Joost van der Ree creates iOS interface concept | Hacker News Reader

Joost van der Ree creates iOS interface concept

notalotofwords.com

51 pointsilldave25 comments

I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion but Windows Phone 7.5 actually has most of these 'features' already!

I'm a huge Windows Phone fan too, but this post isn't about the features, but rather the interaction.

The only thing I'm really missing in iOS (I've got an iPhone that I use part-time) is the ability to go back through my previous apps easily.

Then again, WebOS already had them as well so...

Fair point - I'll give you that!

I did rather like WebOS.

Aye, the recent retrospectives made me even sadder when I found out that (as expected) many of WebOS's "harsh corners" were due to political infighting and mismanagement more than engineers fucking it up, and that the insight of the core team was as good as it seemed.

I had great expectations for WebOS, still inconsolable that it died such a terrible death.

Is WebOS the BeOS of mobile?

Blah blah GEMA blah music rights blah not allowed to show this video blah. Hrmpf. Germany. Where legal idiocracy trumps sharing in every possible way.

They should allow just watching the video without the audio. I mean, it's just some background music in most cases.

I don't know about you, but if they don't start talking in first 5 seconds, I mute every single video presentation I have ever seen!

From a usability standpoint, having 'dynamic badges' and 'flipcoins' available with the same (nearly the same) gesture just isn't going to work. I know, each of these ideas is unique and not all of them would be adopted by the platform, but it's hard (for me) to keep them separate when they're presented together.

Mission Control, as defined in the video, is absolutely brilliant, and in a perfect world would replace the current method for app switching. I also love the "swipe from the bottom" implementation, though honestly even keeping the current home double-tap method would be an improvement.

The rest of the improvements (with the exception of putting the notification center in its rightful place below the home screen) seem unnecessary.

Single-finger swipe from the bottom won't work well, as your fingers hang out down there much too often; you'd be triggering it accidentally all the time. Using the keyboard, for example, would be tedious. If the bottom were a hot zone, it would have to be triggered by multiple fingers, which is awkward on a small phone screen.

I like a lot of these. I have an issue with the Mission control feature. It's nice and it looks pretty, but it's not necessary. To go back to an app that you were using do you really need to be able to see a screenshot of where you were? The linear fashion of the multi-tasking bar is meant to convey a sense of time which a grid doesn't do as well or as obviously. Do I read to the left or do I read down or do I read in a spiral? I did like the way that you could pick a page in safari to go to because that is a pain sometimes.

The "flipcons" are an interesting way to overcome widgets. You get to see small bits of information like a widget but it's not always there.

Notification Center, I'm not sure why it really bothers people that it pulls down over instead of being under the home screen, but to each his own.

Overall these look very good. Great job.

"To go back to an app that you were using do you really need to be able to see a screenshot of where you were?"

Yes. I'm absent-minded as it is. My smartphone lets me quickly move around between apps getting things done. So I'm "busy" with a game or reading news, I get a call requiring my attention, I change apps a few times gathering information and making changes and then ... what was I doing again? I could use that visual reminder.

Also, more choice for getting the information you need in a manner you want is a good thing.

I like most of the ideas but I would love it if more "concept artists" would pay attention to how it would actually work in the whole user experience. This is one of the better concepts but too many times you see these god awful "what I demand from the next version" concepts that have features that would be unbelievable annoying when you actually have to see/use every time you use the device.

This feeling is even worse/stronger if you are, like I am, on the receiving end of streams of ideas like this. (For context: I run Cydia, the alternative to apps for jailbroken iPhones, where you find tons of "Substrate extensions", which are self-contained functionality modifications for other software applications, including the default Apple UI.)

There are a ton of designers out there that seem to believe that developers are not idea people, and that we need concept art and mockups (either videos or Photoshop) in order to build new things. I often describe the concept with the metaphor of an arrogant painter that believes that sculptors are somehow bereft of imagination and would somehow appreciate being told "here: you should sculpt this painting", and then being given beautiful paintings that would make impractical or impossible sculptures--or even simply ones that look great in 2D from a fixed angle but would be awkward from other angles in 3D.

In fact, we often have come up with the same ideas, but either a) can actually build such things, --and thereby feel "talk is cheap" or "anyone can build a mockup"--but have not been able to get around to it yet as it is hard or low priority, or b) have actually built it, maybe five times now, but it didn't actually live up to the promise of the idea somehow.

Put differently: I end up being bothered by people Ho believe that "concept artist" describes, rather than "a conceptual artist" (a kind of modern art that some may or may not appreciate ;P) and instead a stage in the pipeline of construction (the guy who makes the concepts, as opposed to the mere implementer) that is critical and missing otherwise. To be clear, not the reuse of the term, as one normally does see "concept designer", but the very idea that that second position should, or even can, exist.

We are /all/ artists using different mediums, and to convey our ideas to others we use many different kinds of prototyping tools, from "Photoshop mockups" to "slideware". When you label yourself "concept artist" only, I feel like you are just saying "artist, but without the interest in actually creating or the skill in the underlying medium to do so". These two bereftments then combine to cause the lack of "attention to how it would actually work in the whole user experience" that you describe.

Anybody else find something unsettlingly sycophantic (towards Apple) about this kind of thing?

Why iOS specifically?

Because every other mobile OS already has these features ;-)

Or more likely because there's an apple event today...

Sometimes less is more. I can see why people like these features and would want the, but not all of them are a hit. The last one especially with app previews just isnt necessary. So are the "dynamic badges". We already have the notification center which is just as easily if not more easily available and it gives you the same information.

Other platforms already have these features. I think a lot of these people who create concepts of its features that exist on WP7 or Android etc. should just switch to that platform. It's not that these are a bad idea by themselves and a few are actually good ideas. It's just that there's a chance they can cause more problems than they solve and become annoying. Like I said, less is more especially when it comes to Apple and it's iDevices.

I completely agree. Most of these features aren't necessary and seem more interested in playing with your phone than using it for a purpose. People already have a problem with putting down their phones and being constantly inundated with notifications which doesn't make this a good idea.

I do enjoy the app previews while multitasking since it is wasted space but it seems that Apple has been toying with this similar concept for over a year. A YouTube video shows an early build of iOS 5 running this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-gfF3Pryc

I agree also. And +1 you. iPod still has the "old" slower CPU than iPhone. It take couple seconds before selected Safari tab will open. This feature of quick tab browsing would not work.

Perfect example of less is better is the swipe-down notification. Totally useless (turned off everything since numbers on app badges are enough to know something new is going on), further they don't look Apple'ish, since I read somewhere they were direct rip off of Android after Apple got upset with Andro of stealing functionality.

I think a lot of these people who create concepts of its features that exist on WP7 or Android etc. should just switch to that platform. [...] It's just that there's a chance they can cause more problems than they solve and become annoying.

Sure there's a chance of that, but the question is whether that actually does happen, and you'd have to examine it rigorously (ideally with a working prototype) to know.

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