Computers for the people
Tom Krazit, CNET News.com One More Thing blog, April 22, 2008
Excerpts from the post:
Designing a user interface for a mobile computer isn't hard; all you have to do is think like a person.
Sounds simple, but it's taken a long time for that realization to set in, said Stu Card, manager of the user interface group at the famed Palo Alto Research Center. Card joined fellow researcher Ted Selker of MIT's Media Lab at Sofcon 2008 to discuss human interfaces for mobile computers, and just how differently engineers have to treat these devices than their older PC brothers.
...Card focused on the look and feel of the software that accompanies smartphones. He used Apple's iPhone as his example, and examined how the iPhone was designed according to four different human factors: social, rational, cognitive, and biological. The different factors represent the amount of time one spends on a task or problem; you might take a second to page through a library of pictures, but spend months or years developing a network of friends.
"Mobile computing is much more intimately tied to a user's life. You need to design simultaneously on at least four levels, and functional design is not the only requirement," Card said.
Apple made the breakthrough it did with the iPhone because it came up with ways of interacting with the device that make sense on biological and cognitive levels, Card said...
...Human behavior has already evolved as we've grown more mobile. Think of college students who wait until the last minute to make definitive plans, but have had some vague understanding with their friends that they'd all get together at some point during the week, which Card called "microcoordinating."
This custom has derived from nothing more than simple cell phones and text messaging, and those folks will want their computers to be designed around them. Some combination of intuitive interfaces and sensory perception will carry the day.
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