Having used my iPhone 3GS for the last half a year or so I’ve come to love the multi-touch phone interface. But I’ve also realised that there are situations where a multi-touch interface may suffer, compared to the traditional button / keypad phones. Now this post is going to be very focused on iPhone vs traditional mobile phone though much of what I write can also apply to other devices – like the iPad.

Customisation = Simplification
As far as I can see, one of the key benefits of the touchscreen interface is that the keypad is fully customisable. It’s not ‘hard-coded’ into the phone’s body and there’s no more trying squeeze 26 letters of the alphabet (and punctuation marks) into 10 digit keys. This total customisation means so you can fully configure the ‘keypad’ depending on the situation or scenario. For instance, when you’re entering the phone lock PIN, if PINs are only digits then just digits are displayed. If a phone number is only valid without spaces then the space bar is not shown. Or when you only have 3 valid actions for a user to proceed, just show those three on screen as big buttons. Simple. Not only does this simplify an interface for users but it also reduces the amount of thinking they need to do. And from a systems point-of-view this also reduces errors – another user benefit.

Branded Interfaces
App developers no longer need to work with the mundane phone keys to navigate through their funky apps. It’s a similar point to above in that you can totally design the user input controls to create a more holistically ‘branded’ experience. For instance, I started typing this post in the sketch-style Notepad app where the ‘delete’ key is a sketchy bin. Again, the main – most common – buttons are on screen and not hidden in nested menus.

Full Screen
As well as customising the input options and the visual appearance of the input controls they can be removed totally. A good example of this is when viewing rich media like photos or video. In these instances, when full use of screen real estate enhances the whole experience the ability to ‘clear the screen’ is so valuable. Again, total customisation.

In the Dark
Unsurprisingly, the more you can do on your phone, they more time you inevitably spend on it. It starts replacing the home laptop / desktop. And, invariably, you end up in bed with it. The thing with the iPhone is because the ‘keys’ are all displayed on the screen, the interface is normally better lit than a bog standard keypad – backlit or not. This means light (or the total lack of it) isn’t an issue at all.

Wash Your Hands!
Some of the bad things. Your hands must be in a certain condition to be effective. In other words dry – fresh and possibly smelling of Lavender. Anything remotely clammy, greasy or sweaty just plays havoc with feedback and accuracy.

Meeting Tweeting
Tweeting blind (or texting blind) – primarily used in meetings or while driving (tut tut). This is where you can type a message without even looking and by just feeling your way around a keypad, aided by familiarity and experience. You can’t do that on an iPhone – not unless you can see through desks.

Feedback
In a related point to above, there’s no actual clicking sound or the sight of a button being pushed down – apart from the coded effects on the interface. And a lot of the time, that’s enough. However when it comes to playing games the real feedback makes a lot of difference. For instance, I was playing a football game and I was concentrating on where the ball was I didn’t even know my thumb had slipped ‘off’ the ‘joystick’. This is only a minor issue though I must also add that the way you control players on the multi-touch interface (as well as the gameplay itself) on this app is actually pretty amazingly done.

Where’s the spacebar gone?
Memory & Intuition. Two things men aren’t known for. With controls that are dependent on situation and app, you get lots of different patterns of interaction and navigation. Now, on the iPhone Apple have managed to reduce this by coming up with some pretty cool patterns that can be shared across apps (i.e. swipe right for the delete button or pull-down to refresh). Unfortunately you’re left constantly doing a trial and error on similar content but different apps for the same functionality. This can be a fun journey of discovery if the outcome is normally ‘success’. Similarly the keypad is often subtly different depending on the situation. For some, this may be mildly distressing. For others, once you get used to the fact that some keys move around or go missing because you don’t need them right now, then it’ll be more acceptable.

Blue Screen
Total failure. Now this point is total assumption since it’s not happened to me yet (touch wood) but on your iPhone, I imagine that if your screen dies your phone dies with it. There is no other way to make a call if you can’t actually see the keys to press. However I’ve seen people continue to pick up calls on traditional phones with dead screens because the keys are outside of the screen. The lesson here, of course, is not to smash your iPhone screen.

Here’s another bit of slick Apple infographic-ing and one about internet speeds – a favourite of infographic-ing people.

I do like the way that Engadget currently presents its post surfacing modules in their right-hand column. They’re using solid coloured backgrounds to give a visual cue on how popular a post is. Not only is this breaking up (and visually enhancing) what can be quite text-heavy article pages, they’re also presenting useful information in a more scannable way. The boldness of the design and colours also mean that attention is pulled across to that right-hand column more easily then if it was styled in the usual, module-y way. Added to that, the large font for module headings also works well in the context of the page. Where used well, large typography aids scanning and readability and has almost, itself, become a design element these days.

The number of comments presented is displayed in a ‘speech bubble’ graphic. I’m a great fan of using commonly recognisable graphics to replace text where possible. I truly believe this improves user experience and the page as a whole. People hate to read and where we can reduce that workload without impacting comprehension then we should exploit that.