Comments for Spread to Enlarge - Designing for iPhone, Wii and Other New Web Devices

Spread to Enlarge - Designing for iPhone, Wii and Other New Web Devices

2007-10-04T02:27:35Z

Read/WriteTalk has an interesting podcast interview with Dan Saffer, Experience Design Director at Adaptive Path. In the podcast, R/WT host Sean Ammirati and Dan discussed the process of designing for new types of Web-enabled devices - such as Nintendo's Wii, Apple‚Äôs iPhone and the new touch iPod. The background is that Saffer wrote a blog post a month ago, calling for a set of standards for "gesteral interactions". He also launched a wiki for collecting gestural patterns.

Also note that a few days ago Apple released a brand new guidelines doc called iPhone Human Interface Guidelines. So it is an important time for the design community, as they grapple with new forms of Web devices and interfaces. Apple itself says (in the Guidelines intro) that the iPhone presents "a revolutionary user interface and interaction model."

]]> As Dan Saffer says in the podcast, this new "gesteral" form of web design is in big demand already:

"...basically, for the last year, almost every project that I‚Äôve done - in fact, I think every project that I‚Äôve done - has involved some sort of touch interface. Certainly with the advent of the Wii and Apple‚Äôs iPhone and the new touch iPod, the idea of these kinds of different interaction paradigms were coming into the mainstream.

Every time that I went to do one of these projects, I would look for information about it and say, ‚ÄúWow. Has anyone done anything with it? How do you prototype this? How do you document this gesture where I‚Äôm sweeping my hand across the screen?‚Ä? Every time that I would look for that, I was unable to find really anything much of any value at all. So I began to think to myself, ‚ÄúWell, this was really our generation‚Äôs cut and paste. This is our generation‚Äôs drag and drop.‚Ä? These are the types of paradigms that were setup by the guys at Xerox PARC and other interaction designers back in the ‚Äò70s, that have continued up through now on to our desktops. This is our time to really step up and do the exact same thing except doing it for gestures."
(emphasis ours)

Certainly 'copy and paste' and 'drag and drop' have historically been two key aspects of web design. But "Pinch to Shrink", "Ghost Fingers", "Spread to Enlarge" and other new terms are becoming part of our vocabulary in 2007 and beyond.

The Mobile Web world has been struggling (or adapting) to designing web sites for small screens for years now - see Challenges of Interface Design for Mobile Devices from the Yahoo UI blog for the latest on this. However the gesteral interactions that Dan is talking about really are something new and - yes - revolutionary.

If you're a designer or developer, what have been your experiences over the past year or so in gesteral interaction design? What have been the chellenges so far - and opportunities that you're seeing?

Comment from Nature Wallpaper on 2007-10-03

2007-10-04T02:51:03Z

I still can't figure out how to adapt my site..

Comment from Angel on 2007-10-03

2007-10-04T05:44:34Z

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Comment from JulesLt on 2007-10-04

2007-10-04T13:15:05Z

Not sure if cut & paste OR drag & drop have been key elements of web design as opposed to app design.

I did have an interesting moment with one of our consultants the other day when I mentioned that on our new RIA he could drag from the list on the left into the text box on the right . . . it hadn't occurred to him to even try because drag'n'drop isn't something people are used to working IN the browser yet.

(Which does present some interesting questions for RIA designers).

As for gestures . . . the iPod touch (my closest experience to the iphone) is amazingly well thought out (for the most part anyway). It would be nice to see the same zoom-pinch gesture adopted to work with laptop trackpads.

Comment from Eran on 2007-10-04

2007-10-04T13:20:20Z

Interesting subject.

The interactivity provided to customers is parallel usability on the net. A product may have nice bells and whistles, but if it is difficult to operate those, the point and desire is lost.

The example of the copy/paste is brilliant. I would say that most individuals rely on this simple task daily. What makes it used so much is its practically and ease of use. It grants great utility with very little effort. So is with the Wii and iPhone. Instead of learning what buttons to press on the controller, just do what comes naturally...and swing during a Wii tennis game.

Achieve important actions and requirements without having to spend more times learning how to.

-Eran

Comment from Mike Padilla on 2007-10-04

2007-10-04T16:29:19Z

As user experience designers, we've been limited to constrained physical interactions with our web applications - typing, mousing, clicking. Fitt's law rules our working lives. Wii has opened our eyes to leveraging our innate physical ability of gesturing as a means of communicating with the system. Gesturing is an effective method of interacting with a non-physical system that mirrors a physical one. Technology is now enabling us to use this in our everday websites, not just for applications served up through products like the iPhone that have unique tactile interfaces. Logitech just released the MX Air Cordless Air Mouse. Imagine paging through a New York Times article online by using a page turning gesture.