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It's probably worth pointing out that the author is Don Norman - one of the pioneering thinkers in user-centered design and Human-Computer Interaction in general. He wrote The Design of Everyday Things, which I would argue is required reading for anyone interested in HCI (admittedly a bold claim, considering how broad the field is). I'm tempted to agree, but I'm not sure whether this is entirely Apple's fault (some of it is, certainly), or whether this is partly the fault of developers (or maybe shifting the blame back to Apple, Apple's fault for not imposing even stricter interface guidelines). Some apps in iOS have this affordance where you can go back if you swipe from the left edge of the screen inward, but frustratingly some don't. Is this what Norman is talking about? It's not clear because he avoids giving specific case studies, which isn't his style (DOET is a veritable plethora of strong examples to illustrate his points), making me think he's saving them for his later critique. Norman mentions research that users can't remember more than a small number of icons, and I'd like to know what research in particular he's referencing, but coming from a cultural anthro background and with some very superficial knowledge of semiotics, that seems inaccurate, or at least incomplete; maybe he's talking about people learning icons in a very constrained timeframe? People learn to identify countless icons throughout their lives and (within a given culture) you can reliably show people hundreds of iconic symbols and images that they would recognize immediately. I agree with the general argument that Apple (and others) are overloading us with iconography that we need to internalize (iOS emoji in particular seems like too much too quickly, but maybe that's just me), but I think the answer to this is that it takes time for cultures to adopt icons into their lexicon. I would argue that helping the user form a consistent and "accurate" mental model for how things work is the most important thing a designer can do. He points to this in some examples (swipe gestures in particular, which evidently are inconsistent between iPhone, iPad, Trackpad, and Magic Mouse), but he doesn't name the overarching point as such (or if he ties it all together, I missed it). At the end, Norman previews that he and Bruce Tognazzini are writing a critique on "How Apple ruined design", giving me the sense that this post was about drumming up interest for that. If that's the case, mission accomplished. |