scrollable (until you hap-hazardly brush your finger across a list or see someone else using it), nor are there any conventional scrollbars. Scrollbars are a pretty standard user interface. If you see a scrollbar on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Windows Mobile, or anywhere you’re probably going to know how to use that. There isn’t even a standard directional pad like those found on all other phones. How are you supposed to know what to do?

There are many interface items that have unlabelled icons that aren’t easy to understand. Safari is a good example. Why are there play buttons at the bottom? What does the + icon do? Why are there two + icons in Safari?! How do you zoom in or out? Why does the screen only rotate in certain programs? What does the red “Do Not Enter” symbol mean in the Mail program? There’s no way to figure these things out by looking at the screen or opening a menu. There is no indication within the operating system of supporting touch gestures and where they are functional. Apple made you learn how to use the iPhone by making you want to learn how to use it (through clever marketing hype) and then by putting the training videos on TV. THAT is what made it easy to learn, not the design itself. I guess it’s kind of like the appeal of video games; it’s fun to solve the puzzle when you don’t actually have to get any work done.

In theory, Windows Mobile is easier to learn at least in terms of user interface navigation since it employs standard user interface conventions that you’ve been using on desktop computers (including Macs) for decades. You can see the menu that says “Start.” Anyone who understands what that word means knows where to begin. I’m not sure how anyone can argue with that. You can see familiar scrollbars and instantly know how those work. You can see buttons for menus that bring up cascading submenus that behave the way you would expect if you’ve ever used a computer. You can Tap ‘n Hold to bring up context sensitive menus just like on the Tablet PC version of Windows. If you already understand these user interface conventions, then you already know how to navigate the device and easily discover all of the supported commands.

What makes Windows Mobile difficult to learn is the fact that its feature set is so vast. It’s the same reason a toaster is easier to learn/use when compared to an oven.

To be fair, once you do learn about all of the hidden gestures and functions in the iPhone, it does become easy-to-use at least in a limited capacity. The things that these finger touch gestures allow you to do makes for a very efficient user interface. You don’t have to take a stylus out and fumble with tiny scroll bars to pan around images and web pages. You don’t have to access menus to zoom in and out on photos, web pages, and email attachments. You can swipe your finger across the whole screen to perform functions instead of aiming for smaller, more specific, user interface elements.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of finger and eye movement involved. Some functions even require two fingers and most require the use of two hands. This is why (up until last year), the entire mobile phone industry has been moving towards interfaces that can be accessed and controlled by hardware buttons that you can feel with your fingers. The advantage here is that you can navigate the device AND input text with minimal hand and eye movement. With the T-Mobile Shadow (HTC Juno), I can control the entire device including entering text with one thumb while holding it with the same hand. I can feel the buttons so I don’t have to look at the screen all the time, and my other hand is completely free to do other things. This is a huge ease-of-use advantage.

Getting back to the iPhone, unfortunately, other things that don’t fit into its new user interface paradigm and things that you’re used to being able to do on other smartphones may not be available. Things like being able to save files, select/copy/paste content, MMS messaging, search, etc., just aren’t possible. Those omissions make tasks that you’re used to doing much more difficult if not impossible. The lack of a tactile-based interface also makes the device difficult to use when you need your eyes to be functioning on another task at the same time. The design of the iPhone requires use of your eyes in order to navigate the interface, just like the Mac OS does. You simply do not have the option to use any of the more efficient interaction methods found on other smartphones.

While the iPhone gives you one interaction method which is obviously not ideal in many situations, other manufacturers are offering multiple interaction methods such that the user can choose the one most appropriate for the task at hand. The HTC TyTN II can be used one handed in portrait mode with the touch screen, soft-keyboard, and navigation buttons… it can be used with a stylus for more accuracy… you can slide the keyboard out, tilt up the screen and type with two hands for faster input… or you can set it on a flat surface and peck at the keys with one finger for light content viewing while eating breakfast. This amount of flexibility makes for a significant advantage in a variety of task scenarios.

The good news is that the iPhone interface is also fun! Once you learn how to use it, you can entertain yourself all day by making web pages bounce around, flicking through album covers, and making program icons dance. That, in my opinion, combined with the magical marketing hype and efficient finger gesture interactive method, is why the iPhone is successful.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on the leaked Windows Mobile 7 screen shots.

[Pony99CA]

Those were mostly good points about the iPhone vs. Windows Mobile. However, there are a couple of places I have to take issue with (surprise!).

Look at that one button on the front; it's not labeled in English or any kind of recognizable manner.
I'd assume it's like the one button on the Apple Mac mouse -- you push it to select things. The big button in the center of the directional pad on my Motorola Q isn't labeled, either, but I figured out what it was for. (I know, that's because the d-pad was around it.)

And what about scrolling? There’s no indication in the lists of what is scrollable (until you hap-hazardly brush your finger across a list or see someone else using it), nor are there any conventional scrollbars. Scrollbars are a pretty standard user interface. If you see a scrollbar on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Windows Mobile, or anywhere you’re probably going to know how to use that. There isn’t even a standard directional pad like those found on all other phones. How are you supposed to know what to do?
It's hard to be sure, but knowing the iPhone has a touchscreen, maybe they figure people will touch and drag to pan around.

As for scroll bars, I agree that they're useful, but less so on a finger interface because they'd need to be larger, thus taking more space.

I suppose you could have what I call "scroll indicators" that look like scroll bars but just indicate where you are on the page, but that's not perfect, either. I worked at Cisco testing their VOIP soft-phone client, which mimics their hardware phone. Some models of the hardware phones have touchscreens, so you can touch the softkeys displayed, but you can't touch and drag the scroll indicators (because they're indicators, not controls). That problem was worse on the soft-phone, where people would interact with the mouse. They'd see what looked like scroll bars and try to use them. Oops.

So you'd need to make them look significantly different than scroll bars, but then you've lost the recognizability of scroll bars. You see that in Windows Mobile where the Circle-X button is taken to mean "Close" by newbies instead of "Hide".

You can Tap ‘n Hold to bring up context sensitive menus just like on the Tablet PC version of Windows.
We disagree completely here. Tap-and-hold has been in Windows CE since version 1.0, I believe (to make up for no right-button click). Saying that the Tablet PC, which came maybe six years later, makes tap-and-hold obvious is backwards logic. Even if we ignore that, the Tablet PC has pretty much been a flop, so not that many people will understand tap-and-hold.

You can see proof of that every time you hard reset a Pocket PC. You get that annoying start up wizard that teaches you to tap-and-hold, because the metaphor wasn't obvious. (I've heard rumors that part of the wizard can be skipped in WM 6 or maybe a later release. It's about time.)

This is why (up until last year), the entire mobile phone industry has been moving towards interfaces that can be accessed and controlled by hardware buttons that you can feel with your fingers. The advantage here is that you can navigate the device AND input text with minimal hand and eye movement. With the T-Mobile Shadow (HTC Juno), I can control the entire device including entering text with one thumb while holding it with the same hand. I can feel the buttons so I don’t have to look at the screen all the time, and my other hand is completely free to do other things. This is a huge ease-of-use advantage.
I'm not sure about that. It's a huge advantage if you're multitasking and need your other hand free. However, unless I'm driving, that rarely seems to be necessary for me (and I don't tend to use my PDA while driving anyway).

Getting back to the iPhone, unfortunately, other things that don’t fit into its new user interface paradigm and things that you’re used to being able to do on other smartphones may not be available. Things like being able to save files, select/copy/paste content, MMS messaging, search, etc., just aren’t possible.
I think that they're possible; they just aren't in iPhone 1.0. Heck, until WM 6.1 Standard, you couldn't copy and paste on the Smartphone, either (without a third-party utility, and those only work in limited contexts), and I still don't think there's a Search function on the Smartphone in WM 6.1.

For example, an iPhone Search tool would be fairly easy to do. You have an entry field or two, just like in Safari, but instead of typing a URL, you type your search string and file pattern. You might have some icons to select that controlled what types of data you searched, and that's all.

Those omissions make tasks that you’re used to doing much more difficult if not impossible. The lack of a tactile-based interface also makes the device difficult to use when you need your eyes to be functioning on another task at the same time. The design of the iPhone requires use of your eyes in order to navigate the interface, just like the Mac OS does. You simply do not have the option to use any of the more efficient interaction methods found on other smartphones.
True, but I think you have to use your eyes on Windows Mobile devices, too. Unless you've memorized the UI, you need to read the menu you're using, watch as you used the d-pad to scroll through it, etc. (I know -- you use keyboard mnemonics for most everything, but not everybody has memorized the UI that well. That's a lot of learning....)

I've memorized a few commonly used applications, most notably my GPS program so that I could route to a favorite place or exit without looking, but not many.

While the iPhone gives you one interaction method which is obviously not ideal in many situations, other manufacturers are offering multiple interaction methods such that the user can choose the one most appropriate for the task at hand.
I agree that's an advantage, but not everybody does. Look at the work of Humanized (http://humanized.com/) (just recently allied with Mozilla) where they believe you should have one style of interaction that works everywhere. They seem to think that you don't need those "panes, heirarchical trees, scroll bars, and clicky-bits" for some tasks (in this case, an RSS reader).

In fact, they linked to an article by "design genius" Edward Tufte (probably a level akin to Donald Norman, Alan Kay and Jakob Nielsen) that seems to praise the iPhone (http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T&topic_id=1) (the article seems dead now, but was working 10 minutes ago). I know we'd like to think we're better at UI than most, but I might have to defer to Tufte.

Their philosophy is that you sometimes have to throw out the old ways of doing things to get significantly better new ways. I can somewhat understand that -- we like Windows Mobile because we're used to the paradigm. But paradigm shifts, while requiring learning new things, can lead to better things, too (like the shift from the command-line-driven OS to the GUI).

I guess we're just not ready to make that leap yet because we don't see that what's on the other side really is worth the risk.

Steve

[adamz]

I'm not sure about that. It's a huge advantage if you're multitasking and need your other hand free. However, unless I'm driving, that rarely seems to be necessary for me (and I don't tend to use my PDA while driving anyway).

Yes, of course... but many people do need to use their mobile devices while multitasking.


I think that they're possible; they just aren't in iPhone 1.0.

Anything is possible, just not at the current time.



True, but I think you have to use your eyes on Windows Mobile devices, too. Unless you've memorized the UI, you need to read the menu you're using, watch as you used the d-pad to scroll through it, etc. (I know -- you use keyboard mnemonics for most everything, but not everybody has memorized the UI that well. That's a lot of learning....)

I've memorized a few commonly used applications, most notably my GPS program so that I could route to a favorite place or exit without looking, but not many.


And see how much easier it is to be able to do that often-repeated-task without looking? The fact that it was possible for you to learn such an efficient interaction method is an advantage.



I guess we're just not ready to make that leap yet because we don't see that what's on the other side really is worth the risk.

Steve

Wow, that Enso software looks great!
But the Tufte link is dead and I still have seen no evidence that the iPhone interface is significantly better than having a highly flexible interface that supports motor memory, efficient shortcuts, and tactile feedback.

Maybe if Windows Mobile 7 can add those things to an iPhone-like interface, we'll have something worthwhile.

[Brandon Miniman]

I think it's interesting how Apple removed scroll bars and no one missed them. It's natural for us to know when something is scrollable. It is that fact that probably drove Microsoft to remove scroll bars in WM7, which is great because the scroll bars take up a lot of screen space.

[adamz]

I think it's interesting how Apple removed scroll bars and no one missed them. It's natural for us to know when something is scrollable. It is that fact that probably drove Microsoft to remove scroll bars in WM7, which is great because the scroll bars take up a lot of screen space.

Are you saying I'm no one? In what way is it "natural"? You had to learn how to make things scroll on the iPhone and you did it by watching commercials, news videos, or other people. How can you tell which things are scrollable and which things are not scrollable?

The reason we have scrollbars on all computers instead of making the whole screen scrollable by pushing it with your mouse or finger is because you need that input device to do other things in the content area. When the iPhone is showing a list, it's ONLY function when you push across the screen is scrolling. With Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile, etc., clicking and dragging across the content area selects all of the stuff in it's path (depending on what tool you have selected). How do I select a paragraph of text in an email on the iPhone? How would you expect to do that? By dragging across the area with your finger, right? Oops, sorry, that interaction method is already occupied by another function.

One option for implementing both a scroll-bar-less scrolling interface as well as the ability to select content would be similar to what Office 2007 has in Tablet PC mode. There's a "Panning tool" that you can turn on, which will make clicking & dragging within the content area scroll the content instead of selecting it. The disadvantage is that you have to turn the panning tool off in order to select content, where as scrollbars are always there and easy to access (and widely understood).

Maybe you don't need to be able to select content. I find it kind of necessary when editing Word documents and emails, moving files, etc.

[Neal S]

I would think that if Microsoft were to invest in context-sensitive voice recognition such that it became a reliable navigation tool, Windows Mobile would quickly move past the iPhone in terms of ease of use. Microsoft's use of voice recognition in its Live Search application makes it far more convenient than using Google Maps or Yahoo! Go, but it does suffer from problems with confusion due to background noise.

The option of talking to your phone versus buttons and touch screens is big on my wish list. (Not that you remove buttons and touch screens, but simply augment them.)

Hopefully, WM7 will have some strong advances in this area.

[Brandon Miniman]

Are you saying I'm no one? In what way is it "natural"? You had to learn how to make things scroll on the iPhone and you did it by watching commercials, news videos, or other people. How can you tell which things are scrollable and which things are not scrollable?

The reason we have scrollbars on all computers instead of making the whole screen scrollable by pushing it with your mouse or finger is because you need that input device to do other things in the content area. When the iPhone is showing a list, it's ONLY function when you push across the screen is scrolling. With Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile, etc., clicking and dragging across the content area selects all of the stuff in it's path (depending on what tool you have selected). How do I select a paragraph of text in an email on the iPhone? How would you expect to do that? By dragging across the area with your finger, right? Oops, sorry, that interaction method is already occupied by another function.

One option for implementing both a scroll-bar-less scrolling interface as well as the ability to select content would be similar to what Office 2007 has in Tablet PC mode. There's a "Panning tool" that you can turn on, which will make clicking & dragging within the content area scroll the content instead of selecting it. The disadvantage is that you have to turn the panning tool off in order to select content, where as scrollbars are always there and easy to access (and widely understood).

Maybe you don't need to be able to select content. I find it kind of necessary when editing Word documents and emails, moving files, etc.

Good point. We need a way to select content AND scroll.

[Pony99CA]

Yes, of course... but many people do need to use their mobile devices while multitasking.
So it's a tradeoff. You have more efficient two-handed usage that ties up your hands vs. less-efficient one-handed usage that leaves one hand free. You have to assess how often you're multitasking and how much time is wasted switching devices that only support two-handed usage.

For me, a two-handed device is probably better because I'm not often multitasking with my PDA and another device. However, I realize that it may not be either/or -- the one-hand friendly device may also be able to be used with two hands, so you could get the best of both worlds.

Anything is possible, just not at the current time.
That depends on third-party software. Copy/paste isn't possible on WM 6 Standard devices out of the box, but you can get utilities to allow it.

By the reasoning above, the Smartphone platform could be less usable than the Pocket PC platform, then. However, the Smartphone is more one-hand friendly compared to the Pocket PC, so which is more usable?

And see how much easier it is to be able to do that often-repeated-task without looking? The fact that it was possible for you to learn such an efficient interaction method is an advantage.
Actually, I wouldn't say it's easier (or quicker for that matter), just safer.

Consider selecting a location to navigate to:

With fingers only, I press the button to get the favorites menu, then use the d-pad to scroll to the one I want (if I don't want the top item), then press the scroll wheel in to OK that. That's at least two interactions plus however many items that I need to scroll.
With a stylus, I'd still use the button to activate the menu (that's faster than three or four taps), then tap the favorite I want. That's always just two interactions.

Now, if the device had a QWERTY keyboard and a numeric row (or if ALT mode was selected) and the menu had numeric mnemonics, I might be able to cut the finger-only interactions down to two, but it would still be slightly slower because I'd have to mentally associate the location's name with its numeric mnemonic before typing. I suspect that would be slower than just tapping the item directly.

But the Tufte link is dead and I still have seen no evidence that the iPhone interface is significantly better than having a highly flexible interface that supports motor memory, efficient shortcuts, and tactile feedback.
I haven't used an iPhone enough to decide. I will say that viewing a page in the browser seemed easier on the iPhone than on my Q, but of course that's only one task.

However, entering a URL on the iPhone was significantly harder because of the virtual keyboard. Even using a Pocket PC's soft keyboard might have been faster.

Like many things, neither is perfect and both camps can probably learn from the other.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

I think it's interesting how Apple removed scroll bars and no one missed them. It's natural for us to know when something is scrollable.
Not always. Suppose you have group of icons (like the WM Standard Start menu). How do you know there's not another page without a scroll bar?

On the Smartphone, you can look at the softkeys and see "More", of course, but that's not as obvious as the scroll bar. And does the iPhone have softkeys?

The point is that you still need some visual indication when there are unseen items. That may not require scroll bars, but it does require something.

It is that fact that probably drove Microsoft to remove scroll bars in WM7, which is great because the scroll bars take up a lot of screen space.
I wouldn't say that they take a lot of space. Standard scroll bars are 13 pixels wide on a Pocket PC, or slightly more than 5.4% of the width of a portrait QVGA screen.

If you take a QVGA screen, that has 76,800 pixels (320*240). The scroll bars take up 320*13 + 240*13 - 13*13 (the intersection only counts once) for a total of 7111 pixels, or not quite 9.3% of the screen.

So, depending on font size, you may lose 1-1.5 lines of text and 2 characters per line.

On a Smartphone, where the scroll bars are really just scroll indicators and can be smaller because you don't touch them, they're only 6 pixels wide (at least on my Motorola Q, but I could have changed the value). So they only take up 3324 pixels, or just over 4.3% of the screen space.

That's less than one line of text and probably only one character per line.

I hope WM 7 doesn't do away with scroll bars entirely. In fact, I hope they become more finger-friendly while still allowing the stylus for those who like it. I outlined how to do that in my response to the JAMM article (http://discuss.pocketnow.com/showthread.php?t=22653).

It's a tradeoff. You want to show as much information as you can on these smaller screens, but that makes accessing the details about something less finger-friendly. You can make items bigger, but then you have to scroll more to find things easily.

I think a good compromise would be allowing the user to customize things more. Keep things as they are for people who don't mind (or actually like) the stylus, but allow an option to space items apart more for those who want to use their fingers. That should keep much of the familiar Windows Mobile look-and-feel without requiring major redesign.
In finger-friendly mode, you could narrow the scroll bars, too.

Steve

[netsyd]

Good Post Adam - and good responses Steve.

I'm definitely not going to try and put up a good fight on this one as its all personal perspective. You can defend Scroll Bars all day and I can defend finger scrolling all night - won't get us anywhere. Ultimately it boils down to what people like to use. I you prefer to be a Stylus Samurai ... great! If you spend a few hours memorizing button sequences to get you around ... great! I on the other hand couldn't tell you hardly any button sequence that accomplishes some thing in Windows or Windows Mobile. But I can manage the heck out of a server. I also couldn't tell you how many taps it takes to accomplish said task... but I know how to get it done.

Sure I (like everyone else) quite possibly learned to use the iPhone by watching the tutorials on TV. Can't argue that either. But I think figuring it all out would have been very simple no matter what. I'd like to think that if I look at a touch screen, and I see a website on it that appears to be larger than the space I have to view it in ... my feeble mind would be able to figure out that I should try touching the screen and see what happens.

A lot of these things you make sound like brain surgery aren't all that hard. Look at the buttons arguement you made:
Look at that one button on the front; it's not labeled in English or any kind of recognizable manner. None of the other buttons on the side have any kind of indication of what they might do.
So ... maybe because I'm a server admin and I'm used to things breaking anyway, I'm not afraid - but what happened to pressing the button and figuring out what happens? Sure I may not have a clue what is going to happen the first time I press a button, but I've pretty much got it figured out by the second time.

Intuitiveness doesn't require labels on everything so I can read what it is. I don't need to be spoon fed every little thing just for it to make sense. If I tell you there's a home button on the iPhone, I'm pretty sure you're going to find it. If I tell you there's volume buttons on the iPhone - I'm pretty sure you're going to find it. If I tell you there's a close button on the HTC Touch... can you find it? No, wait sorry ... that's a minimize button.

Anyway - as I said - good post. I disagree with much of it, and I think you're making this much harder than it really is, but we're not the same person so what do you expect?

IMHO - Sounds like you're trying your hardest to resist the urge to love the iPhone. I understand. It's easy to say that Kool-Aid is too full of sugar and you shouldn't drink it. :D

[Pony99CA]

I agree that's an advantage, but not everybody does. Look at the work of Humanized (http://humanized.com/) (just recently allied with Mozilla) where they believe you should have one style of interaction that works everywhere. They seem to think that you don't need those "panes, heirarchical trees, scroll bars, and clicky-bits" for some tasks (in this case, an RSS reader).

In fact, they linked to an article by "design genius" Edward Tufte (probably a level akin to Donald Norman, Alan Kay and Jakob Nielsen) that seems to praise the iPhone (http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T&topic_id=1) (the article seems dead now, but was working 10 minutes ago). I know we'd like to think we're better at UI than most, but I might have to defer to Tufte.
FYI, the article is back online.

Also, in case you missed it in the other thread, there's an article about the iPhone user interface by Bruce Tognazzini (http://www.asktog.com/columns/070iPhoneFirstLook.html), former lead of Apple's user interface group.

Steve

[adamz]

Intuitiveness doesn't require labels on everything so I can read what it is. I don't need to be spoon fed every little thing just for it to make sense. If I tell you there's a home button on the iPhone, I'm pretty sure you're going to find it. If I tell you there's volume buttons on the iPhone - I'm pretty sure you're going to find it. If I tell you there's a close button on the HTC Touch... can you find it? No, wait sorry ... that's a minimize button.


The fact that you would have to tell some one those things means that it is not intuitive.



Anyway - as I said - good post. I disagree with much of it, and I think you're making this much harder than it really is, but we're not the same person so what do you expect?

IMHO - Sounds like you're trying your hardest to resist the urge to love the iPhone. I understand. It's easy to say that Kool-Aid is too full of sugar and you shouldn't drink it. :D

Actually I'm trying to figure out if the appeal is warranted and why.

So far all I see are limitations in it's design.

[adamz]

FYI, the article is back online.

Also, in case you missed it in the other thread, there's an article about the iPhone user interface by Bruce Tognazzini (http://www.asktog.com/columns/070iPhoneFirstLook.html), former lead of Apple's user interface group.

Steve

I watched the Tufte video, but he doesn't really explain anything about why the iPhone interface is good. He says that the panels are all visually on the same plane, but you can only see one at a time... how is that any different than a stack? It's not.
He talks about the resolution of the screen and how the interface could make better use of it, but doesn't.
He talks about the lack of administrative user interface elements which is good for efficiency in accessing the content. That's an ease-of-use thing. In terms of easy-to-learn, you really need to see the administrative user interface elements in order to know that they're there. I agree that having the title bar in Safari scroll away is good, just like the header info on Windows Mobile's Messaging app scrolls away with the content, but this would not work in something like Word, where you are going to need those interface elements in all parts of the scrollable content.

[adamz]

Bruce Tognazzini's article written after using the iPhone (http://www.asktog.com/columns/072iPhoneFirstTouch.html) lists plenty of usability issues and limitations in a reasonable way. But then the last section says that:
The iPhone really is a study in "delight."

..yet gives no actual reasoning for coming to that conclusion. All of the limitations and problems he lists above that section seem to indicate that it is not a delight.